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In strong versions of the Problem of Evil, one premise goes something like this:
P: If (a) there has been spread out over the centuries, a large group of people who are highly intelligent, who know an enormous amount about suffering and its potential moral justification, who have spent a great deal of time (centuries collectively) thinking very hard about the justification of suffering, and who have undertaken a very long (again, centuries), intelligent, heartfelt, and otherwise serious search for facts or reasons or whatnot that justify suffering, and (b) they have collectively failed to find them for an enormous number of instances of suffering, then (c) for at least one instance of suffering there were no justifying goods or facts or reasons or whatnot to be found.
Most philosophers will grant that (a) and (b) are true. Both of them seem like pretty straightforward facts.
For (a), the “large group of people” P talks about are philosophers, theologians, and intellectually curious people who think long and hard about why God might allow such horrific suffering that doesn’t, on the face of it, seem worth it. Most philosophers, including theists, accept that (a) is a historical fact.
Most of these theists have the humility to admit that (b) is true too. They have given interesting speculations as to why God allows apparently gratuitous suffering, but they also admit that in many cases it’s just speculation. They don’t claim to have found the justifications for all instances of suffering.
P says that if (a) & (b) are true, then (c) is true. But lots of theists think (c) is false. They think, pretty reasonably, that if God exists, then he is never unjustified in allowing some instance of suffering. Since they typically (not always) think (a) & (b) are true, they are forced to deny P.
What is P really saying?
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It says that since we’ve worked so damn hard to find justifications for suffering, and have failed in an epic manner, part of the explanation for that failure is that at least some of those instances of suffering don’t have any justification (that is, God himself is not justified). Obviously, in some cases we fail to find the justifications merely because we screwed up. The justifications exist but we just missed them. P is saying that since there are so many of us looking, and we looked so freakin’ hard, for so many centuries, and we have failed a colossal number of times despite all those efforts, it’s not the case that each instance of suffering has a justification but we just missed it. Instead, for some suffering, the reason we couldn’t find a justification for it is the fact that there wasn’t one to be found.
All of that is familiar ground in the philosophy of religion.
Theists who reject P, and are competent at philosophy, typically appeal to the following four claims in their attempt to argue against P:1
The task of determining whether an instance of suffering has a justification can be extremely difficult and thereby generate prolonged, hardened, and reasonable disagreements about whether it is justified. For instance, there are hard questions regarding how much goodness a good has, how much badness an instance of suffering has, what it takes for a good to be appropriately connected with an instance of suffering (so as to partly or fully justify it), what connections actually exist between goods and instances of suffering, etc.
Moreover, there are all sorts of vitally important goods and facts about goods (e.g., their indirect and subtle connections to suffering) that even experts don’t know about or that have been discovered only recently that probably apply to the suffering of humans and other creatures on earth.
There could (epistemically anyway) be someone who was omniscient about justification and suffering. More importantly, our justification-suffering knowledge would be infinitesimal compared to the justification-suffering knowledge of such a being: she would know much, much more than we do about suffering and how it’s justified.
We can imagine all sorts of possible scenarios consistent with all the basic facts we actually know about suffering but in which all instances of suffering are justified.
For the sake of argument, I will agree that (1)-(4) are true. So I’m willing to meet these theistic philosophers half way.
But I think that even if they are true, they fail to give good reason to think P is false. That is, the truth of (1)-(4) does not give you a good reason to think “In every single case in which we fail to find a justification for some suffering—and there are zillions of such cases, despite our best efforts over centuries—the justifications are there anyway”.
Before I start, I should mention that there are loads of shitty reasons people give for rejecting P. I won’t consider those. (1)-(4) are respectable!
Regarding (3):
Theists are fond of pointing out that God, if he exists, will have knowledge of good and evil that infinitely surpasses ours. So, he would know all sorts of facts about good and evil that have entirely escaped us. This remark of Michael Bergmann’s is representative:
[T]he fact that humans can’t think of any God-justifying reason for permitting an evil, doesn’t make it likely that there are no such reasons; this is because if God existed, God’s mind would be far greater than our minds so it wouldn’t be surprising if God had reasons we weren’t able to think of (Bergmann 2009; my emphasis).
I hold that the claim after ‘this is because’ is false. If we spell out Bergmann’s point here, I think we get the following dialectic.
Theist: Imagine for a minute what it would be like to learn that there is a being G whose mind is a zillion times more knowledgeable than our minds.
Non-theist: Ok.
Theist: In that scenario, in which you have learned that G actually exists, you would not find it surprising to also learn that G’s knowledge of suffering and goods is far greater than ours.
Non-theist: I agree. The topic of suffering and goods is one in which I can easily imagine that there are many truths we know nothing about.
Theist: Moreover, if you would not find it surprising to learn that G’s knowledge of suffering and goods is far greater than ours, then you would also not find it surprising to learn that all instances of suffering—including the ones that we haven’t been able to find justifications for—are justified.
At this point the non-theist should not agree. It’s easy to admit that there is a fantastic number of interesting truths about suffering and goods that we don’t know at all. That’s to be expected. The pretense ‘What if there were a being G whose mind was far greater than ours?’ is not necessary for making that modest admission.
But that admission gives one no significant reason to think that the unknown truths about suffering and goods make it plausible that there actually are justifications in all the cases in which we couldn’t find any. The key point:
We can take ourselves to be excellent at judging a topic even if we admit that there are millions of truths about that topic that we know nothing about.
To see the italicized point more clearly, consider a sports analogy:
Theist: Imagine for a minute what it would be like to learn that there is a being G whose mind is a zillion times more knowledgeable than our minds.
Non-theist: Ok.
Theist: In that scenario, in which you have learned that G actually exists, you would not find it surprising to also learn that G’s knowledge of baseball is far greater than ours.
Non-theist: I agree. The topic of baseball is one in which I can easily imagine that there are many truths we know nothing about.
Theist: Moreover, if you would not find it surprising to learn that G’s knowledge of baseball is far greater than ours, then you would also not find it surprising to learn that almost all of our comparative baseball judgments were mistaken (judgments of forms such as ‘So and so was a better baseball player than the other so and so’).
The if-then conditional in the final line is false, and the reason that it’s false is that we take ourselves to have pretty good judgment regarding baseball comparisons despite our admission that there are millions of truths about baseball we know nothing about. Just because I learn that some being knows infinitely more than I do about baseball, or suffering and goods, or any other topic, gives me no good reason to doubt the reliability of my judgments about baseball or suffering and goods or some other topic.
Here is another way to think about it:
Suppose you learned that some being knew infinitely more than you do. Would that make you think you are unreliable in your comparative baseball judgments? No, of course not.
Suppose you learned that some being knew infinitely more than you do about baseball. Would that make you think you are unreliable in your comparative baseball judgments? No, of course not. Just because you admit there are millions of baseball facts you know nothing about doesn’t mean you should admit that you are unreliable in your baseball judgments.
Similarly:
Suppose you learned that some being knew infinitely more than you do. Would that make you think you are unreliable in your judgments about suffering and goods? No, of course not.
Suppose you learned that some being knew infinitely more than you do about suffering and goods. Would that make you think you are unreliable in your judgments about suffering and goods? No, of course not. Just because you admit there are millions of suffering/goods facts you know nothing about doesn’t mean you should admit that you are unreliable in your judgments about suffering and goods.
If you don’t like the sports comparison, fine! Feel free to substitute something else for baseball. For those reasons then, I think the truth of (3) fails to provide good reason for doubting P.
Regarding (1), (2), and (4):
In response to (1) & (2) one should admit that human fallibility being what it is, we have missed out on a large number of important justifications for instances of suffering. I’m sure there is a massive collection CS of facts about suffering that we know nothing about and that applies to the suffering we see on Earth.
But so what? There is a massive collection CB of baseball facts that we know nothing about. The mere fact that CB is huge gives one no good reason to think the facts in CB are situated in such a way that our baseball comparisons (described above) are unreliable. Similarly, as far as I can see the fact that CS is huge gives one no good reason to think the facts in CS are situated in such a way that when it comes to suffering all our negatives (i.e., instances in which we have failed to find justifications) are false negatives.
For those reasons then, I don’t see how (1) & (2) work in casting serious doubt on P.
Similarly, just because it is not difficult to imagine all sorts of possible scenarios consistent with all the basic facts we actually know about suffering but in which all instances of suffering are justified, gives no good reason to think P is false; hence, (4) fails to suggest P is false, as shown by a brief comparison with baseball or almost any other topic we have reliable judgments about.
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My target theist wants to give us reasons for thinking that we are truly awful at discovering the justifications for suffering; that would be a good reason to doubt P. But if the above arguments are sound, then (1)-(4) aren’t anywhere near good enough.
I’m not saying the theist has no reasons to think P is false. I’m not saying that at all. Neither am I saying that P is true. Instead, I’m saying that the popular reasons the theist has given for rejecting P, (1)-(4), are not very good.
Anyone who is familiar with philosophy can guess that the theist will have replies to my objections. That’s fine. I just wanted to lay out some of the considerations that help us see into the Problem of Evil in an illuminating way.
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This post is a revision of a small part of this paper.
For (1) & (2) see William Alston, “The Inductive Argument from Evil and the Human Cognitive Condition,” Philosophical Perspectives 5 (1991): 29–67; Alston, “Some (Temporarily) Final Thoughts on the Evidential Argument from Evil,” The Evidential Argument from Evil, ed. D. Howard-Snyder (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996), 311–32; Kirk Durston, “The Consequential Complexity of History and Gratuitous Evil,” Religious Studies 36 (2000): 65–80; Durston, “The Failure of Type-4 Arguments from Evil,” Philo 8 (2005): 109–22; Durston, “The Complexity of History and Evil: A Reply to Trakakis,” Religious Studies 42 (2006): 87–99; Daniel Howard-Snyder, “The Argument from Inscrutable Evil,” in his 1996; Howard-Snyder, “Epistemic Humility, Arguments from Evil, and Moral Skepticism,” Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion, ed. J. Kvanvig (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 17–57. For (3) see Alston 1996; Stephen Wykstra, “The Humean Obstacle to Evidential Arguments from Suffering: On Avoiding the Evils of ‘Appearance’,” International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, 16 (1984): 73-93; Wykstra, “Rowe’s Noseeum Argument from Evil”, in Howard-Snyder 1996; and Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford, 2000). For (4) see Alston 1991, 1996; Michael Bergmann, “Skeptical Theism and the Problem of Evil,” Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology, eds. T. Flint and M. Rea (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 374–402; and Peter van Inwagen, “The Problem of Evil, the Problem of Air, and the Problem of Silence,” Philosophical Perspectives 5: Philosophy of Religion, ed. J. Tomberlin (Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview, 1991), 135–65; and Van Inwagen, The Problem of Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
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