Ch. 1: Is Evil Evidence against Belief in God?

Chapter 1

We have three debaters to debate this chapter. William Rowe will argue that evil is evidence against belief in God. His opponents are Daniel Howard-Snyder and Michael Bergmann.

William Rowe's Case
First, William Rowe makes his case that evil is evidence against God's existence. He makes it very clear at the beginning what is being argued. He isn't attempting to show that God doesn't exist or that overall, the evidence is against him. He is attempting to show that, all other grounds for belief in God aside, the consideration of the amount and intensity of suffering that exists makes God's existence less likely.

His argument structure is the following:
1. There exists horrendous evils that God would have no justifying reason to permit.
2. God would not permit evil without a justifying reason for doing so.
3. Therefore, God does not exist.

He does not claim to be able to establish premise (1) with certainty. His point is given the instances of horrendous evil that we see every day, it is plausible that (1) is true. He gives two instances of seemingly pointless suffering which are:

1. A fawn is horribly burned in a forest fire caused by lightning. It lies on the forest floor suffering terribly for five days before death relieves it of its suffering.

2. A five year old girl is brutally beaten, raped, and strangled in Flint, Michigan, on New Year's Day.

He states that examples such as these are plentiful and it is pretty difficult to believe that God had a good reason for allowing them to occur. It seems that whatever good we can come up with, it doesn't seem to justify God allowing the event to occur. These are examples of seemingly pointless suffering which make premise (1) seem plausible.

First Objection: Argument from Ignorance

Rowe responds to the objection that his argument from evil is an argument from ignorance. The argument goes: We are not omniscient like God is so we shouldn't expect to understand all the reasons he allows bad things to happen. It is fallacious to argue that we don't see a reason why certain bad events occur to argue that there is no such good reason. After all, a good parent may have to make his kids suffer for their good even if they can't understand why. A little kid is made to go to the dentist, for example.

Rowe responds that it may be plausible to think a finite being has a good reason for these evils to occur, it isn't plausible to think an infinite being does. Also, if God were a good parent, why doesn't he comfort us while we're going through this necessary evil? Why does he stay silent? It would be like a parent sending their kid to the dentist and not comforting them and telling them that it's for their own good. God, if he exists, has been silent on many occasions where horrendous suffering has occurred. Rowe wonders why.

He meets the argument head on on page 9 by saying that we have a reasonable judgment of the goods involved in many of these seemingly pointless instances of suffering. Therefore, we can trust our intuition and say that it is plausible they are pointless.

Second Objection: Theodicies

Rowe then considers that someone could bring up a reason why God allows such evils and if that reason worked, then that would refute his argument. However, he contends such theodicies fail. He briefly mentions and objects to the free will theodicy.

Daniel Howard-Snyder and Michael Bergmann's Response

Snyder and Bergmann aren't interested in bringing up any theodicies to defeat Rowe's argument. Instead, they take the first objection, that Rowe's argument is an argument from ignorance. That we don't have good reason to say, one way or the other, whether an omnipotent, omniscient being would have justifying reasons to allow the given instances of suffering.

Nosseum Arguments

Snyder and Bergmann bring up the example of extraterrestrials. They imagine someone who sees no evidence for aliens to argue that they probably don't exist. To guarantee this conclusion however, the following proposition is needed:

P1. More likely than not, if aliens existed, we would find evidence for them.

However, P1 doesn't seem true. We can think of many reasons why we wouldn't see any evidence for aliens if they existed. Perhaps they live too far away or are not intelligent enough to make contact or have no desire to do so. So, it is not reasonable to accept P1.

They argue there is a similar proposition in need of proving in Rowe's argument, that being:

P1'. More likely than not, if a justifying reason for God to allow these horrendous evils existed, we would see them.

They argue that we just don't have enough knowledge to know if this statement is true. Therefore, the burden is on Rowe to show that it is.

Rowe's Response

Rowe responds to nosseum argument that he is making something more like a no-conceivum argument. Not only is it the case that we don't see goods coming from the horrendous evils, we can't imagine why a God would allow such things. This does not parallel the case of extraterrestrials because we can imagine situations where they wouldn't visit us but still exist. However, we can't imagine justifying reasons God may have.

He also criticizes them by asking how much evil would it take for it to be enough against God's existence? Even if all of our lives were characterized by constant suffering, Bergmann and Snyder seem like they would still argue that we are not in a good enough position to say whether God would allow it.

Bergmann and Snyder's Response

They respond that Rowe still hasn't given a good reason to think that if God had justifying reasons for the evils we see, that we would see them. He is arguing that we can't conceive of a reason for God to allow them which implies there probably isn't one. This takes a nosseum proposition like P1' given above and none has been defended.

Evaluation

Overall, I would say that Rowe's argument is not an argument from ignorance. I think, without a theodicy of any sort, when faced with the large amounts of evil that occur, they have to count against God's existence. I think there is a good theodicy given by Richard Swinburne in his book Providence and the Problem of Evil. However, the number of seemingly pointless instances of suffering do cry out for an explanation. It seems that in general, we are in a good position to tell whether a future event is likely to result in unnecessary suffering. We do it all the time.

Bergmann and Snyder do make an initially convincing case though. However, their case seems to go against the statement that if something seems true, that gives evidence towards it being true. They want to argue in a case similar to Stephen Wykstra. He argues that the following principle is true with regard to believing something based on appearances.

"On the basis of cognized situation s, human H is entitled to claim 'It appears that p' only if it is reasonable for H to believe that, given her cognitive faculties and the use she has made of them, if p were not the case, s would be different than it is in some way discernible to her."--(quoted from Providence and Problem of evil, p. 25)

For example, we can only say of an object that it appears to be red if we have reason to believe that if it wasn't red, it would appear in a different way and we would be able to detect it as so. However, this claim is too bold and leads to an infinite regress.

Take any ordinary claim like my computer appears to be in front of me. Using Wykstra's argument, we would only be able to claim this if I could say that if my computer weren't in front of me, then it wouldn't appear to be there. This appears fine and true, but using Wykstra's principle, this is not enough. We need reason to think that if this statement were false, we would know it. We may be able to come up with yet another reason but in the end, we would be stuck in an infinite regress trying to justify each appearance. So, it seems the general principle underlying Wykstra's and Bergmann's and Snyder's response is false. (I owe this point to Richard Swinburne which is made in his book Providence and Problem of Evil, p. 25-27)

So, in the end, I believe Rowe has made a better case, that theists have to put up a theodicy to answer his argument from evil. His argument is not an argument from ignorance. In response, someone can't rely on the general statement that we can only claim that it appears that p if we have good reason to think if p were false, we would detect it. A theist must come up with a theodicy if he is to answer Rowe's argument from evil. I do think such a theodicy exists (Swinburne's) but without one, Rowe's argument succeeds.

Go here for a good paper on nosseum arguments.