Abstract

The problem that suffering and other evils pose for the rationality of belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect person has been the focus of intense discussion for a long time. The main thing that I want to do here is to consider whether recent discussions have significantly advanced our understanding of the underlying issues. I believe that they have, and I shall try to indicate the ways in which that is so. The structure of my discussion is as follows. The first two sections constitute the main part of the paper. In the first section, I shall consider how the argument from evil might best be formulated. Among the topics that I shall discuss are, first, the distinction between abstract and concrete formulations of the argument from evil; secondly, the distinction between incompatibility and evidential formulations; thirdly, the distinction between subjective and objective formulations; and fourthly, the relevance to the argument from evil of traditional arguments in support of the existence of God. One of my conclusions in the first section is that the argument from evil is best viewed as consisting of a core argument that is relatively straightforward – with the exception of one crucial premise – plus a subsidiary argument designed to support the premise in question. The second section will therefore be devoted to an examination of that subsidiary argument. In the third section, I shall consider different types of responses to the argument from evil. One useful classification, I suggest, is in terms of whether the goal is that of a total refutation of the argument, a defense, or a theodicy. In subsequent sections, I consider those options, and I show that none is successful.