ARGUMENTS AGAINST MONOTHEISM 143A Rowean needs (R); it is hard to see that (R) is correct as opposed to (R*).
Let us look at matters a bit more fully. In doing so, we will need to consider
The Actually Pointless Evil Claim that says:
2a God would not allow actually pointless evils.
Our concern, as noted above, will be with its meaning, not its truth – which
the critic’s argument requires and about which we here suspend judgment.
Actually (or metaphysically) pointless evils
We have talked about evils being imaginably or unimaginably pointless,
and the like. These are epistemological features of evils, properties that
they have in relation to us. They are relational properties that an evil may
or may not have, but has if at all due to certain human cognitive states.
Being actually (or metaphysically) pointless, like having a point, are
properties an evil has, if at all, whether we know it has it or not.^28 But what,
exactly, is a pointless evil? In considering this question, it seems best to
start with what it might be for an evil to have a (metaphysical) point. Then
we can, so to say, proceed by subtraction in defining an evil being without
point. Here is one definition:
Definition 1: Evil E has an actual (or metaphysical) point if and only
if there is some good G such that (i) E’s obtaining is a
logically necessary condition of G’s obtaining,^29 and (ii)
G’s obtaining is of sufficient worth to justify E’s being
permitted in order to make G possible.
A pointless evil, on this account, is simply one for which there is no
corresponding good of which both (i) and (ii) are true. Given this
understanding of pointlessness, is
2a The Actually Pointless Evil Claim: God would not allow actually
pointless evils
true?
The idea is not that under some circumstances, or given some conditions,
God would not allow actually pointless evils, and those circumstances or
conditions obtain. The idea is that 2a is a logically necessary truth – that
(P) It is logically impossible that a morally perfect and omnicompetent
being allow any pointless evils.^30 It is this assumption that her argument