The Problem of Evil and a Critique of Religious Reason

Abstract

The author’s goal is to weigh capabilities of theistic reason in regard to the problem of evil, and two formats of reasoning in this regard are strictly differed, i.e. attempts at building theodicies (as universal, generally valid and transparent for all reasonable persons, both believers and nonbelievers, models of explanation of causes, dimensions and distributions of evils and sufferings in the world of the Divine origin and government) and defenses (counterarguments to atheistic inference of the non-existence of God from the abundance of sufferings in the world). The upshot is that while there is no doubt that the great multitude of evils and sufferings in the world are surely beyond reach of any theodicies, it is similarly doubtless that many sound reasons are suitable for countering atheist “evidential refutations”. Some new arguments are offered to counterbalance Rowe’s “friendly atheism”, Draper’s “hypothesis of indifference”, and Schellenberg’s “argument from hiddenness”, along with analysis of wishful thinking underlying all of them.