ARGUMENTS AGAINST MONOTHEISM 151moral acceptability the occurrence of evils that serve to promote religious
personal maturity in the rough sense characterized above. Kim’s being
relevantly informed regarding an evil is a matter of her knowing whatever
is relevant to making a rational assessment of the moral justifiability of
Kim suffering it – its effect on Kim, on others, what it makes available that
would otherwise not be, and the like. The sort of ideal rationality required
might be easier to achieve after an evil was undergone, even if undergoing
it was not morally problematic. Perhaps C1 is true; even if it is, however, it
is not easy to see how to apply it in any useful manner, since no one is
likely to have much reason to think they are in the ideal situation C1
requires.
Succinct Roweanism
Roweanism, in one version at least, argues as follows. Let an evil E be
Rowean if and only if (i) we have good reason to think it occurred; (ii)
either we can think of no conceivable morally sufficient reason R that God
might have for allowing it, or we can think of such an R but know^36 that the
context in which the evil occurred rules out R applying, or we know that R
would apply only if sorts of things exist that we know not to exist. Then
the basic argument is:
R1 There are Rowean evils.
R2 If there are Rowean evils, then there are^37 actually pointless evils.
So
R3 There are actually pointless evils.
Behind premise R2 lies some such principle of inference as:
P1 If we can think of no conceivable morally sufficient reason R that God
might have for allowing it, or we can think of such an R but know^38
that the context in which the evil occurred rules out R applying, or we
know that R would apply only if sorts of things exist that we know
not to exist, then we know that E is pointless.
Competitive to principle P1 is principle:
P2 Even if either we can think of no conceivable morally sufficient reason
R that God might have for allowing it, or we can think of such an R but