Good and Evil

Abstract

Abstract With regard to good and evil, two related issues must be distinguished: the validity of the teleological argument for God’s existence and the validity of the argument from evil against God’s existence. The connections of these two questions to each other and to our comparative inquiry can be sketched, in first outline, as follows: (1) A satisfactory explanation of all the world’s evils would doubly strengthen the case for God’s existence, both by reinforcing the teleological argument on the one hand and by removing the objection from evil on the other. So doing, it would greatly reinforce Plantinga’s hypothesis that belief in God is epistemically comparable to belief in other minds, for little or no teleological evidence backs many an other-minds belief (for instance, my belief in Mrs. M’s love). Even limited explanatory success might bolster Plantinga’s thesis to some extent; however, given our cognitive limitations and the complexity of the universe, it appears unlikely that we humans could succeed in providing a detailed, compre hensive explanation of all evils.