Yujin Nagasawa has published a new book on the Problem of Evil. This book is available for free here: https://academic.oup.com/book/56378
I have not read the book. This is just my immediate first impression subject to change over time.
First, there have been "problems of evil" offered for atheists before. William Lane Craig argues that theism is needed to explain the existence of moral facts and duties. Dustin Crummett has argued that theism has the advantage when it comes to moral knowledge. And Anne Jeffrey has argued that theism has the advantage when it comes to moral motivation.
I would argue strongly against all three of these conclusions. But that's for another time.
My point is that when I hear "problem of evil for atheists", I think we are talking about an argument with the conclusion "Therefore, God exists", and the argument uses evil in some way. This is like what Craig does with moral facts. That argument goes like this:
1) There are no moral facts on atheism.
2) But there are moral facts.
3) So God exists.
This is a bad argument. Luckily Yujin Nagasawa is not making this argument at all. In fact, in this interview he admits that theism has no compelling answer to the classic problem of evil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHAZnMW0uXA
Instead, the argument is that atheists are committed to a form of moderate optimism which says "overall and fundamentally, the environment in which we exist is not bad." (pg 170/267) However, "our observation of systemic evil suggests that it is not the case that our environment is, overall and fundamentally, not bad."
Nagasawa freely admits that theists are moderate optimists too. And so the "Problem of Evil for Atheists" is an entirely misleading title. This is the problem of evil for optimists, which encapsulates both optimistic theists and optimistic atheists.
What then is meant to be the advantage of theism over atheism in this respect?
The way Nagasawa puts it in the interview is that theists can draw or win while the atheist can only draw or lose.
It's worth noting that on the Grand Story theodicy our environment is bad, but it's not fundamentally bad. We are, after all, participating in the Grand Story even here on Earth. When I hear "fundamentally bad" as it pertains to our existence, I think of a situation where someone wishes they were dead but cannot die. Conversely, if our existence is fundamentally good, then we always prefer being alive and we never die.
I'm not sure how good a definition of fundamental goodness / badness this is. If God sent us to hell for a trillion years, but then we got heaven for an infinite number of years afterwards, would that be a fundamentally good or bad existence? For one trillion years we would prefer death to life and yet would not be able to die, so our existence would be fundamentally bad. But then once we made it to heaven, our existence would transition from fundamentally bad to fundamentally good. But that seems to betray the meaning of fundamental. Is that life on the whole good or bad? Technically that life spends an eternity in heaven, which sounds good on the whole.
Maybe the hope of heaven is so good that we actually do prefer to exist while we are in hell, and so hell is not fundamentally bad.
Because of how infinity dwarfs even a trillion years, I'm not sure I could fault someone for taking that deal. I guess it would depend on how bad hell really is and whether we can take back our choice if it's unbearable.
A loving God would never send anyone to hell for a trillion years. So if the above scenario does count as fundamentally good, then we would have the paradox of God giving us a fundamentally good world while failing to be all-loving. That doesn't sound right. [Update: Actually this sounds perfectly fine. We can imagine an almost-perfect God who creates almost-heaven for us. This world is fundamentally good in that we are always grateful for our existence, but God is not perfectly loving because he allows some minor gratuitous evils.]
A world is fundamentally neutral if you want to exist but can't or if you want to die and can. That describes our world. The world is not fundamentally good because people can prefer death to their circumstances, or can prefer life but not get it. But the world is not fundamentally bad because eventually you will die, and so it's impossible to be forever locked into an existence you don't want. Put another way, we can imagine a world that's infinitely worse than ours, but we can also imagine a world that's infinitely better than ours. So our world is fundamentally neutral, not fundamentally good or bad.
For the theist, there is the promise of heaven. That's the advantage the theist has; the theist is more justified in his optimism than the atheist is.
However, it seems wrong for God to give us hell and then heaven, as noted above. That's not the loving thing to do. And certainly some people experience a hellish existence here on Earth.
The atheist is rightly moderately optimistic (or moderately pessimistic) because our world is fundamentally neutral.
There's nothing in any of this that suggests atheism is false while there is plenty here to suggest that theism is false.
The problem is meant to catch atheists in a contradiction, but there is no contradiction.
What's funny about this is that this was my "great" epiphany when I was 18 years old. I concluded that to be an atheist I would have to be a pessimist, but I cannot live as a pessimist. On that basis, I continued in my Christian belief.
But this does nothing to defend Christianity as being actually true. Perhaps the truth is that we should be pessimists. And if that entails our suicides, then so be it. Will you truly follow the evidence where it leads? Or is there a point at which being alive and happy is more important to you than believing what's true?
There is no problem of pessimism for atheists for this reason: there are different kinds of pessimism.
Atheists are committed to broad pessimism. This is because on atheism life is fundamentally tragic; it all ends in death and there never was much point to it to begin with. That's a bad story. Life, on atheism, is one giant bad story. Of course, if we were in hell, we would be far more pessimistic; life would be an infinitely worse story. This is why this "broad pessimism" is a lot more moderate than what we could imagine as noted above.
You could argue atheists are not committed to broad pessimism. This is because, as the argument goes, most people basically prefer living to not. So life is generally more good than bad for most people. So life on the whole is basically more good than bad. So life is not one giant bad story; it's a mixed story that's actually more good than bad.
I would argue against this and say that it's exactly because people prefer living that makes life so tragic. You want to live but life has other plans. Everyone dies; everyone's individual story is ultimately tragic.
Then you have what we could call regional pessimism. This is pessimism about Earth, climate change, politics, your culture, your country, corruption of governments, the greed and evil and false beliefs of humanity, and so on.
Then you have local pessimism. This is pessimism over your life.
If a theist experiences local and regional pessimism, they can fall back on their broad optimism. This is the "hope from within" of Christians. Christians have their hope in the promises of Jesus.
But if an atheist experiences local and regional pessimism, they have no broad optimism to fall back on. This is the advantage Christians have. That's one reason why I stuck to my Christianity for so long. I didn't lose faith until I was about 26 despite having more than enough reason to do so.
I wanted, and needed, Christianity to be true. It was my only source of optimism, my only way to move forward.
But that's my life. There are many, many people who have good lives. They have good reasons to be locally optimistic. Sure, the world might be a terrible place, and sure, life on the whole may be a tragedy. But if you're young, attractive, talented, wealthy, have lots of followers, are well-liked, have good friends and family, and have many joys available to you in life, then there is no reason not to live and embrace life fully, at least until something changes.
So locally pessimistic Christians do have an advantage over locally pessimistic atheists. But that advantage doesn't translate to much. Epistemically speaking, this does nothing to increase the probability that Christianity is true (actually, the fact God allows local pessimism is strong evidence that there is no loving God). Even pragmatically speaking, what is someone who is pessimistic about their life to do? Praying to God doesn't do anything. Both locally pessimistic Christians and atheists are in the same boat of having to figure out what it is they must do to make their life better and more worth living.
In fact, here the locally pessimistic atheist has a pragmatic advantage. The Christian is tempted to lie around and do nothing about their problems. Why? Because the Christian believes that God will save them. Or, the Christian believes that God has placed them there for a reason. So the Christian has less reason to be highly motivated to change their life. I know for a fact this psychology applies because it applied to me! On the other hand, the atheist already believes that no one will save him, so he will be properly motivated to work as hard as it takes to make his life better. And while the Christian is battling with the depression that comes with a crisis of faith as God continues to fail to demonstrate his love in any tangible way, the atheist won't be dealing with such emotional and existential turmoil.
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