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How not to render an explanatory version of the evidential argument from evil immune to skeptical theism

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Abstract

Among the things that students of the problem of evil think about is whether explanatory versions of the evidential argument from evil are better than others, better than William Rowe’s famous versions of the evidential argument, for example. Some of these students claim that the former are better than the latter in no small part because the former, unlike the latter, avoid the sorts of worries raised by so-called “skeptical theists”. Indeed, Trent Dougherty claims to have constructed an explanatory version that is “fundamentally immune to considerations pertaining to skeptical theism”. I argue that he has done no such thing.

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Notes

  1. See Rowe (1979, 1986, 1988, 1991, 1996, 2003).

  2. For example, Draper (1992), Draper and Dougherty (2013), and Dougherty (2014).

  3. Howard-Snyder, forthcoming.

  4. See, e.g., Bergmann (2009) and Howard-Snyder, unpublished.

  5. (Dougherty (2014), Sect. 6.3).

  6. (Draper (1989), p. 13).

  7. Thanks to Hud Hudson and Justin McBrayer for comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

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Howard-Snyder, D. How not to render an explanatory version of the evidential argument from evil immune to skeptical theism. Int J Philos Relig 78, 277–284 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-014-9501-2

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