Suppose an atheist argues for the nonexistence of God from the fact of natural and moral evil. For any such argument to be probative, the fact of evil must be an objective fact; otherwise it cannot be adduced in support of the objective nonexistence of God.
Suppose further that without God there is no objective good or evil. Then one might try to show that the atheist cannot argue from evil to the nonexistence of God without presupposing the existence of God as the absolute standard of good and evil.
Possible Atheist Response:
I don't believe in God or in an objective good and evil. Good is whatever satisfies an organism's wants or desires and evil is whatever thwarts them. So if one animal has another for breakfast, then what is good for the eater is evil for the eaten, so that there can be no talk of an objective or non-relative good and evil. The fact that nature is "red in tooth and claw," that life is at the expense of life, is just a value-neutral fact, neither good nor evil. Good and evil exist only relative to conative/desiderative beings. (See here.) But I will grant you that if there is objective good and evil, then God exists, and conversely. Now you are granting me for the sake of our little discussion that the kinds and amounts of evil in our world are inconsistent with the existence of God as classically understood. So if objective evil exists, then there is no God, and if there is no objective evil, then, as you maintain, there is no God. Therefore, there is no God! I am not presupposing the existence of God. On the contrary, given our mutual concessions, I have demonstrated the nonexistence of God!
Let E = Objective evils, moral and natural, in the kinds and amounts encountered in our world, exist, and let G = God exists. Then the argument can be set forth as follows:
1. E --> ~G
2. ~E --> ~G
-----
3. ~G.
This argument is clearly valid in point of logical form. Either E or ~E, by Excluded Middle. If E, then ~G, and if ~E, then ~G. Therefore, ~G. I am granting (1) to my atheist interlocutor, and he is granting (2) to me. But now it looks as if he wins our little debate. Far from presupposing the existence of God, he seems to have shown his nonexistence.
Theistic Rejoinder
On second thought, there may be a fly in the ointment. The argument above is valid only if there is no equivocation on 'E.' Note that there is a difference between objective evils and the property of being objectively evil. Evils, as instances of the property of being objectively evil, are not to be confused with this property. The property can exist whether or not there are any instances of it. (We may think of the properties of being objectively good and objectively evil as concepts in the divine mind.) Now I grant arguendo that if objective evils exist, then God does not exist. And I maintain that if the property of being objectively evil does not exist, then God does not exist. Letting E* = the property of being objectively evil exists, the argument sine equivocatione may be displayed as follows:
0. E --> E*
1. E --> ~G
2. ~E* --> ~G
-----
3. ~G
But this second argument is invalid! In order to validly infer (3) what we need is not (0), but its converse
0'. E* --> E.
But the converse is false: it is false that if the property of being objectively evil exists, then objective evils exist.
My conclusion, then, is that an atheist who sets out to demonstrate the nonexistence of God from the fact of evil, and who grants the biconditional The properties of objective good and evil exist if and only if God exists can be justly taxed with presupposing the existence of God. He presupposes the existence of God by presupposing the properties of objective good and evil. The existence of these properties is presupposed by (and thus entailed by) the existence of objective goods and evils, a fact he needs for his argument to get off the ground. Our atheist interlocutor's position is self-contradictory:
4. There are objective evils. (atheist starting point)
5. There is the property of being objectively evil. (from 4)
6. God exists. (from 5, given the atheist's biconditional concession supra)
7. If there are objective evils, then God does not exist. (atheist argument)
8. God does not exist. (from 4, 7)
9. God does and does not exist. (from 6, 8)
Since from a contradiction anything follows, the theist may calmly conclude that God exists and that our atheist's argument from evil fails.
1. G --> ~E (God is incompatible with actual evil)
2. G --> X = E (if there is a God, then the suffering that we see is not the atheist's amoral suffering but is, since there is then morality, evil. This does not require that the atheist presuppose that evil does exist.)
3. X (there is suffering in the world.)
4. G --> E (from 2, 3)
5. ~G (from 1, 4)
The logic is the same for this simpler argument:
G --> ~E
G --> E
-----
~G
which is equivalent to the first argument I gave above. (Apply Contraposition to the premises.) But then my equivocation objection kicks in.
Whether or not objective evils exist, the atheist typically argues as though they do. Bertrand Russell, Richard Dawkins, George H. Smith, etc., don't preface their arguments from evil with the proviso that they are only talking about "hypothetical evils" (i.e. evils that actually don't exist, but only theoretically exist under the hypothesis of God.) The psychological force of the argument from evil derives from the fact that the atheist argues from real, manifest evil. In that sense it is an empirical argument. I doubt the argument from evil would move many people if it were made strictly in the hypothetical form.
On another point, I'm puzzled about this point:
I've read the post on Richard Taylor, but I still don't understand why objective good and evil must be non-relative good and evil. Are not good and evil necessarily relative, since to be good must be to be good for someone or something? Yes, the death of the sheep is evil for it but good for the wolf that devours it, but this doesn't change the truth that the death of the sheep really is bad for it and devouring the sheep really is good for the wolf; there is nothing "value-neutral" about either event. Does the atheist think that the good of the wolf and the evil of the sheep cancel each other out, like +5-5=0? This would only imply that the aggregate of good and evil in the world balances itself out, not that good and evil are not objective facts.
In fact, it seems to me, if the atheist truly holds to the value-neutral position, then his argument can't get started, because he can't say "what is good for the eater." The attribution of good to the eater would be arbitrary, and we need not pay attention to an argument from the arbitrary.
Your first para seems to show that you haven't quite understood what I am up to in this post. So I'll pass it by.
Consider the state of affairs: some animals must eat other animals to survive. Is that a good arrangement or an evil arrangement? It strikes many as evil indeed and evidence for the nonexistence of God. As one such atheist said to me, "If you were God would you set things up like that? Wouldn't you make them all vegetarians?" Now the atheist I'm considering above considers the fact of predation neither evil nor good. The question I am discussing is whether, on the assumption that there are no objectively good or evil states of affairs, he can still make a case for the nonexistence of God.
1. There are such things as murder, rape, cancer, hydrocephaly, etc. (I take it that this is uncontroversial.)
2. The theist must say that these things are objectively evil, or to put it in conditional form: if theism is true, then murder, rape and all the rest are objectively evil.
3. But if murder is objectively evil, then given that murder is all too real, there is such a thing as objective evil.
4. If objective evil exists, God cannot exist. (I reject this premise, but I gather that we don't mean to question it here.)
5. Collect together 2, 3 and 4 and we reach this sub-conclusion: if theism is true, God cannot exist.
6. But this leads us straight into logical paradox. For surely we must say that if theism is true, God must exist. Indeed theism just is the claim that there exists a God.
7. Thus if theism is true, we must say both that God exists and that God does not exist.
8. We find, then, that theism entails a contradiction - the contradiction that there both is and is not a God.
9. Hence we must say that theism cannot be true.
Notice that the atheist does not assent to the existence of objective evil - nowhere in the argument are we told that there is such a thing as objective evil. Rather all that the atheist claims is that if there is a God, the there is objective evil.
Happy New Year too you as well!
I think I understand the point you are making. I was just making a psychological (not a logical point) in my first remark. Your primary argument is that the argument from evil must assume the reality of objective evil in order to make its case, and granting that objective evil implies God as a metaphysical foundation, the argument from evil implicitly assumes the existence of God in its premises and therefore can hardly refute such an existence. The atheist responds that he does not assume the reality of objective evil, only that such evil exists on the hypothesis that God exists, and therefore the God hypothesis is self-refuting. My psychological point is that, in practice, atheists tend to make the argument from evil with a lot of lurid descriptions of the horrors of nature - giving the listener no doubt at all that the atheist is talking about real evil, not merely hypothetical evil about which the atheist is (supposedly) philosophically indifferent. It makes me think that the real power of the argument is more psychological than logical. In other words, I think you are right, but that won't stop atheists from deploying the argument to psychologically powerful effect.
To my second point (which is logical), I'm just wondering the following: The atheist seems to use "objective" and "non-relative" synonymously. Do you agree with this? Can something be relative yet objective? I don't think the Richard Taylor post answers this question. In my opinion, it is perfectly reasonable for something to be relative yet objective.
Cheers,
David
How about this atheist move?
(E2) If there is such a thing as a property of objective evil, then a human's being eaten by an animal is an evil.
Suppose we grant (E2). We also uncontroversially have:
(E3) Some humans have been eaten by animals.
Now, E*, E2 and E3 together entail that there is evil. So the atheist can now say
1. E-->~G
2. ~E*-->~G
3. E*-->E (by E2 and E3; the arrow is a material conditional or subjunctive; I think the argument works on either interpretation)
4. Therefore, E*-->~G (by 1 and 3).
5. Therefore, ~G.
Of course it's easy enough for the theist to get out of it by denying (1), but the argument seems valid.
I think the question comes down to this. Is E2 something that both the theist and the atheist can uncontroversially agree on? Let's suppose the theist accepts it. Can the atheist reasonably accept it? If the theist can, I think so can the atheist. We may be sceptical of whether some property exists, but be quite sure that if that property exists, then some specific item exemplifies it. Thus, one might be unsure whether there is such a thing as objective beauty, but quite sure that if there is, then Michelangelo's David and Beethoven's Fifth exemplify it. One can come up with more weird cases, but this one should suffice.
That said, I think E2 is kind of tricky. I don't know that it is an evil to be eaten as a deserved punishment for one's sins. We may need to modify E2 as follows:
(E2*) If there is such a thing as a property of objective evil, then an innocent human's being eaten by an animal is an evil.
But then E3 has to say that some innocent humans have been eaten by animals. This may seem uncontroversial, except that "innocent" is a morally loaded term that the atheist who doesn't believe in objective good and evil is not entitled to use. Instead, the atheist has to say "Some human beings who would be innocent if there are objective properties of good and evil have been eaten." This seems uncontroversial.
So the argument can be completed, but it is kind of complicated. And of course the smart theist denies that evil is incompatible with the existence of God.
Good response. It shows how tricky the dialectical situation is. I cannot fault your logic. Comparing your argument to the argument at the end of my post, it now seems to me that the theist and the atheist (having made their concessions to each other as explained above) are both committed to an inconsistent set of propositions.
Logically, they are in equally bad shape. But dialectically, the atheist loses and the theist wins. Why? Well, the atheist is trying to give a positive demonstration of the nonexistence of God from the existence of objective evils. But his commitments entail the contradiction 'God does and does not exist' as I show at the end of my post. Thus the atheist's argument has no probative force. All the theist has to do, since he is the defender, is turn aside the atheist's argument -- which he succeeds in doing.
Analogy: if the State brings murder charges against Jones, all Jones' attorney has to do is show that the evidence against him does not meet a certain probative standard; he does not have to furnish a positive proof of Jones' innocence.
You give the subargument:
E2. If there is a property of objective evil, then a human's being eaten by an animal is an objective evil
E3. Some humans have been eaten by animals
-----
3. If there is a property of objective evil, then objective evils exist.
I should think that (3), if true, is necessarily true. Consider the connection in the other direction. Necessarily, if objective evils exist, then a property of objective evil exists. The connection between an instance of evil and its evilness is surely not contingent. The same goes for the left-to-right direction. The connection between evilness and an instance of it is necessary. Note also that properties are necessary beings (especially if they exist in the mind of God as concepts, God being a necessary being. Properties so regarded possess necessitas ab alio as opposed to necessitas a se, to invoke a Thiomistic distinction) So I would say that (3), if true, is necessarily true, and conclude that (3) is NOT true since, while God and the properties of objective good and evil exist in all possible worlds, objective evils don't exist in all possible worlds.
Now if (3) is a necessary proposition, it does not follow from the premises you supply since the second of them is contingent.
My thought, which I am having trouble making rigorous, is that God is a transcendental presupposition of the very distinction between objective good and evil so that anyone whos says that the torturing of babies, e.g., is objectively evil has made use of the transcendental presupposition in question with the upshot that that his argument against it is bound to be self-defeating.
The relation of 'transcendental presupposition' may not be capturable in standard logic.
I certainly was thinking of (3) as a contingent truth, which is all that the atheist needs for the argument I gave on her behalf to be logically valid (though it won't be sound). Now it may be the case that if (3) is contingently true, then (3) is necessarily true. But that doesn't affect the argument. It may also be the case that the necessity of (3) doesn't follow from the premises of the argument. But that doesn't affect the argument since the argument doesn't presuppose the necessity of (3).
Where I think there is some fishiness is in E2. It might be argued that the atheist's justification for believing E2 is based in an implicit acceptance of the concept of objective evil. After all, if that concept were unreal, would we know what "it" would apply to?
Here's a question. Suppose that one is sceptical of the concept of race (I incline to such scepticism). Could one still assert the following analogue to E2:
(R2) If there is such a thing as Caucasianness, Elizabeth II is Caucasian.
Or is it the case that even in making such a conditional claim, one is already presupposing the concept. Maybe that is what you mean by a transcendental presupposition?
There may be something to this. In (R2), I use and not just mention Caucasianness. If there is no such property, then what I said perhaps isn't true. Maybe it is just nonsense, akin to:
(M2) If there is such a property as mimsiness, then some borogroves are mimsy.
If this is right, then you have a very good point.
But maybe the atheist can reform the argument, avoiding use of the property of objective evil altogether, and instead talk of the property, if any, referred to by the letters "the property of objective evil"?
(E2*) If the sequence of letters "the property of objective evil" refers to a property, then the property it refers to would be exemplified if some human was eaten by an animal.
(E3) Some human was eaten by an animal.
Now, suppose the atheist and the foolish theist agree that if the sequence of letters "the property of objective evil" refers to a property, and some event satisfies the property to which this sequence refers, then God does not exist.
At this point, the atheist seems to have a valid argument.
i. If God exists, then the sequence of letters "the property of objective evil" refers to a property.
ii. If the sequence of letters "the property of objective evil" refers to a property, then some event has that property. (By E2* and E3)
iii. If the sequence of letters "the property of objective evil" refers to a property that some event has, then God does not exist.
iv. Therefore, if God exists, then God doesn't exist. (By (i)-(iii))
v. Therefore, God doesn't exist.
Of course the theist should reject (iii) and get out of the argument that way.
But the argument seems sound, and it seems like the atheist can make it. Unless there is some transcendental presupposition in (iii). Maybe there is. (This is making me think about deep questions about the Tractatus. I worry that my argument is making the atheist whistle what can't be said. That would be a powerful objection to the atheist's atheism.)
(A) Being eaten is an objective evil
than we are of the conditional claim that:
(B) If being eaten is an objective evil, then it is an evil incompatible with the existence of God.
But if our atheist is right, then (A) and (B) can't both be true given the uncontroversial assumption that someone was eaten. For if (A) is true, then there is a property of objective evil, and then God exists. But (B) implies that God doesn't exist (given that someone was eaten, and by using the argument I gave on the atheist's behalf). Since we can't assert both (A) and (B), and since (A) is very plausible, we should assert (A). But if (A) holds, then on the assumptions in this discussion, God exists.
So, in fact, God exists.
The key word here is "from". Let me explain why I think it might mislead.
I would put the point this way: what the atheist attempts (or should attempt) to do is argue that God's existence and the existence of (absolute) evil are inconsistent. She need not assume the existence of (absolute) evil. Rather all she needs to say is this:
You theists believe in both God and in objective evil. But I can show (see my first post) that these are not consistent assumptions. Assume one, and you must reject the other. I don't in any sense argue from objective evil to God's nonexistence. I don't make objective evil's existence a premise in my argument. On the contrary, I simply give a series of conditionals, the key of which are (1) If there is objective evil, there is no God, and (2) If there is a God, certain actual states of affairs are objectively evil. For my own part, I don't believe in absolute evil. But you theists must believe in it, and all I wish to show is that this is not consistent with your theism. That leaves you with a choice, of course: either give up the Theism, or give up the belief in objective evil. Do as you wish - I don't care. But you can't have both.
I should have said as well that the atheist should not attempt to disprove God's existence here. She cannot do that and yet at the same time not assume God's existence. She should set her sights lower. She should only seek to find inconsistency in the theist's belief-set. The sights are lower, but the argument still has the power to wound, or to kill.
I agree that the reduced argument is similarly vulnerable, but that was not my version of the atheist's argument, but your reduction of it, and my lines (1) and (2) were dissimilar; there was no equivocation because my E was always E, never E*. My atheist had E as the consequent in line (1), but an equivalence as the consequent (not unlike Pruss's E2 above) in line (2). In plainer terms, my atheist would believe that X, that not-G, and that if G then lots of inconsistencies (but that's OK because not-G (although admittedly also X which is unfortunate))...
Another good comment. I was assuming all along that there is a distinction between an ad hominem argument in which the atheist tries to expose an inconsistency in the theist's belief-set, and a positive argument in which the atheist argues to the nonexistence of God from the fact of evil. What I was concerned with above is the latter sort of argument.
I had in mind an argument of Quentin Smith in which he clearly believes that the law of predation, as he calls it, is objectively evil. He argues that the existence of God is improbable given the fact that there are objectively evil natural laws.
But what about the atheist who denies both God and objective good/evil? Does he have a reason to be an atheist? I grant that he has a reason to not be both a theist and a believer in objective evil. But our atheist does not have a reason for being an atheist.
Your last comment seems right. I wonder what Franklin would say in response to it.
But there's an atheistic argument about, and it's this:
There's no such thing as absolute good and evil.
If there were a God, there'd be absolute good and evil.
Thus there's no God.
Valid, of course. Second premise true, of course. First premise - highly controversial, at least as controversial as the existence of God.
I find Alex's argument of the 7:49 pm post persuasive, and that argument (or one like it) is what first opened my eyes to theism. I'd always been convinced of the existence of absolute good and evil (it served for me as a kind of obvious, foundational posit that was as obvious to me as my own existence or the existence of others); I came later to realize that this might require that I take theism seriously.
Building on your remarks above: Our atheist denies the existence of God and the existence of objective good/evil. Presumably the latter denial amounts to a denial of the very concepts of objective good and evil, which in turn seems to mean that these concepts are meaningless. But our atheist finds it meaningful to assert the following conditional:
A. If an animal's being eaten alive is an instance of the concept of objective evil, then God does not exist.
The meaningfulness of this conditional, however, presupposes the meaningfulness of the concept of objective evil. But if there is this concept iff God exists, then (A) has as a transcendental condition of its meaningfulness the existence of God.
In other words, the atheist is not saying that the concepts of objective good and evil exist but have no instances; he is saying that these concepts themselves are bogus. If so, it might be arguable that he cannot maintain (A) and the like.
There's no such thing as absolute good and evil.
If there were a God, there'd be absolute good and evil.
Thus there's no God.
What the major premise means, I take it, is that there are no such concepts as the concepts of absolute good and absolute evil. And what that means is that these putative concepts are meaningless. For this reason no objects or events (e.g. the being eaten alive of one animal by another)instantiate these putative concepts.
If this right, then the minor premise is meaningless, not true. If one the other hand the minor is true, as I am inclined to say, then it is meaningful, which implies that the major is false.
Or am I falling into some fallacy?
Why can't it be that there are concepts of absolute good and evil but that, necessarily, nothing falls under either? Perhaps the atheist would say that they are contradictory, like the concept of being a square circle. There is such a concept as that, I would think, but of necessity there are no square circles.
My suggestion comes to this. We rewrite the major premise so that it now says:
Though there are the twin concepts of absolute good and evil, of necessity there is nothing to which they apply.
(Of course it might be that my suggestion doesn't work. Perhaps the atheist ought to say that there are no concepts of absolute good and evil. If this is so, it becomes difficult to restate the argument. Semantic assent would seem to be in order:
The terms "absolute good" and "absolute evil" have no conceptual correlates, i.e. there are no concepts which answer to these names.
If there were a God, these two terms would have conceptual correlates.
Thus . . ..
But I'm not at all sure that this can be made to work. How would one know that no concept answers to "absolute good" unless one had at least a partial idea of what those words mean? But one would think that, if those words mean something, the concept of absolute goodness is what they mean.)
Would the concept of evil as privative be consistent with holding that there is objective evil? In that case the existence of evil is not something that can be given an objective foundation per se. More or less evil comes from adding or subtracting the good. So God is not needed for what cannot be given a foundation. "Evil is not a substance" (Augustine)
Evil is not a substance, something positive, but a lack of good. Hence the classical phrase, privatio boni. Whether or not this is right, it is consistent with the objective reality of evil.
God is needed, not to be the foundation of evil, but the foundation of good. As such, he is the the Good Itself (as Augustine might put it) and thus the source of the goodness in all good things. As setting the standard, however, God is the objective foundation of all privationes boni.
Nothing instantiates the concepts of absolute good and evil
If God were to exist, something would instantiate these concepts
-----
God does not exist
I take the first premise to imply that nothing is objectively evil, that every evil object or event or state of affairs is evil only in relation to someone who judges it to be evil and in a manner that allows others to judge the same item to not be evil. It would follow that none of the crimes of the Commies or Nazis were objectively evil. And that I find preposterous.
Franklin actually suggested the modalized premise:
Necessarily, nothing instantiates the concepts of objective good and evil.
But surely it is the case that
Possibly, God (the Good Itself) instantiates the concept of objective good.
So the possibility of God is a counterexample to the modalized premise.
The terms 'absolute good' and 'absolute evil' have no conceptual correlates
If God exists, these two terms would have conceptual correlates.
-----
God does not exist.
Well, even if the mentioned phrases lack Bedeutung, they still have Sinn, and this sense or meaning is distinct from the words. Where do we get this sense?
My intuition, which is is difficult to hammer out rigrously, is that good and evil are like true and false. The existence of truth is a transcendental presupposition of all inquiry and all theoretical operations in general. Similarly, the existence of goodness is a trans. presupp. of all practical operations.
I follow your analogy of negative space and accept what you say. Best wishes and a Happy New Year.
Your response that the conditional makes no sense is powerful.
I wonder if there isn't some sense in which one can justifiably sometimes assert conditionals where neither the antecedent nor the consequent make sense. For instance:
(1) "If there is an ojkepor on top of a fijdjueifo, then there exists an ojkepor."
Can our atheist friend perhaps say that the conditional
(2) "If there is objective evil, then God doesn't exist"
is like that?
I am inclined to think not. The problem is that if (1) makes sense at all, it is because the nonsense word "ojkepor" figures literally identically in the antecedent and the consequent. But there is no such thing in (2). To get the alleged incompatibility between God and evil, one needs to do logic, and one really does need to deal with concepts, not just words. And that can't be done if the concepts don't make sense.
In fact, I am not even sure (1) can be asserted. To assert (1), we'd need to make it contextually clear that "ojkepor" has the same meaning in each of its two inferences (else the conditional equivocates). But if a word has no meaning, it is false that it has the same meaning in different places.
Can I assert 'If some toves are slithy, then some slithy things are toves'? If I can't, why can I assert 'If some Ss are Ps, then some Ps are Ss'?
A very stimulating post, as can be seen from the interesting discussion it provoked. Here are some initial thoughts about it and the ensuing discussion it provoked.
Two general issues raised:
(A) What are the presuppositions of the Logical Argument from Evil (henceforth, LAFE) to which the atheist is committed?
In order to answer this question we must first ask the following further question:
What is the logical form of LAFE?
(B) Does the existence of a theistic God that sets the standards for moral principles in virtue of being morally-perfect is the only conceptually possible foundation for an objective conception of morality?
This question is difficult and important for both theists and the atheists alike. So it is worth discussing on its own right. In this post I shall not discuss (B) directly.
So, what is the logical form of LAFE? I have in mind here Mackie in “Evil and Omnipotence”, and others. I think such arguments can be seen as having the form of a reductio ad absurdum. Reductio arguments have typically primary and auxiliary premises. In this case, the primary premises represent the theist’s core beliefs (e.g., a perfect God exists; objective evil exists, etc.,) and they constitute the target propositions. The proponent of LAFE need not accept any of these propositions; in fact the point of a LAFE argument is to offer a sound proof that they are not co-possible; not all of them can be true. The auxiliary premises are propositions that both the theist and atheist accept and they must be necessary truths (the motivation for the necessity requirement here is complicated so I shall skip it). Suppose the primary plus auxiliary premises entail a contradictory pair of propositions. Then, not all the primary premises can be true.
The proponent of this proof need not, and does not, accept that the propositions expressed by the primary premises are true. The point of the proof is precisely to refute them. Hence, the proponent of LAFE, assuming s/he is an atheist, need not believe that the theist God exists or that objective morality exists. Their point is to offer a sound proof that anyone who believes in both (plus several other propositions) is logically inconsistent.
IS LAFE a sound proof? That is the question, in my opinion.
I think this is partly what Franklin was saying in some of his posts.
peter
What you are saying is hard to fault. It is essentially the standard line as presented by J. L. Mackie in Ch. 9 of The Miracle of Theism. You understand that this is all 'old hat' to Pruss, Mason and me.
But we are digging a little deeper than this. We understand that to affirm a conditional is not to affirm its antecedent. So if one succeeds in showing that the existence of objective evil entails the nonexistence of God, one does not thereby commit oneself to the existence of objective evil.
But if there are objective evils, then there must be a property of objective evil. Now suppose it can be shown that this property cannot be instantiated unless God exists. It may be that the property of evil is like the property of being a creature. Nothing is a creature unless it instantiates this property, but this property cannot be instantiated unless God exists. No God, no creatures. No God, no objective evils. If that is the way it is, then objective evil entails the existence of God. This would seem to neutralize the atheist argument.
Admittedly, this remains quite murky. But blog posts are meant to be exploratory. . .
Thanks.
Yes I did give a paper at NAU; the title "Is there a Problem with the Logical Argument From Evil?".
Let us recap your argument:
1) If there are instances of OE (objective evil), then there is a property of OE.
2) If God Does not exists, then there are no [cannot be] instances of OE.
You conclude:
3) If (1) and (2) are the case, then LAFE(=the atheist logical argument) fails.
What i have trouble understanding is how (3) follows from (1) and (2).
Let me say why?
Take Mackie's argument patched up a bit:
Primary premises:
(a) OE exists.
(b) A perfect God exists.
(c) If a perfect God exists, then it is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good.
Auxiliary premises:
(e1), (e2), (e3) have a conditional form, e.g.,
If God is omniscient, then....
[for brevity I will skip these. If needed, i can provide them]
Now, the reductio argument goes as follows:
S(1) God is omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good.
Steps (2), (3), and (4) will utilize the auxiliary premises that state (unconditionally) that God knows every true proposition, can do anything logically possible and eliminates all objective evil.
S(5)There is no OE in the world.
S(6). S(5) & premise (a).
Contradiction.
Therefore, one or more of the premises (a)-(c) must be false.
Now, this argument is undoubtedly valid.
Will it be still valid if we add your propositions (1) and (2) as premises? Of course it will still be valid.
That is so because, formally speaking, if a set of sentences entails a contradiction, the addition of more sentences cannot alter the fact that the original set entails a contradiction (deductive, unlike inductive, inference is monotonic).
Will adding (1) and (2) to the set of premises change the soundness of the argument?
Well, if the original argument is sound, then so is the argument that results from adding the said propositions to the original set.
So how you propose to derive (3) from (1) and (2)? How will accepting (1) and (2) change anything about the validity or soundness of LAFE I have given above? But if accepting your (1) and (2) does not change the validity or soundness of LAFE, then in what sense does accepting them "neutralize" or undercut the atheist logical argument from evil? After all if neither the validity nor the soundness of LAFE are effected by accepting your (1) and (2), then the theist still needs to face the challenge of LAFE which seems to show that his or her beliefs represented by the primary premises entail a contradiction. How is this fact changed in any way by accepting (1) and (2)?
This is what I have trouble seeing.
peter
I want to introduce a couple of topics and discuss them with some people. one is about the original-sin doctrine, its source, meaning and use as a theodicy (or defense); second, the significance of the Book of Job to the problem from evil. Shall i just raise it here? or what?
peter