The evidential argument from evil is valid.

First off, my thanks to Freeman for crafting this debate; I've been looking forward to debating this with him since shortly after joining this website, and his opening round certainly does not disappoint. I am quite pleased to have him as my opponent. I am defending a "theistic God"; no specific religion was mentioned, and the point is not to defend one religion or another, but essentially to defend the concept of theism against that of atheism in light of the existence of evil. Keeping this in mind, I plan on using arguments from many branches of theism. Again, because part of the whole point of theism is the concept of a "Creator," I will be using mainly arguments that assume a God created the universe. I have no intention of making this into an evolution vs. creation debate - much too far outside our scope; as atheism demands evolution, so most forms of theism demand special creation. I will try to make the point of view my arguments come from clear. ----------- Does suffering from natural causes make the existence of a theistic God improbable? My opponent and I agree on two points: P1. E is true. Living things suffer and die. Sentient or unconscious; young or old; virus or man; every living thing dies, quite often accompanied by suffering. And: All other things being equal, the simplest explanation is the most plausible. From the existence of suffering, then, we are left to decide the plausibility of a God who knows that suffering exists, is capable of stopping the suffering, and is morally perfect. ---Rebuttal of P2--- ". .. if a theistic God existed, he, in his moral perfection, could not possibly care more about the well-being of his creation in order to let them flourish. And given God's complete power and knowledge, he could also not possibly be in a better position to ensure that sentient beings achieve the good life. As such, vast amounts of natural evil that prevent many animals from flourishing is implausible under theism. " It's not that simple, though. E does not contradict the claims of theism, unless my opponent has invented a "generic theism" for me to defend; in fact, "theism" encompasses many, many different explanations for E: 1. God is "morally perfect," but is also the definition of "moral perfection:" -to be moral, one must act like God; God acts like God is supposed to act; God can do no wrong; etc. In this case, a God who is demonstrably indifferent to animal and human suffering can be morally perfect, as He defines moral perfection by His actions. Not a very satisfying solution, as it IS self-referential, but if it's His house, it's His rules. - 2. God is morally perfect, and He does care about suffering, but there exists an equal and opposite force of evil that prevents Him from alleviating all suffering. Welcome to Dualism. There are two forces, omnipotent, omniscient, and polar opposites morally. We are assured that the good God will do His utmost to prevent suffering, but this comfort is balanced by the fact the evil Devil is doing HIS best to create as much suffering as possible. Not only is suffering explained by this method, it is guaranteed virtually forever. This is a variant of Theism, notably seen in Zoroastrianism and certain forms of Gnostic Christianity; it is not used by mainstream Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. - 3. Physical things are naturally evil; God is morally perfect and cannot by his very nature deal with them without becoming impure. He entrusts the running of the world to a far-removed set of overseers to alleviate the suffering without being directly involved. This is the basic premise of Gnostic Christianity, boiled down almost past recognition. Far too long of an explanation to fit into these three rounds, but I will not be defending this position; I'm just referencing it here as one of the many alternate ways different theistic beliefs answer this question. - 4. Suffering exists, God cares and would like to prevent it, but He has sufficient reason to allow it to continue to exist. -Or, alternately: Suffering exists, but it's our fault. God will use the suffering we caused to further His ends, and at the right time will end all natural suffering. The difference between these two is that the first argues that this is the best of all possible worlds; and the other that this is the best possible world, given our choices. Depending on the theologian, one or the other is assumed by traditional forms of Christianity and Judaism. -- Here I have provided five different theistic frameworks in which E is prevalent without being contradictory in any way to an omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect God. Under any one of these five theistic cosmologies, E is to be expected. Naturalism has no better capability in predicting the existence of E than theism. I confidently expect the 4th and 5th to be challenged by my opponent; "best of all possible worlds" is quite a statement, after all. These were the framework on which I originally planned to make my defense in this debate; more relevant lines of reasoning appeared after a careful reading of his R1, however. If he chooses to object to them, I can defend these two in more detail next round. It should not be necessary though; there are five different forms of theism here; and any one of them allows for the same amount of E as naturalism. ---Rebuttal of P3--- "Naturalism is more plausible than theism (i. e. , naturalism is more probable than theism independent of all evidence). " and "Naturalism is a simpler hypothesis than theism by its very nature" My opponent does not seem to think this requires any explanation. He restates his assertion without any real elaboration ("Simply put, theism's a priori commitment. .. " etc. ), but all we are left with is that he considers naturalism a simpler explanation than theism. This is odd, as one of the selling points of the theistic religions is their simplicity. In order to explain the order of the universe, the existence of life, the complexity of everything we observe, etc ad infinitum, the theist needs to make only one assumption: God. Contrast this to a partial list of the assumptions needed by naturalism to explain our suffering (and forgive me for the caricatures; the character limit impends): -An unbelievably massive timeless singularity spontaneously exploded. -The energy released formed atomic particles that spontaneously coalesced into stable elements. These by-products of chance consistently obey universal rules of behaviour. -These elemental particles, while flying away from each other at incredible speeds, managed to clump together into increasingly larger groups, eventually forming stars, which grouped into galaxies, which grouped into superclusters. -Life spontaneously began out of non-living matter. All the information contained in the first DNA strands came about because a couple amino acids got lucky. -That life, through a fantastic series of freak mutations, continues to add information to that DNA until finally we arise, the Frankensteins of the animal kingdom. -Somehow, somewhere along the line, those random conglomerations of proteins, water, and carbon developed a quality we call consciousness. This allows us to suffer. As I said, the purpose of this debate is not over HOW things got here. Evolution may very well be true; that's not the point. The point is that there are many assumptions that evolutionists must make in order to have their theory match reality. In that regard, then, P3 is incorrect. The simpler explanation is that some supernatural being is the cause, rather than a complex series of random events. --Conclusion-- As I have shown, theism is not "highly improbable"; as theism explains the presence of E equally well as naturalism, and theism is the simpler explanation, theism is actually the -more- probable explanation.