The Problem of Evil (PoE)

IntroductionRather than realising that not every premise in an argument is controversial, Con seemingly thinks his best strategy is to reject every premise of the argument. I personally think that he is best to focus on P3, but as we see from his last post, this is the premise he disputes least. Now, given that Con’s counter arguments apply to specific premises, I’ll deal with them as part of defending my own premise, but I start off with a separate objection raised by Con, about the nature of the argument itself. Con’s O1Firstly, Con charges both that the debate resolution is vague, and that this makes it problematic when we come to consider the argument, given that it is a probabilistic argument “because there is no quantification”. Now, the reason there is a problem is simple: Con has conflated the debate resolution (merely the title of the debate topic), with the argument in support of that resolution. While the debate resolution distinguishes my position (Pro) and my opponent’s position (Con) on the general plausibility and credibility with regards to the problem of evil, it has no truth value. It wasn’t set up to have truth value, but merely to indicate the topic of discussion and our consequent positions on it. Besides, this is such a minor point that we have to ask whether this is isn’t a completely manufactured complaint, especially with Con given the title of the debate beforehand. The second point Con makes here about quantifying is actually a potentially tricky one for the PoE. There are 2 potential meanings Con may have here. The first is to ask how/when we determine that the amount of evil in the world is sufficient to present a problem for God. In short, when is enough evil evidence against the existence of God. The second potential problem for the advocate for the PoE is to challenge the basis on which we quantify things like evils. Now as I explained in my second post, my argument isn’t based on the AMOUNT of evils, but the NATURE of these evils, so the first meaning has no relevance to my argument. In fact, any single gratuitous evil would validate the argument completely. What the argument states is that it vastly more probable to think that the evil I described in my first post (babies with an intestinal blockage) is gratuitous that not because not only do we have a litany of reasons to think it so and none with which to doubt it, but even the conceptual-type arguments (classical theodicies, such as free-will for example) all fail miserably. Now, while Con hasn’t presented any for me to engage with here, I have heard him defend several (contradictory) theodicies, and much more besides, and I think I can convincingly show why none of them work. As for quantifying this in terms of a metric, I think the standard attributes of good philosophical explanation apply here (explanatory scope, power, plausibility, and economy among others), so there’s no real mystery to be had here. But even if it were the case that I couldn’t quantify this, Con has used concepts which would demand the same standard. For example, if God is all powerful (as Con agrees), what metric is Con using here? Likewise, when he talked about the physics problems going against intuition, how does one measure this? We see again Con’s contrived standard for the PoE, while he himself continues to flaunt the standards he sets. Defending P1Now Con here asserts that I have an impractical argument (stemming from my inclusion of death as an evil), and that I present no credible alternate world. Ironically, both these can be dismissed simply by restating my P1 from my very first post:“If there were an all-powerful and all-good God, then there would not be any evil in the world unless that evil is logically necessary for an adequately compensating good.”In this single sentence, I explicitly state that evil itself is not incompatible with God. Rather it is evil which is gratuitous (not logically necessary for an adequately compensating good) which is incompatible with God. So taking death, Con argues ridding the world of this is absurd, because without death, we can’t have life. Notice that rather than dismiss P1, Con actually vindicates P1, by using an example of evil (death) which is logically necessary for an adequately compensating good (life). But as Con himself points out, birth necessitates death (the evil here is logically necessary), and the price of death therefore is ultimately life (the adequately compensatory good). As for the “alternative world”, again, this is explicitly mentioned within P1. Rather than claim a world with no evil is feasible (it may or may not be), I simply state that if God exists, then there would be world absent gratuitous evils. P1 simply seeks to establish that God (if he exists) would only permit evils if he had morally sufficient reasons to do so. He could want to preserve free-will, character build or bring people to Him. Whatever the proposed theodicy is irrelevant for P1. Whether or not gratuitous evils actually exist, or whether God actually exists, P1 is true regardless, not least by definition.Defending P2Again Con seems incapable of understanding P2:“There is lots of evils in the world”All this means is exactly what is says. If there is lots of suffering, pain, disability and/or death (a definition of evil that has went unchallenged), then P2 is automatically true, regardless of the nature of evil whether or not this is gratuitous (this the scope of P3). Even Bill Craig remarks that:“Everyone admits that the world is filled with apparently gratuitous suffering.” (1)So denying that suffering exists at all (P2) is regarded as ridiculous by even the expert Christian philosopher who Con appeals to in his own post!Further, Con remarks,“There will always be evil as long as there is anything remotely resembling life as we know it.”Surely, if there always will be evil, Con must accept that evil exists in the first place? Again, I aim to be charitable to Con here, but the very fact that he acknowledges evil to dismiss its existence is truly astonishing. On the point about levels of pain, again this assumes evil exists (a strange way to deny P2, which seeks merely to affirm this), but also it is otherwise irrelevant. What amount of evil in the world isn’t what creates the problem for the theist. Rather, it is the particular kind of evil (gratuitous evil), which is the remit for P3.Defending P3For P3, I gave a particular case of evil which I argued was gratuitous. Now given that Con has not even mentioned this is so disconcerting, as this (and other examples like it) is the sole basis for the argument itself. This is the problem of evil. The painful and inevitable death of babies who had an intestinal blockage in the past seems wholly inconsistent with God both because there was no even conceivable benefit this would have, let alone an adequately compensating benefit which was logically necessary. The fact that Con totally ignored this example repeatedly while arguing over debate titles and such is really unforgivable.As for the likelihood of God and the arguments (bar perhaps the ontological argument) for His existence, these matter not a jot. Even if I were to concede that they work (which I don’t), then all it would mean, is that given the PoE, such a God would not be all-powerful and/or all-good. All we are discussing here is the God defined in the first round, and given this, these arguments make no difference, especially when Con resorts to listing them, rather than defending them. ConclusionCon's position seems to be that anything is more favourable than accepting the conclusion of the PoE, taking comfort in any source, be it the appeal of absurdity from physics to denying the existence of evil altogether. There certainly are numerous challenges one has to overcome to use the PoE, but by failing to engage with P3, none of these challenges emerged in this debate.Sources(1) God? . . . P114