Assertion: evil | /r/HasProperty | gratuitous
Facets:
value: genuinely
type: DEGREE
value: be for god
type: OTHER
value: to respond toward it
type: PURPOSE
Source sentences:
text: Evil is gratuitous if and only if it would be possible for God, if he existed, to prevent or not create the evil without thereby eliminating or preventing the realization of any worthwhile, sufficiently outweighing good, which is good that, when combined with the evil, results in greater overall goodness than the alternatives without the evil.
text: While evil is gratuitous if (1) God could prevent or not create it without thereby eliminating or preventing the realization of any sufficiently outweighing good, this is not the only way in which evil could be gratuitous.
text: Evil would also be gratuitous if (2) God would be morally required to prevent or not create it regardless of any necessary loss of good from his doing so, as there can be no morally sufficient reason for God to permit or create evil if (2) is true of it.
text: Accordingly, gratuitous evil must be defined disjunctively: evil is gratuitous if and only if (1) or (2).
text: Evil is gratuitous if and only if it would be possible for God, if he existed, to prevent or not create the evil without thereby eliminating or preventing the realization of any (a) worthwhile, sufficiently outweighing good or (b) favorable opportunity for some agent A that is not God to freely realize some worthwhile, sufficiently outweighing good, where a "favorable opportunity" is one in which it is more likely than not that A will realize the good.
text: First, it seems false that we need to think that evil is gratuitous to virtuously respond toward it.
text: This severity instead suggests that these evils are more likely to be genuinely gratuitous, and thus that we should be calculating the probability of P2 being true like we would calculate the probability of getting at least one heads in a string of unfair coin tosses where the coin favors heads.
text: This may not be conservative enough for skeptical theists who want to lump all apparently gratuitous evil together into a single category, thereby making it equally probable that this evil is genuinely gratuitous as mysteriously nongratuitous (which results from plugging 1 in for n).