376 NOTES9 Arguments against monotheism
1 There may be times in between embodiments, for a given person or for all persons in a
condition, in which the physical world spends some time at rest.
2 See Bruce Reichenbach’s discussion in Reincarnation and Karma and the article by Paul
Griffiths, referred to in the Annotated reading at the end of the chapter.
3 For a possible problem regarding the use of the doctrines of reincarnation and karma as
a reply to the problem of evil, see Roy Perrett (ed.), Indian Philosophy of Religion
(Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers), chapters 1 (section starting on p. 13) and 3.
4 Other sorts of considerations are considered elsewhere – e.g., in our consideration of the
concept of God, and the properties of being omnipotent, being omniscient, and being
morally perfect.
5 Or Probably, God does not exist or There is evidence against the existence of God or the
like. It is not a logically necessary truth that If there is evil then there is evidence against
the existence of God.
6 Perhaps the assumptions are rendered easier to make if one mistakenly takes there to be
such a thing as knowing everything but one thing (being one proposition short of
omniscience) and being able to do everything except one thing (being one power short
of omnipotence). These assumptions take propositions and powers to be related to one
another as are pieces of straw in a haystack (each separable from the others), and this is
a dubious view about both propositions and powers. This is so, even if holism (the view
that the content of every proposition and power is intrinsically dependent on the content
of every other) is also a dubious view about propositions and powers.
7 Perhaps a best possible world should be conceived as also “maximizing” other values
besides moral worth. My point here is that, since it is moral evil that is relevant to the
objection being considered, the idea of a best possible world is at least the idea of a world
with “maximal” moral worth, and that such a world will contain no evil.
8 Philosophers differ over whether such virtues as fortitude, bravery, courage, and
compassion have intrinsic worth – possessing them is a logically necessary condition of
being a maturely good moral agent, or merely intrinsic worth, so that fortitude, bravery,
courage, and compassion are valuable in the way that taking bitter medicine may be
valuable – as a remedy for something unpleasant but not as something that is good for
its own sake. If any evil-requiring virtue has intrinsic worth as an essential element in
a fully mature good character, then (N1)’s denial that a best possible world – if that
notion makes sense – could contain no evil is mistaken.
9 One can put this premise instead as 2. If there are apparently pointless evils, then
probably there is no God, with the conclusion stated as 3. Probably God does not exist.
Similar alterations could be made in arguments to come. For simplicity these variations
will not be explicitly dealt with, but the discussion applies equally to them.
10 For some relevant considerations concerning actually pointless or gratuitous evil, see
the current author’s “Divine Existence and Gratuitous Evil,” Religious Studies, Vol. 25,
pp. 15–30.
11 It is one thing to appeal to mystery and another to possess the minimal modesty involved
in recognizing that the range of knowledge of an omnicompetent being might include
things that exceed our comprehension.
12 Since it is on behalf of an argument we will reject that we make this assumption, its
relative unclarity will not be a problem for anything we want to argue for.
13 The definitions of pointless evil that follow all refer to our knowledge and our conceptual
efforts – to what we can think up. An importantlly different sort of definition would
eliminate all such reference. Roughly, on such a definition, a pointless evil would be one
that served no point, whatever we thought about the matter.