The Argument from Evil

The existence of evil, pain and suffering is considered by many philosophers to be the most vexed question concerning the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect deity. Why would a loving God permit wanton acts of cruelty and misery on the scale witnessed throughout human history? In this essay, Leslie Allan evaluates four common theistic responses to this problem, highlighting the benefits and challenges faced by each approach. He concludes with a critical examination of a theistic defence designed (...) to show that the problem of evil is not a problem at all. (shrink)

The soul-making theodicy seeks to explain how belief in the existence of God is compatible with the evil, pain and suffering we experience in our world. It purports to meet the problem of evil posed by non-theists by articulating a divine plan in which the occurrence of evil is necessary for enabling the greater good of character building of free moral agents. Many philosophers of religion have levelled strong objections against this theodicy. In this essay, Leslie Allan considers the effectiveness (...) of the counterarguments advanced by theist philosopher, Clement Dore, to two key objections to the soul-making theodicy. (shrink)

Some atheistic philosophers have argued that God could have created a world with free moral agents and yet absent of moral evil. Using possible world semantics, Alvin Plantinga sought to defuse this logical form of the problem of evil. In this critical note, Leslie Allan examines the adequacy of Plantinga's argument that the existence of God is logically compatible with the existence of moral evil. The veracity of Plantinga's argument turns on whether his essential use of counterfactual conditionals preserves the (...) logic of this type of conditional. (shrink)

Bu çalışma, geleneksel din felsefesindeki kötülük probleminin gerçek değil sözde bir problem olduğunu, dolayısıyla çözümlemeye çalışmak yerine tasfiye edilmesi gerektiğini öne süren bazı yeni tarihli iddiaları değerlendirmektedir. Öncelikle ele alınan konu sözde problem dendiğinde ne kastedildiğidir. Bir problemin iki tarafının karşılıklı olarak aynı yanlış varsayımı yaptığı durumlar literatürde sözde problem olarak nitelendirilmektedir. Makalede bu anlamda sözde problemin türleri ve ölçütleri belirlenmektedir. Arkasından geleneksel kötülük problemini oluşturan argüman ortaya koyulmakta ve problem için getirilen çözüm önerileri tanıtılmaktadır. Makalenin son bölümünde, önceki bölümlerde (...) tanıtıldığı şekliyle kötülük probleminin, önceki bölümlerde tanıtıldığı şekliyle sözde problem ölçütlerini karşılayıp karşılamadığı incelenmektedir. Varılan sonuç, kötülük problemine yönelik sözde problem iddialarının savunulabilir olmadığı, problemi tasfiye etmek için ortada sağlam bir gerekçe bulunmadığıdır. (shrink)

God is often conceived as a necessary being, but if gratuitous evil is even possible, then God cannot be necessary. Two arguments are developed that the possibility of gratuitous evil is more probable than divine necessity. Thus, probably, it is impossible for God to be a necessary being. The main argument is then followed with some reflection on what this conclusion means for philosophical theism.

In this essay I discuss the concept of suffering, the causes of suffering, and the Christian solution to the problem of suffering. I conclude that there is no basis, within the Christian view of things, for raising the traditional problem of evil through reflection on the fact of substantial suffering in the world. I thus respectfully suggest that the problem of evil is only a problem for non-believers, who have the wrong perspective on the nature and source of suffering. (When (...) first uploaded to this website, the text of this essay was inadvertently replaced by that for a different essay, "Morality and Fallen Man." That essay has been uploaded and the original text restored.). (shrink)

In this paper, I present a Kantian theodicy, i.e. one based on some of the leading ideas in Kant's ethics, to the classical problem of evil and recommend it as an adequate solution to the problem of evil so understood.

Religious world-views tend to make many seemingly contradictory claims. A well-known pair is God’s absolute goodness and the existence of intense evil. We present a simple model to show the compossibility of middle knowledge, grounded truth, libertarian free will, physical laws, deism, theism, predestination, evil, hell, a sin-free heaven, God being perfectly just, free, praiseworthy, and necessarily omni­benevolent, omni­scient, and omni­potent, this world being both replete with injustice and the best of all possible worlds, heinous suffering, no-one unjustly suffering, God’s (...) grace for the godly, the prospering of the godless, original sin, human responsibility, trans-world depravity, irresistible grace, and Arminian human choice. Besides that, the model also features an open future, fully grounded tensed facts, and bivalence, and allows for a kind of universalism and a pervasive principle of sufficient reason. The model is not intended to be realistic, but its possibility argues for the possibility that a realistic model containing such compossibles could exist – and even be actual. (shrink)

The problem of evil is one of the most significant challenges to theism and Christianity in particular, asking why there seems to be so much evil if an omnibenevolent (all good), loving God exists. The problem of evil, as posed by many atheists and agnostics today, (following Epicurus) often asserts that the following premises cannot all be true: 1. God exists, and is omnipotent (all-powerful) 2. God exists, and is omnibenevolent (all-good) 3. God exists, and is omniscient (all-knowing) 4. Evil (...) exists Christian thinkers over the past two thousand years have given various responses to the problem of evil in the form of various theodicies, or attempts to explain why evil exists (or appears to exist) given the existence of an Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnibenevolent God. This document serves as a brief overview of different theodicies offered by Christian thinkers throughout history. (shrink)

The Book of Job is often read as the Bible's response to theodicy's 'problem of evil.' As a resolution to the logical difficulties of this problem, however, it is singularly unsatisfying. Job's ethical protest against God is never addressed at the level of the ethical. But suggested in Job's final encounter with God is the possibility of a spiritual resolution beyond the ethical. In this paper I examine the Book of Job as a response to the spiritual problem of despair; (...) despair engendered by the ethical problem of evil. My reading is informed by Kierkegaard's analysis of despair in The Sickness unto Death, and Stephen Mitchell's extraordinary translation of the Book of Job, as well as his insightful commentary. (shrink)

Clearly nature does not care about human suffering. Culture does not care either due to the pressures of marketplace. ------ It has been said that God's omnipotence, omniscience and perfect goodness is not reconcilable with suffering and existence of evil. The only solution seems to be that the most divine attribute is indifference. Contra Leibniz, the world is not the best possible world but the most indifferent possible world. ------ Habermas says the 'Never Again' principle must lead to a German (...) commitment to protecting Jewish life and Israel's right to exist. We know what German commitment means in the current political climate ... then the reports of the end of world war II are greatly exaggerated. ------ Strategy I: Mend the marketplace. Strategy II: Do not reproduce and die ASAP. Leave this beautiful world to those who want it so badly (colonials). (shrink)

Epicurus asked: “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” This Socratic dialogue explores a popular version of the Argument From Evil. Suitable as an introduction to the topic.

In this paper I introduce the idea of a higher-order modal logic—not a modal logic for higher-order predicate logic, but rather a logic of higher-order modalities. “What is a higher-order modality?”, you might be wondering. Well, if a first-order modality is a way that some entity could have been—whether it is a mereological atom, or a mereological complex, or the universe as a whole—a higher-order modality is a way that a first-order modality could have been. First-order modality is modeled in (...) terms of a space of possible worlds—a set of worlds structured by an accessibility relation, i.e., a relation of relative possibility—each world representing a way that the entire universe could have been. A second-order modality would be modeled in terms of a space of spaces of (first-order) possible worlds, each space representing a way that (first-order) possible worlds could have been. And just as there is a unique actual world which represents the way that things actually are, there is a unique actual space which represents the way that first-order modality actually is. -/- One might wonder what the accessibility relation itself is like. Presumably, if it is logical or metaphysical modality that is being dealt with, it is reflexive; but is it also symmetric, or transitive? Especially in the case of metaphysical modality, the answer is not clear. And whichever of these properties it may or may not have, could that itself have been different? Could at least some rival modal logics represent different ways that first-order modality could have been? -/- To be clear, the idea behind my proposal is not just that some things which are possible or necessary might not have been so at the first order, as determined by the actual accessibility relation, but also that the actual accessibility relation, and hence the nature or structure of actual modality, could have been different at some higher order of modality. Even if the accessibility relation is actually both symmetric and transitive, perhaps it could (second-order) have been otherwise: There is a (second-order) possible space of worlds in which it is different, where it fails to be symmetric, or transitive. We must, therefore, introduce the notion of a higher-order accessibility relation, one that in this case relates spaces of first-order worlds. The question then arises as to whether that relation is symmetric, or transitive. We can then consider third-order modalities, spaces of spaces of spaces of possible worlds, where the second-order accessibility relation differs from how it actually is. I can see no reason why there should be a limit to this hierarchy of higher-order modalities, any more than I can see a reason why there should be a limit to the hierarchy of higher-order properties. There will thus be an infinity of orders, one for each positive integer, and each order will have an accessibility relation of its own. To keep things as clear as possible, a space of first-order points (i.e., of possible worlds) shall be called a galaxy, a space of second-order points, a universe, and a space of any higher order, a cosmos. However, to keep things as simple as possible, in what follows I will deal with but a single cosmos, and hence will not deal with modalities higher than the third order. -/- The accessibility relation is not the only thing that might be thought to vary between spaces of worlds: Perhaps the contents of the spaces can vary as well. While I presume that the contents of the worlds themselves remain constant—it makes doubtful sense to suppose that in one space some entity e exists in a world w and in another space e doesn’t exist in that same world w—we may suppose that different spaces differ as to which worlds they contain, just as different worlds may differ as to which objects they contain. Thus we might have a higher-order analogue of a variable-domain modal logic. There seem, then, to be three ways in which spaces can differ: First, as to the properties of the accessibility relation; second, as to which worlds the relation relates; and third, as to which worlds or spaces are parts of their domains. -/- The paper will be structured as follows. In Section 2 I provide some reasons why one might want to pursue this kind of project in the first place. In Section 3 I outline the syntax and semantics of my proposed logic. Section 4 covers semantic tableaux for this system; and after giving the rules for their construction, I construct a few of them myself to establish some logical consequences of the system and give the reader a feel for how it works. In Sections 5, 6 and 7 I explore some of its potential philosophical implications for areas besides logic, namely the philosophy of language; metaphysics, including the metaphysics of modality and the philosophy of time, and finally the philosophy of religion, before concluding the paper in Section 8. (shrink)

This article presents a theodicy based on a revision of the popular concept of God’s benevolence. If we follow the Protestant tradition by assuming that God is the exclusive source of virtue, the benevolence of God has to be radically different from the benevolence of a human being. A benevolent and almighty God who wishes to reward virtue and punish evil would design the world order similar to that in the allegory of the long spoons. Divine punishment is unforgiving, merciless, (...) individually non-retributive, holistically retributive, and quantitatively unpredictable. All sufferings are divine punishment. Several popular arguments from evil, including animal suffering, victims of evil deeds, natural disasters, and children’s diseases, can be resolved within this framework. (shrink)

I argue that the answer is affirmative, pace Oppy.

Mulla Sadra in all of his works views good and evil from the angle of existence and non-existence. In Shawahid-al-Robubiyyah he says, "existence is equal to all; it is light in every being while darkness is equal to non-existence. The real evil is the same as the negative entity and for this reason lesser evils have entered the world of existence, by the decree and ordinance of God."In Asfar he writes, "That which desires and by which it attains perfection is (...) the pure good." Elsewhere, based on good and evil he divides beings into four groups: pure good i.e. the necessary existent, the good which prevails over evil i.e. the being utterly devoid of non-existence, the evil which prevails over good i.e. defective beings which are subject to change, and pure evil which is the same as pure non-existence.Mu'tazilites like Shi'ites also believe that God is devoid of any evil, and a human being is free in his deeds which are justified on the basis of punishment, reward and obligation. (shrink)

The problem of evil is an ideal topic for experimental philosophy. Suffering--which is at the heart of most prominent formulations of the problem of evil--is a universal human experience and has been the topic of careful reflection for millennia. However, interpretations of suffering and how it bears on the existence of God are tremendously diverse and nuanced. We might immediately find ourselves wondering why (and how!) something so universal might be understood in so many different ways. Why does suffering push (...) some people toward atheism while pushing others toward deeper faith? What cultural, psychological, or sociological differences account for this diversity of responses? And, importantly, what light might this diversity of responses shed on the problem of evil and how it has been formulated by philosophers in recent years? The primary aim of this paper is to highlight how the tools and resources of experimental philosophy might be fruitfully applied to the problem of evil. In the first section, we review some recent work in this area and describe the current state of this emergent body of literature. In the second section, we review the broader and more recent theoretical developments on the problem of evil. Finally, in the final section, we outline some potential areas of future empirical research that we see as especially promising given those developments. (shrink)

According to a simple Bayesian argument from evil, the evil we observe is less likely given theism than given atheism, and therefore lowers the probability of theism. I consider the most common skeptical theist response to this argument, according to which our cognitive limitations make the probability of evil given theism inscrutable. I argue that if skeptical theists are right about this, then the probability of theism given evil is itself largely inscrutable, and that if this is so, we ought (...) to be agnostic about whether God exists. (shrink)

Subsumption theodicies aim to subsume apparent cases of natural evil under the category of moral evil, claiming that apparently natural evils result from the actions or omissions of free creatures. Subsumption theodicies include Fall theodicies, according to which nature was corrupted by the sins of the first humans, demonic-action theodicies, according to which natural evils are caused by the actions of fallen angels, and simulation theodicies, according to which our universe is a computer simulation, with its apparent natural evils caused (...) by the free actions of simulators in the next universe up. We propose a new subsumption theodicy: the omission theodicy. According to the omission theodicy, apparently natural evil, including pre-human animal suffering, results from the omissions of free creatures who had the ability to prevent it, but culpably failed to do so. We argue that the omission theodicy avoids the main problems with existing subsumption theodicies and deserves a respectable place among leading hypotheses about why God might allow the apparent natural evils we find in our world. (shrink)

After outlining sceptical theism (ST) and the fine-tuning argument (FTA), I demonstrate how arguments for the former undercut the latter. I then consider and reject three recent proposals for ameliorating the conflict: positive ST, considerations about normative superiors, and appeal to theistic metaethics. I contend, however, that Kirk Durston’s complexity argument for ST does not undercut the FTA but in fact supports it. In defending that thesis, I respond to Climenhaga’s contention that ST undermines all warrant for theistic belief, the (...) FTA included. (shrink)

The philosophical “problem of evil” goes back at least as far as Epicurus and has remained a powerful argument against the existence of God in contemporary philosophy. The argument is rooted in apparent contradictions between God’s divine attributes and various conditions of human existence. But these contradictions arise only given certain assumptions of what we should expect both God and the world to be like given God’s existence. In this paper, I argue that we can utilize the work of the (...) 20th century French philosopher Simone Weil to craft a coherent metaphysical picture of God, creation, and suffering which rejects these common assumptions. Further, I contend that this picture very plausibly follows from commonly-accepted tenets of traditional monotheism. Given this, I argue that this Weil-inspired framework provides serious reasons for reframing the problem of evil and its corresponding theodicies by presenting a radically different view of how God must relate to creation. Yet, this picture does not necessarily vindicate the theist. I argue that this picture may leave us with a new question about creation in the face of evil. Namely, is it possible to understand God’s initial creative act as Weil describes it—as an act of love? (shrink)

I argue that classical theism is in tension with a kind of modal recombination principle known as ‘cut-and-paste’. I develop this tension at length, giving two arguments against theism based on cut-and-paste. I then both lay out and respond to various original proposals for reconciling theism with cut-and-paste. I conclude by measuring the cost of having to deny cut-and-paste. I argue that while there is an intuitive cost to this consequence of theism, theists also have plausible ways of addressing various (...) motivations for cut-and-paste. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider Sterba’s recent criticism of skeptical theism in context of his argument from evil. I show that Sterba’s criticism of skeptical theism shares an undesirable trait with all past criticisms of skeptical theism: it fails. This is largely due to his focus on causal connections and his neglect of logical connections. Because of this, his argument remains vulnerable to skeptical theism.

The evil-god challenge is a challenge for theists to show that belief in God is more reasonable than belief in evil-god. In this article, I show that whether or not evil-god exists, belief in evil-god is unjustified. But this isn’t the case for belief in God: belief in God is probably justified if theism is true. And hence belief in God is (significantly) more reasonable than belief in evil-god, and the evil-god challenge has been answered.

Say theism is the view that an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly loving, and perfectly good being exists. And say pointless atheism occurs just in case there’s an atheist who isn’t resistant to belief in God, and no greater good comes about on account of this atheist’s non-belief. In this article, I show that if two prominent views about evil and divine hiddenness are accepted, theism is compatible with pointless atheism—a result hitherto unnoticed. Furthermore, not only is theism compatible with pointless atheism, (...) it entails pointless atheism. This is significant because many objections to the argument from divine hiddenness have tried to show that all instances of non-resistant atheism are required for a greater good. But if I’m right, given theism, there need not be a point to non-resistant atheism. Indeed, we should expect there to be pointless atheism. (shrink)

Free will theodicies that rely on a good afterlife to explain how earthly evils are ultimately outweighed or defeated are challenged by what Simon Kittle has termed the lack of value problem concerning heavenly freedom: that a heaven with no freedom to make good and evil choices is not a supreme good that could justify God’s creation of evil. I take up Kittle’s suggestion that this problem can be addressed by a choice-based account of heavenly freedom which gives some idea (...) of how the types and number of choices an agent might face in heaven add up to a level of freedom that it would be desirable to have. While Christian notions of a loving God’s desire for divine-human union typically prioritise non-choice-based accounts of how heavenly existence perfects our wills for union with God, I argue that a good-maximising view of an omniperfect God’s creative purpose provides for an account of heaven as a realm of enhanced agency that answers Kittle’s challenge by outlining the types of goods that might exist in this afterlife and how choices between them could be supremely valuable. (shrink)

Much of the contemporary discussion over the problem of evil is undermined by a violation of a basic conceptual truth: no rational agent would knowingly engage in self-sabotage. The argument of this paper contends that several prominent versions of the Evidential Argument from Evil are undercut as these arguments imply an incentive structure that would generate perverse outcomes. Put another way, these arguments imply that an omniscient agent would knowingly engage in self-sabotage. Interestingly, however, it is not just arguments from (...) evil which run afoul of the principle that no rational being would knowingly engage in self-sabotage. As several prominent theodicies suffer from the flaw of incentivizing perverse outcomes as well. (shrink)

Sceptical theists respond to the problem of evil by arguing that we should be sceptical of our abilities to understand God's plan and the justifying reasons for his actions. A major difficulty faced by sceptical theism is the problem of moral paralysis. Some sceptical theists have proposed a divine command response: theists can appeal to God's commands in acting, and this circumvents the need to exercise value judgement in moral deliberations. This article provides an objection to the divine command response (...) by arguing that it renders love impossible and practically undermines the possibility of the theistic way of life. As a result, this article demonstrates a constraint on any potential solution to the problem of moral paralysis in sceptical theism: the access to values of loving relationship and human well-being, as well as their role to play in agents’ deliberative process, should be safeguarded. (shrink)

Este capítulo ofrece un panorama del escepticismo acerca de las creencias religiosas tal como el mismo es entendido dentro de la tradición de la filosofía analítica. Su estructura es la siguiente. La Sección 2 propone una posible taxonomía del escepticismo religioso. Las tres secciones subsecuentes examinan tres argumentos que pretenden ofrecer razones para sostener o bien (i) que las creencias religiosas son falsas, o bien (ii) que las mismas carecen, per se o al menos por el momento, de justificación epistémica. (...) Los argumentos a considerar son: el argumento del desacuerdo y, en relación con éste, el argumento del ocultamiento divino (Sección 3); el argumento evolutivo (Sección 4); y el argumento del mal y, en relación con éste, el contraargumento del teísmo escéptico (Sección 5). La Sección 6 analiza si, y cómo, un escéptico acerca de la religión puede de todas formas ser religioso. Con relación a este tema, son discutidos el fideísmo, el conservadurismo religioso y el ficcionalismo religioso. La Sección 7 ofrece algunas consideraciones finales. (shrink)

The great strength of process theism is also its tragic flaw. It avoids the weaknesses of more traditional theologies--e.g., the problem of evil and conflicts with science--by envisioning a God so thoroughly interwoven with nature and history that there is nothing left which they cannot do without God. Even if we can understand what process theologians mean by their claims (per Antony Flew), there seems to be no empirical method to distinguish the work of God from the work of nature, (...) history, or culture. (shrink)

Louise Antony calls Laura Ekstrom’s book “courageous” (backcover). I have no clue what it means for a work of philosophy to be courageous, but Ekstrom’s book is certainly good. And despite the fact that I think there are about a million problems with it, I recommend it to anyone interested in the problem of evil or skeptical theism: it's well researched and clearly argued—undergraduates as well as professional philosophers will find this book useful. (Well, this recommendation comes with one caveat: (...) the book—through no fault of the author—is priced at $99, which is worth roughly 90 McChickens. I cannot in good conscience recommend any philosophy book over 90 McChickens.) In what follows, I will summarize and comment on Ekstrom’s book. I will have more to say about chapters I personally found interesting (i.e. chapters 1, 2, and 4) and less to say about chapters that I found less interesting (i.e. chapters 3, and 5-8). (shrink)

In this article, I explore the mythic narratives of the Yoruba-derived tradition of Candomblé Nagô to discern the attributes of its Supreme Being. I introduce Candomblé, offering an overview of its central beliefs and practices, and then present theological perspectives on the Supreme Being in African Traditional Religion as a basis for comparison with the myths I will examine. I consider the primary creation myths of Candomblé, emphasizing references to the tradition's Supreme Being and, analysing these myths, I argue that (...) Candomblé's Supreme Being, as depicted in these narratives, amounts to a limited god. This portrayal accounts for the absence of a problem of evil within the tradition. It suggests the moral ambivalence of Candomblé's Supreme Being and other high deities, as well as the world itself. This exploration sheds light on a lesser-explored tradition and its unique approach to philosophical dilemmas, distinct from the predominantly theistic framework of most philosophy of religion, and evinces that philosophizing through immersion in myths should involve appreciating the complexities and richness inherent in these forms of life, free from the imposition of external assumptions or biases. (shrink)

Some free-will defenses appeal to the intuition that the love of creatures who God causally determined to love him is less valuable than the love of creatures who chose to love God freely, in the libertarian sense. I challenge that intuition directly. I attempt to discredit the intuition in question by demonstrating that no analogies regarding human-related cases can support it. In each case I treat, I argue either that the case is disanalogous to God’s case, or that granting the (...) lover libertarian free will wouldn’t make the love in question more valuable. (shrink)

This introduction provides a brief overview of the issues and arguments that arise in Hume's _Dialogues concerning Natural Religion_ (1779). It also provides a few brief comments relating to the historical context in which this text should be interpreted , as well as an account of the place of the _Dialogues_ in relation to Hume's other philosophical works.

This paper considers the question of “atheism” as it arises in Hume’s _Dialogues_. It argues that the concept of “atheism” involves several signficiant ambiguities that are indicative of philosophical and interpretive disagreements of a more substantial nature. It defends the view that Philo’s general sceptical orientation accurately represents Hume’s own “irreligious” and “atheistic” commitments, both in the _Dialogues_ and in his other (“earlier”) writings. While Hume was plainly a “speculative atheist”, his “practical atheism” was targeted more narrowly against “superstition” - (...) as opposed to deism or religion of a more “philosophical” kind. (shrink)

According to the simulation hypothesis, the world we live in is a computer simulation. According to longtermism, we should aim to bring about the best possible future. In this paper, I argue that there is a tension between the two: insofar as we have reason to think we are living in a computer simulation, we have reason to think the longtermist project will fail (or has already failed). I make my case by developing a novel version of the problem of (...) evil. It says that there exist certain forms of evil in our world that longtermist philosophers have argued we should try to eradicate. But then, the existence of those evils give us reason to think our world is not a computer simulation run by a being aligned with longtermist values. In short, the more that longtermists think we could make the world a better place in the future, the more troubling they should find it that the world is not already a better place, given the assumption that we are living in a computer simulation. (shrink)

The Evidential Problem of Evil The evidential problem of evil is the problem of determining whether and, if so, to what extent the existence of evil (or certain instances, kinds, quantities, or distributions of evil) constitutes evidence against the existence of God, that is to say, a being perfect in power, knowledge and goodness. Evidential […].

Historically, philosophers who thought our world unsurpassable, like Leibniz, thought it the uniquely best of all possible worlds. But recent developments in value theory and philosophy of religion make clear that our world could be unsurpassable, but not uniquely best—because other worlds are still as good as or incomparable with it. In particular, the world may contain infinities that result in incomparability with many other worlds. This chapter advances the recent philosophical debate over whether it is tenable to hold that (...) our world is unsurpassable, given that it may contain an infinite number of people with lives that go infinitely well. I argue that while recent innovations in formal axiology offer prospects for comparing many worlds with these kinds of infinities, many infinite worlds are genuinely incomparable with each other. Consequently, whether there is another world better than our own ends up turning on substantive metaphysical and normative questions: metaphysical questions about personal identity across possible worlds, and normative questions about what makes for a valuable life. (shrink)

This volume presents original essays on the ideas of philosophical optimism and the best possible world. It highlights the historical and philosophical nuances of an idea that remains under-treated within the literature despite its long and influential history. Optimism--broadly, the thesis that God does the best, or that this is the best possible world--is often associated with the philosophy of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. However, there exists a rich tradition of philosophical optimism not only after Leibniz, but before him as well. (...) The chapters in this volume address the philosophical nuances of optimism within the ancient, medieval, enlightenment, modern, and contemporary eras. They cover a variety of thinkers ranging from Plato, Aquinas, Rousseau, Voltaire, Jonathan Edwards, the new optimists of 19th-century France, and the non-theistic optimists of the 20th century. Optimism and the Best Possible World will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of religion, history of philosophy, religious history, and intellectual history. (shrink)

The revised compensation theodicy holds that the primary good of evils, in addition to the compensation of the afterlife, is to justify the existence evil. It holds that this primary good does not necessarily outweigh the evils present in the world, nor is it necessary that the primary good returns to the one who suffered. However, Reichenbach argued that this theodicy is fatally flawed. He asserted that the premises in this theodicy and its treatment of justice are objectionable, leading to (...) an unacceptable conclusion where people are treated only as a means to produce goods. This article elucidates Reichenbach's position and responds to his objections, showing that the revised compensation theodicy has great potential in attempting to resolve the problem of evil. (shrink)