Introduction

Abstract

Is the existence of evil in the world compatible with the existence of the God of Christianity?1 Detractors of theism have generally tended to argue that both existence claims cannot be true. Some have argued that there is a logical contradiction perhaps not directly, but if one or two propositions are added which some judge to be compellingly true, since the first belief is obviously true, if the added propositions are compellingly true, it is false that God exists. Others have taken the more modest line, given the amount of evil that there is, it is strongly probable that some of it is gratuitous, and the strong probability that there is gratuitous evil in the world makes it strongly improbable that God exists. Various rather sophisticated theistic defences have been formulated in response to both lines of attack in the current philosophy of religion literature.2 Implicit in those defences which have received the most attention is what might be called the ‘Greater-Good Defence,’ Part of my task is to look at this defence in preliminary form as it is presented by Keith Yandell since he has offered a straightforward and extended account of this strategy.3 Then variant accounts of the Defence are formulated and examined, and selected contemporary defences which may be viewed as significantly incorporating a greater-good notion are critically appraised.KeywordsOrder GoodProbabilistic StrategyProbabilistic ArgumentMoral EvilEpistemic ProbabilityThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.