Evidence Arguments Research Articles

Williama Rowe’a bayesiański argument ze zła przeciwko istnieniu Boga. Próba analizy i oceny.

The aim of this article is to present the Bayesian formulation of the argument from evil for atheism against the background of the contemporary debate on Rowe’s initial inductive formulation of the argument. At the beginning I present the key premises and basics of the Bayesian formulation (esp. Bayes’s theorem, the notion of epistemic probability, etc.), then I discuss the most important challenges to Rowe’s weak and strong claims. The main problem with the Bayesian formulation of the argument is that it does not accomplish what it was intended for: it fails to avoid the confrontation with skeptical theism . The latter has to be refuted in order to save Rowe’s argument (no matter which formulation we take into account, the inductive or the Bayesian). It seems that the debate on Rowe’s evidential argument from evil has reached a deadlock – more and more analytic philosophers of religion claim we should return to the logical formulation of the problem of evil.

Fatal Flaws in Michael Almeida’s Alleged ‘Defeat’ of Rowe’s New Evidential Argument from Evil

Fatal Flaws in Michael Almeida’s Alleged ‘Defeat’ of Rowe’s New Evidential Argument from Evil

Rowe’s new evidential argument from evil: Problems and prospects

This paper examines an evidential argument from evil recently defended by William Rowe, one that differs significantly from the kind of evidential argument Rowe has become renowned for defending. After providing a brief outline of Rowe’s new argument, I contest its seemingly uncontestable premise that our world is not the best world God could have created. I then engage in a lengthier discussion of the other key premise in Rowe’s argument, viz., the Leibnizian premise that any world created by God must be the best world God can create. In particular, I discuss the criticisms raised against this premise by William Wainwright as well as Rowe’s attempt to meet these criticisms. The Wainwright-Rowe exchange, I argue, highlights some insuperable difficulties in Rowe’s challenge to theism.

Does Skeptical Theism Lead to Moral Skepticism?

The evidential argument from evil seeks to show that suffering is strong evidence against theism. The core idea of the evidential argument is that we know of innocent beings suffering for no apparent good reason. Perhaps the most common criticism of the evidential argument comes from the camp of skeptical theism, whose lot includes William Alston, Alvin Plantinga, and Stephen Wykstra. According to skeptical theism the limits of human knowledge concerning the realm of goods, evils, and the connections between values, undermines the judgment that what appears as pointless evil really is pointless. For all we know the suffering of an innocent being, though appearing pointless, in fact leads to a greater good. In this paper I argue that no one who accepts the doctrines of skeptical theism has a principled way of avoiding moral skepticism.

The complexity of history and evil: a reply to Trakakis

I have presented an argument from the consequential complexity of history against certain types of evidential arguments from evil; ‘The consequential complexity of history and gratuitous evil’ Religious Studies, 36 (2000), 65–80. Nick Trakakis has responded with two objections; ‘Evil and the complexity of history: a response to Durston’ Religious Studies, 39 (2003), 451–458. He argues that the consideration of future consequences to the end of actual history may be irrelevant and, also, that one does not need detailed knowledge about possible worlds to conclude that there are better worlds. In this paper I show that, given the complexity of history, both of his objections fail to move us out of the state of agnosticism regarding what God should or should not permit. Thus, my original argument remains intact.

Evidential Arguments from Evil and Skeptical Theism

Evidential Arguments from Evil and Skeptical Theism

Reply to Trakakis and Nagasawa

AbstractNick Trakakis and Yujin Nagasawa (2004) criticise the argument in Almeida and Oppy (2003). According to Trakakis and Nagasawa, we are mistaken in our claim that the sceptical theist response to evidential arguments from evil is unacceptable because it would undermine ordinary moral reasoning. In their view, there is no good reason to think that sceptical theism leads to an objectionable form of moral scepticism. We disagree. In this paper, we explain why we think that the argument of Nagasawa and Trakakis fails to overthrow our objection to sceptical theism.

Excellence and Precedence

The question of the imamate or the caliphate, the designation of the Muslimcommunity’s legitimate leader, is undoubtedly one of the most important inIslamic history. The first civil war (656-61), which broke out with the murderof Caliph `Uthman, had a profound effect not only on subsequentIslamic political and religious institutions, but also on later Muslims’ views,accounts, and discussions of the community’s early history. This bitter conflict,which necessarily involved extensive controversy concerning theidentity and required qualifications of the community’s legitimate leader, laid the foundations for an enduring theological split among Islam’s threemajor “sects”: the Shi`ites, the Sunnis, and the Kharijis – one that wouldpersist long after the war ended with the assassination of `Ali.Polemics among these groups, and among subcategories of the threemain groups, each of which endeavored to justify its contemporary viewson legitimate leadership and sectarian identity, were a creative force inmany fields. Bodies of theoretical discussion, primarily in theology butalso in law and other fields, grew around these polemics, using prooftextsfrom the Qur’an and Hadith, as well as historical accounts, as evidencein arguments about the Companions, their relationships with theProphet, their relative merits and other moral qualities, and their dealingswith each other. Though focused on a much earlier period and concerningconflicts long over, these polemics were all the more sensitive andemotionally charged because of their contemporary implications concerningthe legitimacy of the sectarian groups’ beliefs.Her work reveals, by examining one important intellectual exchange,some of the processes by which this body of theoretical discussion grew. Itanalyzes Bina’ al-Maqalah al-Fatimiyah fi Naqd al-Risalah al-`Uthmaniyah, a seventh-/thirteenth-century polemical Shi`ite work on theimamate, itself a refutation of a third-/ninth-century polemical work. Theauthor, Jamal al-Din Ahmad ibn Musa ibn Tawus (d. 673/1274-75),belonged to an established Twelver Shi`ite scholarly family from Hillah,southern Iraq. Both he and his brother, Radiy al-Din `Ali ibn Tawus (d.664/1266), were important thirteenth-century scholars, although Radiy al-Din has been better served than Jamal al-Din in modern scholarship sincethe publication of Kohlberg’s A Medieval Muslim Scholar at Work: IbnTawus and His Library (Leiden: 1992) ...

Analysing reasoning about evidence with formal models of argumentation

This paper is on the formal modelling of reasoning about evidence. The main purpose is to advocate logical approaches as a worthwhile alternative to approaches rooted in probability theory. In particular, the use of logics for defeasible argumentation is investigated. Such logics model reasoning as the construction and comparison of arguments for and against a conclusion; this makes them very suitable for capturing the adversarial aspects that are so typical for legal evidential reasoning. Also, it will be shown that they facilitate the explicit modelling of different kinds of knowledge, such as the distinction between direct vs. ancillary evidence, and the explicit modelling of different types of evidential arguments, such as appeals to witness or expert opinion, applying generalisations, or temporal projections.

Evidential Arguments from Evil and the "Seeability" of Compensating Goods

William Rowe has offered one of the most simple and convincing evidential arguments from evil by arguing that the existence of gratuitous evil in our world serves as strong evidence against the claim that God exists. Stephen J. Wykstra attempts defeat this evidential argument from evil by denying the plausibility of Rowe's claim that there are gratuitous evils in the world. Wykstra sets up an epistemological test that he refers as CORNEA, and he proceeds demonstrate that Rowe's inference his existential claim is unjustified in light of our particular epistemic situation. Specifically, this inference is unjustified because compensating goods that would be connected to any given evil lack what Wykstra calls 'seeability.' Without seeability, it is illicit infer the nonexistence of an object simply from the fact that we cannot detect it, and thus Rowe is denied justification for his first premise. Wysktra's principle defense of the non-seeability of compensating goods rests on an analogy comparing children and parents humans and God. 1 will show that Wykstra's conclusion regarding the seeability of compensating goods is unjustified given this analogy. Without justification for the claim that some compensating goods lack seeability, Wykstra's defeater crumbles. First I need reconstruct Wykstra's criticism in order demonstrate the crucial role of seeability in his defeater, and then I will criticize his application of the parent analogy. Rowe's original evidential argument from evil begins with the existential claim that gratuitous evil exists, then notes that if God exists then there will not be any gratuitous evil, and concludes via modus tollens that God does not exist. Wykstra converts Rowe's existential claim concerning gratuitous evils into the logically-equivalent claim regarding the existence of compensating goods for some evils. 3 In other words, Wykstra demands that Rowe defend the claim that there are no compensating goods for some evils. Rowe ' s

Skeptical Theism and Moral Skepticism

Skeptical theists purport to undermine evidential arguments from evil by appealing to the fact that our knowledge of goods, evils, and their interconnections is significantly limited. Michael J. Almeida and Graham Oppy have recently argued that skeptical theism is unacceptable because it results in a form of moral skepticism which rejects inferences that play an important role in our ordinary moral reasoning. In this reply to Almeida and Oppy's argument we offer some reasons for thinking that skeptical theism need not lead to any such objectionable form of moral skepticism.

The New Evidential Argument Defeated

The New Evidential Argument Defeated

Sceptical Theism and Evidential Arguments from Evil

Sceptical theists--e.g., William Alston and Michael Bergmann--have claimed that considerations concerning human cognitive limitations are alone sufficient to undermine evidential arguments from evil. We argue that, if the considerations deployed by sceptical theists are sufficient to undermine evidential arguments from evil, then those considerations are also sufficient to undermine inferences that play a crucial role in ordinary moral reasoning. If cogent, our argument suffices to discredit sceptical theist responses to evidential arguments from evil.

Evil and the complexity of history: a response to Durston

Kirk Durston recently presented an argument aimed against evidential arguments from evil predicated on instances of suffering that appear to be gratuitous; ‘The consequential complexity of history and gratuitous evil’, Religious Studies, 36 (2000), 65–80. He begins with the notion that history consists of an intricate web of causal chains, so that a single event in one such chain may have countless unforeseen consequences. According to Durston, this consequential complexity exhibited by history negatively impacts on our grasp of the data necessary to determine whether or not an evil is gratuitous. He therefore concludes that our epistemic condition poses an insurmountable barrier towards the inference from inscrutability to pointlessness. By way of reply, I contend that Durston's argument is flawed in two significant respects, and thus the evidential argument emerges unscathed from his critique.

God, Gratuitous Evil, and van Inwagen’s Attempt to Reconcile the Two

Both critics and advocates of evidential arguments from evil often assume that theistic belief is not compatible with gratuitous evil. It is often assumed, in other words, that an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good being would not permit an evil unless he had a morally sufcient reason to permit it. However, this cornerstone of evidential arguments from evil has come under increasing re of late, in particular by Peter van Inwagen. The aim of this paper is to outline and then assess van Inwagen's attempt to reconcile theism with gratuitous evil.

Is rowe committed to an expanded version of theism?

I argue in this paper two theses. First, I argue that the internal consistency of the argument from evil demands that it take into account some form of EST. Thus, there is no ground for the atheist to chide the theist when the theist appeals to an expanded version of theism. Second, I show that it isprima facie probable that RST does in fact ential EST. I show this by capitalizing on the distinction between what is contained in a concept and what is entailed by a concept. What a term or concept means is different from what it may entail. What a concept or term entails is conceptually more robust than what it simply means. I call this the “containment objection” and if is true, then the restricted conjunction rule cannot apply since a version of theism sufficient to deflate the evidential argument would not be logically independent from RST,pace Rowe.

Religious experience and the evidential argument from evil

This paper examines Alvin Plantinga's defence of theistic belief in the light of Paul Draper's formulation of the problem of evil. Draper argues (a) that the facts concerning the distribution of pain and pleasure in the world are better explained by a hypothesis which does not include the existence of God than by a hypothesis which does; and (b) that this provides an epistemic challenge to theists. Plantinga counters that a theist could accept (a) yet still rationally maintain a belief in God. His defence of theism depends on the epistemic value of religious experience. I argue, however, that Plantinga's defence of theism is not successful.

Skeptical Theism: A Response to Bergmann

Bergmann suggests that STI is reasonable-or at least not unreasonableowing to our of our cognitive limitations and the vastness and complexity of reality. And he notes that I seem to have some sympathy with STI. He then considers my new evidential argument from and argues that it depends on rejection of this skeptical thesis and, therefore, suffers from the same problem that afflicts his [Rowe's] original argument. In what follows, after a preliminary comment, I will respond to Bergmann's discussion of my 1996 argument from evil. The constant theme in my discussions of the problem of evil is our awareness that no good within our ken can reasonably be thought to justify an allpowerful, all-knowing, perfectly good being in permitting any particular instance of the vast number of instances of horrific suffering (both animal and human) that occurs daily in our world. Skeptical theists like Bergmann do not directly dispute this point, although they think my claim exceeds what we are fully justified in asserting.3 Rather, they contend that given the disparity between our knowledge of goods and the conditions of their realization and the knowledge of these matters possessed by God, if he exists, we simply aren't epistemically qualified to make any reasonable judgments whatever about the amount of seemingly pointless, horrific evil such a being would need to allow in the world. For all we know, they say, the world could contain a great deal more seemingly point-

Skeptical Theism and Rowe's New Evidential Argument from Evil

Evaluation de la nouvelle version de l'argument evidentialiste du mal developpe par W. Rowe dans le cadre du debat sur le theisme sceptique. Examinant les objections de M. Tooley et B. Russell concernant la representation des biens possibles, l'A. montre que l'argumentation de Rowe n'opere pas une critique significiative du theisme.

Book Review: The Evidential Argument from Evil

Book Review: The Evidential Argument from Evil