150 ARGUMENTS: MONOTHEISTIC CONCEPTIONSis that reflection about a monotheistic conception of God is a going enterprise;
it is not impossible to draw any justified conclusions in the philosophy of
monotheistic religion. It is easy to take an all-or-nothing stance here: either we
can come to a reasonable decision regarding the truth or falsity of every
proposition of interest to philosophy of monotheistic religion, or we can come
to a reasonable decision regarding none. But this stance is mistaken. It is false
that, if God exists and each evil God allows has an actual point, we can
reasonably expect to judge with confidence that we have discerned, for every
type of evil, what that point is. That simply is not something we could
reasonably expect. This being so, it is (R*), not (R), that is true. It is not cause
for surprise if there are types of evil for which no one can suggest plausible
candidates for the point, if any, they may serve. Nor is it evidence that they
serve no point.
The Actually Pointless Evil Claim (that God would not allow
pointless evil) and Definition 3
The relevance of Definition 3, and the discussion that led to it, can be simply
stated. It is this: our ability to tell whether or not an actual evil has a point in
the sense defined by Definition 3 is even more restricted than our ability to tell
whether an evil has a point in the sense defined by the earlier definitions. It
serves to increase awareness of the sorts of point an evil might serve, points
not incompatible with, but also not limited to, morality. It thus renders
Roweanism – acceptance of (R) as a correct characterization of reasonable
confidence concerning Common Reasoning – less plausible by pointing out
further sorts of points evils might have. Deciding whether an evil could have
any point of this sort is even more demanding than whether it could serve any
point that falls within the scope of morality.^35
Evil and moral acceptability
One might suggest this as a rough criterion for the moral acceptability of a
person being allowed to suffer evil:
C1 Kim’s suffering evil E is morally acceptable if and only if Kim, relevantly
informed about E, and insofar as rational, accepts E without moral
protest.
For purposes of considering this notion, we can include under the notion of