Theism, natural evil, and superior possible worlds

Abstract

The cluster of problems created by evil and suffering are widely regarded as comprising the most intractable set of objections there are to the consistency and the truth of theism. Over the past thirty years, a great deal of attention has been devoted, in philosophical literature, to the issue of whether or not the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly good God could be shown to be compatible with the existence of any moral or natural evil at all or with various amounts, kinds, and distributions of moral or natural evil.1 Moral evil or sin refers to the intentional wrong actions of free creatures and the foreseen consequences of those acts. For example, cruelty, lies, theft, and murder are all instances of moral evil. Natural evil or pain includes every other event which issues in diminished lives, suffering, and death. Disease, famine, earthquakes, genetic malfunctions and their bad consequences are all instances of natural evil. More recently, however, a general consensus has emerged among philosophers of religion that the objection against the compatibility of God and evil is at best inconclusive and at worst has been refuted.2 But such an admission on the part of sceptics has not dampened their enthusiasm for problems raised by evil and suffering which are thought to count significantly against the truth value of theistic beliefs. This world's quantities, types and distributions of moral and natural evils have been used to formulate inductive and cumulative case objections to the theoretical credibility of theism.3 In addition to that, the practical problem of how to cope with the bad consequences of evil and suffering has called into question the existential adequacy of theistic religions such as Judaism and Christianity.4 So, the problems raised by