132 ARGUMENTS: MONOTHEISTIC CONCEPTIONSpossible that there be evils in it; but odds are there won’t be. So (roughly)
the assumption goes. Is the assumption right?
There is at least this much to be said for the assumption: for typical
monotheisms, the present state of the world is not such as to make God
overly pleased. The prayer “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”
has not exactly received a full answer yet. Critic and theist agree that
things are not as a morally perfect and omnicompetent being would wish
them to be. In Judeo-Christian terms, our world is a “fallen” world. The
question remains whether the existence of evil is evidence against the
existence of God.
Those who follow the strategy of seeking some set of non-necessary or
logically contingent truths that, together with (E) There is evil, entail not-
(G) God does not exist tend to appeal to claims about our knowledge and
what is reasonable to accept in its light. The following argument provides a
simple illustration. Let an evil whose purpose, if any, is unknown to us be
an apparently pointless evil.
A simple argument
1 There are apparently pointless evils.
2 The Apparently Pointless Evil Claim: If there are apparently pointless
evils, then God does not exist.^9
3 God does not exist (from 1, 2).
The first premise is patently true. The conclusion follows from the
premises. So the question is whether the second premise – The Apparently
Pointless Evil Claim – is true. The idea behind this claim apparently is this:
2a The Actually Pointless Evil Claim: God would not allow actually
pointless evils.
2b The We Would Know Claim: If an evil has a point, it will be apparent
to us.
Then it follows that
2c God would not allow any evils that are apparently pointless.
And from 2c and 1 we can infer 3 – the claim that God does not exist.
Suppose, then, that the truth of 2a and 2b is intended as the necessary and
sufficient conditions of the truth of The Apparently Pointless Evil Claim.