The argument from evil is successful

I find it interesting that Thras says my defeater is “easy to reductio” given that his first two accounts failed. The first hinged on an equivocation, he then modified it, but the second hinged on a dis-analogy. I’ve discussed both of these flaws in detail above. Thras doesn’t make a third attempt, although he alludes to the possibility of one. However, he maintains that it is still a successful reductio based on my faulty “rule of inference.” A few comments concerning this rule: (1) It fails to make any mention of the shortcomings of our moral faculties. Thras needs to show why (VEG) and (NPC) are false or, at least, have little bearing on our recognition of “not-X”. (2) It also fails to mention the hypothesis of an omni-God. Although, not included in my original defeater I have discussed this as relevant information multiple times in the debate. (3) I have never claimed anything to the effect that, “apparently not-X is still likely X!” (This quote comes from the paragraph below the inference rule.) The comment in (3) misrepresents my argument and is surprising considering that it does not follow the inference rule he just stated. (It is much stronger than the rule) I have only argued that it is at least as likely and that is all that is needed. If, due to the limitations of our moral faculties and the possibility of an omni-God, what is possibly a not-X is at least as likely an X then Thras’ original argument fails. Following this Thras regresses back to the swan scenario and ignores the dis-analogy between it and the use of our moral faculties. In order to argue that we can trust our moral faculties enough to claim that some evils are probably gratuitous Thras needs to show that we have the proper justification in regard to our moral faculties not our sensory faculties. Simply because that have a word in common between them is not enough to draw an analogy. As I described above these two faculties deal with completely different realms (the physical and the metaphysical) and any comparison between has serious flaws. Thus, repeating the swan example over and over again fails to disprove my defeater or provide the necessary justification for trusting our moral faculties to the extent that we can conclude an omni-God would lack justification for allowing evil. On Bayes: Wow, we have really gotten off track here. Who is to blame? I don’t know. I made a mistake in choosing my variables, but I thought I fixed it as I clearly stated “in the quotation in question” (I) ought to have been (U), i.e. the totality of inscrutable evils. (U) was not to replace (I) in the Bayesian formula. Nowhere did I mention this. I find it odd that Thras claims I need a premise that says “most evils are justified” while concurrently claiming that (1) human justification is useless we need “God-justification” and (2) only one inscrutable evil is enough. Given these two claims I’m not exactly sure how even this presumptuous claim (that most evils are justified) would be enough evidence. Again, however, the claim that most evils are justified isn’t needed. Instead of a presumptuous claim like this I make the claim that (J) and (U) are equal. In other words, half of all evils are justified and half are inscrutable. That said in conjunction with the fact that we lack various faculties that put us at a great disadvantage, e.g. (VEG) and (NPC) and we also have the omni-God hypothesis—recall that the attributes of this God are all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowing—It is possible that an omni-God would have justification beyond our ken for allowing evil analogous to the way in which we have justification for allowing various evils. Final Remarks: (1) Thras says that showing our moral faculties to be inferior to God’s isn’t helpful. This is just false and I have presented a very clear argument for why—if God exists, given his attributes, he (or she) could very possibly, in the same way we do, have reasons for allowing evil that we do not. This is similar to the way in which a parent has reasons for doing things that their children don’t understand. This epistemic divide is easy for us to see and, furthermore, it is easy to see how this applies to the argument. Again, if God existed there would be a huge divide between his epistemic capabilities and ours. Thras needed to address this and he simply did not. Thras says that he “pre-empted” this, but whether he did or not is a moot point because he failed to adequately show why the parent-child/human-God analogy is insufficient evidence. Especially in conjunction with (VEG) and (NPC) this shows we are at a great disadvantage for assessing whether or not an evil is gratuitous. Specifically (VEG) argues that we don’t actually know when “white is in mate.” Thras never provided a single reason why we should believe we have seen white is in mate; i.e. that an evil event has “completed” in such a way that we know all the relevant information and contingencies in such a way as to accurately assess whether or not it is justified. (2)He claims that God does not labor under the same causal limits that we do. This is obvious. Also, he seems to allude to the idea that I think God has the same causal limitations as we do—claiming that I deny R3 and R4. This is completely uncharitable and I’ve never said anything close to this. Rather I argued that if God desired to maintain that we have free will this would clearly limit his causal efficacy lest he act in such a way to override our free will. (3)Thras still does not understand my response to his moral paralysis claim. Simply put, we are not paralyzed if God allows evil for the benefit of free will while maintaining a moral law which we are, at least for the most part, aware of. This would imply that a child being abused allows free will although we know, very clearly, that the act in and of itself is morally wrong and, if possible, we ought to (freely) prevent it. In other words, by preventing the abuse we are “actually doing good.” Again, no moral paralysis here. Conclusion: I have successfully shown that my argument isn’t fallacious, as Thras claims. Failed reductio’s are useless as counter-arguments. As a result the defeater provides a solid basis for us to think that inscrutable evils could very well be justified or, at the very least, that his argument is unsuccessful. However, this is not to say that the evil is justified, for instance, if a person was to abuse a child. Clearly, for the person abusing the child, this act is not justified. The point is to say that an omni-God might allow this in lieu of an over-arching justification, i.e. free-will. Of course, it’s quite possible that God doesn’t exist. However, the argument that (1) since some evils are inscrutable to us implies (2) that an omni-God probably doesn’t have justification and, therefore, doesn’t exist is just plain irrational. It heightens our epistemic situation well beyond its means and makes presumptions about our moral knowledge it simply cannot obtain. In short, our moral knowledge is limited especially in regard to justification. If a benevolent God exists he or she would very likely have justification for allowing certain evils. That information alone is enough to say that we don’t have a clue whether or not an evil would be unjustified for an omni-God. That being the case inscrutable evils do not provide a good reason for thinking God doesn’t exist; i.e. Thras’ argument is unsuccessful. Anyone else confused this statement in his post above: “The argument from evil remains undefeated, and consequently unsuccessful.” Eh?? Clearly, he wants us to vote con. Just a playful jab J