Retreating to a ‘meta-formulation’

Although I consider my full-fledged formulation of the problem of evil to be sound, I accept that this would be a bold claim to make, and one that is likely to be met with significant objections from the general audience of philosophers of religion. It would therefore, perhaps, be sensible to work with a version that would be more acceptable to the general audience. Mine is also a rather complicated version, including no less than eighteen steps; this makes it rather unmanageable. These reasons prompt me to retreat to a more manageable formulation, one that is more acceptable to the general audience. But which formulation to work with?

I have discussed various variations over the course of this and the preceding chapter:

Mackie’s formulation was deemed to not cut the mustard; Rowe’s and Tooley’s are too

‘inductive’ and retreat from a notion of logically binding inconsistency; I have mentioned various ‘simple’ versions over the course of my discussion of how we should understand the difference between evidential and logical formulations, and found that although they reflected the central elements of the problem of (and argument from) evil, in both logical and evidential forms, their premises were too easy to deny, and therefore they were too easily defeated by responses such as Plantinga’s; my full-fledged version is too complicated, and likely to be considered controversial. I am left in need of a new formulation, one that combines the strengths of all the variations but lacking the weaknesses. We must learn from Mackie that we must include our central entailment (that expresses the incompatibility between God and evil) from the outset; we must learn from my criticisms of Rowe and Tooley that we need not frame it as an ‘inductive’ problem; we must learn from Plantinga (and others) that there might be some subset of evils that are not incompatible with God’s existence - if certain evils are justified via their necessary connection with greater goods, say, then they will not be considered incompatible with God’s existence. I propose the following

‘meta-formulation’ to take account of all these lessons - I call it a ‘meta-formulation’ because it is intended to represent a formulation that all variations of the problem of evil could be reduced to, or else a formulation whose framework all variations of the problem of evil could fit into:

1. There exists a maximally-good, maximally-powerful creator of the universe.

2. A maximally-good, maximally-powerful creator of the universe would not create or permit any pointless or unconscionable evil in its creation.

3. Some pointless or unconscionable evil exists.

These three propositions form an inconsistent set; there is no need for any inductive move between premises to establish this inconsistency. The central entailment expressing the incompatibility between God and evil is featured centrally. Initial theodical responses (such as Plantinga’s) are headed-off by the stipulations that the relevant evils (i.e. the ones that remain incompatible with God’s existence) are not justified by greater goods, or else are of such a kind as to be considered unjustifiable by any appeal to greater goods. (I am yet to discuss this issue of ‘unjustifiable’ evils, since I have not engaged with anyone making that point, but it will soon become relevant in the following chapters.)

There is, of course, nothing to say that any of these premises are necessarily true, or ultima facie true for a theist; I only claim that they are prima facie true for a theist, and this is all we need concern ourselves with. Crucially, it remains the case that the underlying logical inconsistency remains logically binding. This problem is, therefore, unavoidable. It must be solved, on pain of contradiction. To accept the truth of any two propositions within the set is to deny the truth of the remaining third.

2.5 Conclusion

My full-fledged formulation of the problem of evil is intended to illustrate the principal points of disagreement between those who think that the evil of the world shows that there is no God, and those who do not. It is intended to force the theist (presumably, one of those who does not think that the evil of the world shows that there is no God) to reconcile their set of beliefs by rejecting either the evaluative claim, regarding a certain instance of evil, that that evil ought to have been prevented, all things considered, or else rejecting the claim that God is a moral agent such that He is subject to the kind of moral obligations that such an evaluative claim would yield. I have given a brief defence against the latter of those

two options, and claimed that denying God’s moral agency leads to equivocation issues. The former option, that of denying the evaluative claim that a certain evil ought to have been prevented, all things considered, has not been defended against yet, since it will form the focus of the remainder of my thesis. To my mind, the most common response to the problem of evil, whether it takes the form of a ‘theodicy’ or not, is to reject the evaluative claim that any pointless or unconscionable evil exists in the world. That is, it is to reject the claim that any of the evils of the world ought to have been prevented, all things considered. It is the moral status of this claim that I intend to investigate for the majority of this thesis.

I consider my full-fledged formulation to be sound but, as mentioned, I do not expect this formulation to hold any great sway with many philosophers of religion. The two key judgements that the formulation relies upon - that God is a moral agent and that there are evils in the world that ought to have been prevented, all things considered - have been extensively discussed elsewhere, and the extent of that discussion alone is testament to the level of widespread disagreement about these issues. So rather than try to convince anyone that these judgements are true, I instead aim to point out the repercussions - specifically moral repercussions - of denying them. That is, if theistic belief combines with the logical (and therefore unavoidable) status of my formulation of the problem of evil to force a denial either of God’s moral agency, or the evaluative claim that there are evils in the world that ought to have been prevented, all things considered, then what is the moral cost of denying either of these claims?

For simplicity, I have retreated to my ‘meta-formulation’ to tackle this issue, but it should be understood that the same evaluative claims (or at least very similar) that are found in my full-fledged formulation would be found in the meta-formulation, as they are found in all formulations of the problem of evil. The problem of evil is founded upon just such evaluative claims; it is the problem of evil, after all! The next chapter will look at some issues that arise from a recognition of the fundamental role that these evaluative claims play within the problem of evil.