The argument from evil is successful

Resting on a Fallacy: In his first section (MMM) Thras’s attempts a reductio counter-example to show why the defeater I have offered fails. Unfortunately, it rests entirely upon a fairly obvious equivocation. His claim is this: “The problem [is] that "lots" can still be a minority of the relevant cases (as with black swans)…” However, this is not how I used the word in question (“lots”) by any means. It should have been quite apparent to Thras that in using this term I was drawing a correlation between the experiences we have of justified evil and the “lots” of inscrutable evil that he refers to in his opening argument. Furthermore, I explicitly stated, in the paragraph above the argument, that; “…there is an unquantifiable number of instances that have occurred in which the justification of a given evil event can be identified.” (Emphasis added) Possibly, if I would have added the emphasis earlier I wouldn’t have to bother with this, but as it stands I unfortunately do. Just to be clear the issue is that Thras’ counter-argument hinges on his “black swan” analogy. The essential point is that black swans, even though there may be “lots”, are still in the vast minority of total swans. In other words, consider a jar that holds 1k marbles. 100 of these marbles are red and 900 green. I could say there are “lots” of red marbles, but the reds would still only be 10% of the total and thus in the minority. So what Thras is implying is that my use of “lots” is akin to this, but that is clearly false and sadly, as a result, his straw-man reductio fails. I could say more on this point, but the fallacy is quite apparent and I will just leave it at that. Moving On: Thras further suggests that in order for my argument to go through I would have to support a modified premise: (m1) Most instances of evil appear justified. If most instances of evil appear justified then a few inscrutable evils, given some epistemic limitations, would be expected. Exactly what it meant by most here is a vague, as most could be anything from 50.1% of a given sample to 99.9%. However, given the explanation below this statement it seems that Thras is going for the latter claim, or, at least, something on the higher end. (I follow this interpretation due to a few statements including “a small ‘tail’ of inscrutable evils” and “occasionally miss a justification.” These statements seem to indicate that justified evils would be in the vast majority. If this is incorrect I apologize; I am merely trying to avoid committing the fallacy just discussed.) The problem is that this claim is unjustified. Why is it that this new premise is required in order to support the defeater? Recall that Thras’ argument is only successful if, after considering it, we ought to raise our credence for the conclusion. If that is the case then there is no reason why justified evils must outweigh inscrutable evils. Here is why: recall that Thras provided a function above to support this conclusion: “P(I|G) > P(I|¬G) We can plug this into Bayes: P(G|I)/P(¬G|I) = P(I|G)/P(I|¬G) * P(G)/P(¬G)” However, this function ignores any other evidence that might explain why certain evils, even “lots” of evils, are inscrutable - what I essentially provided. Let’s call the evidence of our epistemic limitations (E), the omni-God hypothesis (O) and the evils for which we find justifiction (J). (I realize that Thras’ reply requires more discussion on (E) and (J) - I will get to that shortly.) Including these evidences the function now looks more akin to this: P(I|E & O & J & ~G) is at least as likely as P(I|G) In short, the defeater we have at least an equal amount of evidence for inscrutable evil being justified as we do for it not being justified. Furthermore, notice that (J) and (I) = 1. For either an evil appears to be justified or it does not and if (~G) is at least as likely as (G) then both = .5 and it seems clear that any claims against this equivalence will require methods of quantification we simply do not have access to. (Another epistemic limitation of ours.) Any assertion that (~G) is more likely given (I), in light of all the evidence, will be a result of personal credence and have no bearing on the argument. Of course, Thras claims that I need (m1) to support the defeater. However, under this new function, incorporating the total evidence, his claim is entirely without warrant. Up till this point, then, Thras has offered a rebuttal which relies on a fallacy and asserted a premise (m1) we have no reason to accept. As I mentioned, however, Thras does object to both (E) and (J), but unfortunately both of these contentions fail as well. Failed Objection to (E) & (J): Thras argues that we are not interested in simply justifying reasons for evils (J), but rather God-justifying reasons. However, by identifying evils for which we find justification we have a plausible reason why, in conjunction with our epistemic limitations and the vastly superior capabilities of an omni-God, the evils for which we do not have justification, quite plausibly, have justification we are ignorant of. This justification may be simple or complex. A God-justifying reason may involve a connection between an evil and a good unperceivable to human cognition (NPC), but similar to the same justifications we see in everyday life. On the other hand, the justification could involve a much broader situation including, but not limited to, soul-making, free will, etc. Of course, the complexity would likely leaves us ignorant of the full justification. Furthermore, the a priori nature of Thras’ response leaves us wanting. I understand that Thras is credulous towards the possible justification of any evil. However, his personal credence has no bearing on the argument in question or on our acceptance of it. For example, what justification are we given for the claim that “God does not labour under these limits?” It is quite plausible that God has certain limits under which he “labours” himself, again, in the goal of various eternal goods?[1] Could it not be that these limitations prevent him from curing everyone to our personal satisfaction? It is clear that Thras’ assertion needs better justification than his personal feelings on that matter. In regard to (E) Thras’ mis-states my claim: “…there will be cases (perhaps many cases) where we observe inscrutable evils that are in fact non-gratuitous. Yet this not enough to say that our observation of inscrutable evils is no evidence for gratuitous evil.” I made no such claim that inscrutable evil is not evidence for gratuitous evil. In fact, the claim is that justified evil provides evidence, in light of inscrutable evil, against gratuitous evil. Of course, inscrutable evil is evidence for gratuitous evil, but it is not the only evidence we have. When assessing an argument one must look at the total evidence! Straw men and ignoring relevant evidences do not add up to successful arguments. Freedom From Moral Paralysis Unfortunately, I have left myself little space to deal with Thras’ last contention—that skeptical theism leads to moral skepticism. A quick summar: if we claim that we are unaware of certain goods that God might bring about by allowing various evils then we are left paralyzed between behaving morally and immorally. For if it is possible that God could only bring about a given good through a certain evil we do not want to act in a way so as to prevent that by stopping the given evil. However, in light of a free-will type defense I think this argument ultimately fails. If at least one of the eternal goods that God desires is our free will then it is perfectly consistent that he will allow either the good or evil to happen which allows humans the free choice to make the correct moral decision. This seems quite plausible, but more is likely needed and if Thras’ desires I will address it in the next round. [1] For example, see Plantinga’s famous FWD in God, Freedom and Evil.