Argument vs Problem and What it Means for the Problem of Evil to Succeed

Point 1: Argument vs Problem

 

You hear about the problem of evil and perhaps problems of evil. You also hear about arguments from evil. Is 'problem' just a synonym for 'argument'?

 

The short answer is no, these two ideas come apart though they are closely related.

 

‘The problem of evil’ refers to the idea that there is tension between evil and God. This tension is a rational tension; the problem is a problem for rational belief in God. So you could call it the threat of evil, because evil threatens to render belief in God irrational. 

 

'Arguments from evil' refer to arguments that attempt to show that the tension between God and evil is real, and attempt to spell out the logic causing the tension.

 

Problems correspond to questions, so you could also call it the question of evil: Why does God allow evil? If the theist doesn't have a satisfying answer, but the atheist does ("Because God doesn't exist."), then atheism scores the point. The question reveals the tension, and the theist's poor answer (if their answer is poor) fails to nullify the tension.

 

(A theist might argue that while there is no satisfying answer to the problem of evil, denying God leads to no satisfying answer to other problems, such as contingency, the beginning of the universe, the beginning of life, or consciousness. So it's a matter of which bullets you're willing to bite.)

 

We can speak of problems of evil because there are multiple tensions between God and evil. For example, there's the problem of unjustified evils (How can a good and powerful God allow the horrendous evils we see?), the ontological problem (If God created everything, then did God create evil?), and the problem of perfection (If the state of the world was perfect prior to creation, then how could a perfect being change the world from perfect to imperfect? Alternatively: If God is the perfect foundation of reality, then how could a fundamentally perfect reality contain imperfections?).

 

Point 2: What does it mean for the problem of evil to succeed?

 

To say "the problem of evil succeeds" then is to say "One or more arguments from evil successfully demonstrate the irrationality of the belief in a perfect being." (You can replace 'perfect being' with a descriptor of your target model of God. Typically perfect being theism, a God of maximal love and power, is the target for problems of evil, though I'm sure there are problems of evil adapted for classical theism, neo-classical theism, and so on.) In other words, if the problem of evil succeeds then the threat of evil to rational belief in God is fully credible.

 

Theists must, therefore, say either 1) Evil is evidence for God, not against God; 2) Evil is neither evidence for nor against God (i.e. maybe evil is evidence against God, but so far attempts to show this have failed); 3) Evil is evidence against God, but is outweighed by counter evidence. And of course no theist will consider evil to be a proof against God.

 

Theists who opt for Options 1 or 2 will say that the tension between God and evil is merely apparent and based on some confusion. Theists who opt for Option 3 will say that the tension between God and evil is real, but isn't as bad as tensions between naturalism and other data (again, the "biting bullets" approach, also known as a Moorean Shift).

 

However, there are a number of available interpretations on what it means for the problem of evil to succeed, such as:

 

Basic success: The problem of evil is successful in that one or more arguments from evil are valid with true premises, and belief in the truth of the premises is justified.

 

(You can fill in the justification requirement according to your preferred theory of justification. An explanationist, for example, would say that "...are valid with true premises, and the truth of the premises is what explains someone's being convinced of them.")

 

Success as a proof: The problem of evil proves beyond reasonable doubt that there is no perfect being. All belief in God hinges upon either ignorance of the problem of evil or an inability to understand the problem of evil.

 

Success as a defense of permissive agnosticism: While it's still rational to believe in God, the problem of evil proves that it's also rational to withhold belief. The problem of evil does not by itself allow someone to conclude with any confidence that God does not exist.

 

Success as a defense of permissive atheism: While it's still rational to believe in God, the problem of evil proves that it's also rational to deny that God exists. It's also rational to simply withhold belief and be agnostic.

 

Success as a refutation of theism (non-permissive agnosticism): The problem of evil proves that theism is irrational. The problem of evil does not by itself prove that one should deny that God exists.

 

Success as a refutation of theism (non-permissive atheism): The problem of evil proves that both theism and agnosticism are irrational. The person who grasps the force of the problem will be confident that God does not exist 

 

Sociological success: The problem of evil has a significant sociological impact and is well-regarded as a formidable problem for theistic belief.

 

Partial convergence: Many agnostics and atheists explicitly cite the problem of evil as justification for their agnosticism / atheism.

 

Total convergence: All or virtually all professional philosophers believe that the problem of evil succeeds in some sense.

 

Personal success: You find yourself committed to the premises of one or more arguments from evil, and, given that the argument(s) is/are valid, find yourself committed to their conclusions. You make no claims about what others should or should not believe or what they are or are not committed to.

 

With the exception of "basic success" I wrote these out in terms of the problem of evil being successful when it's really a specific argument that will succeed in demonstrating the tension. The reason for talking about the success of the problem of evil in general terms is because it is a convenient simplification, and because you might think that there are multiple successful arguments (perhaps ranging across the multiple tensions mentioned between God and evil). Someone might think an argument from perfection succeeds while all arguments from justification fail, and someone else might think several different arguments from justification succeed and one version of the argument from perfection also succeeds, and so on. Not only are there many variations of the problem of evil across different tensions, but there's also the sense in which the argument from evil in question succeeds (whether it's a refutation of theism or something weaker). So there is no limit to the number of ways someone might mix and match their exact views on the success or failure of the problem of evil.

 

To complicate things even further, there are different senses of the word rational. If the problem of evil shows that belief in God is irrational, what does that mean, exactly? There is the internalistic notion of rationality where, if the problem of evil succeeds, the theist is in some way guilty of committing one or more epistemic sins. There is something wrong with the theist.

 

This view of irrationality, it seems to me, is very unpopular. The reason why is very obvious: No one chooses their ignorance or their intelligence at any given moment. And so, no one chooses what arguments they are exposed to or what arguments appeal to them at any given moment. So, you can't fault anyone ever for believing how they do at any given moment.

 

As someone who argues in favor of free will skepticism, I accept this. There is no irrationality in the sense of epistemic fault.

 

However, this still leaves room for external rationality. While no one is at fault for believing wrongly, they still believe wrongly. While it's true there is nothing wrong with the person as a person for believing wrongly, it's still the case that there's something wrong with what the person has, that is, the person has mistaken beliefs. There may also be something wrong with the person in the sense that this person has an inability to believe what's true due to bias or misunderstanding. But you are not what you have.

 

Keeping this bifurcated view of blame in mind is essential to understanding what we are committed to when we accuse someone of irrationality. Due to how strongly we associate who someone is with what they have, any critical comment on what someone has will often be viewed, incorrectly, as an insult to their personhood. 'Irrational' is often used and received as an insult, and no intellectually civil person wants to insult those who disagree with them. But 'irrational' in the philosophical sense need not be used or received as an insult, but instead viewed as a necessary description, and constructive critique, of the quality of what someone has. 

If you're playing piano and struggling and someone says "You suck," then that's an insult (notice the you statement... insults always personalize). But if they instead say, "Your tempo is off; try again with a metronome," it's no longer an insult despite the acknowledgement of mistake (notice how the you statement turns into a your statement). For the person who wants to be good at piano, there is a pressure to get it right. 

 

So in productive philosophical conversations, 'irrational' will never be used as an insult, but the pressure provided by the threat of irrationality will certainly be in the background, playing its role of pushing us toward getting things right.

 

Following the pattern of "basic success", we arrive at basic rationality:

 

Basic irrationality: If a person affirms premises that logically entail a conclusion, but rejects that conclusion, then this person is irrational. The rational person will either accept the conclusion or change their mind about one or more of the premises (either by withholding belief in or denying the truth of).

 

Notably, failing to accept a conclusion that follows from accepted premises is not necessarily irrational, because there are many, technically infinite, conclusions that follow at least trivially from what we believe. We don't consciously accept all of them and for good reason: it's impossible to be aware of all that you are committed to at any given moment. It takes a serious and prolonged conscious effort to discover what it really is you are committed to. (Arguably it's perfectly rational for someone to cease pontificating about the coherence of their beliefs given more urgent matters of survival. But someone else might think that placing too great an emphasis on one's survival leads to atrocities like Nazi Germany, where Nazi soldiers were happy to place their survival above doing what's right.) It's only when a conclusion is brought to your attention, a conclusion you are committed to, when your rationality causes you to understand the logical consequence and subsequently update your belief.

 

Rationality in this case refers to a mental power, and thus to a component of intelligence, that involves one's ability to understand logical consequence and to believe accordingly. There is 1) the understanding aspect and 2) the follow-through aspect of rationality. An irrational person is someone who 1) Fails to understand the logical consequence or 2) Understands but fails to update their beliefs.

 

I suspect that it's impossible to be rational enough to understand logical consequence while at the same time not rational enough to follow through on it. If that's right, then rationality is (perhaps among other things) the ability to understand logical commitments. Someone with that understanding will update their beliefs when presented with a conclusion they do not consciously believe and yet are committed to by prior beliefs. That's just what it means to understand.

 

Rationality is, in addition to the above, associated with "sensitivity to reasons."

 

Reason-based rationality: A rational person has good reasons for their belief and behavior, and an irrational person has no reasons or poor reasons for their belief and behavior.

Reasons are (perhaps among other things) 1) Answers to why questions and 2) related to mistakes.

 

Good reasons, then, are good answers to why questions. (To have a good answer, the question itself must be good, as it's hard to give a good answer to a bad question. Such an answer will require rephrasing the question in a helpful way, or rejecting the question outright.)

 

A rational person is a reasonable person, meaning that a rational person is someone who is disposed to have good reasons for their beliefs and behaviors, meaning that a rational person is someone who is disposed to give good answers to why questions. (Clearly, someone can be rational in one area of life and quite irrational in another, able to answer one set of why questions impressively and yet founder on another set of why questions.)

 

The sense of 'good' here is not clear. One sense of good/bad is phenomenal, rooted in experience. Another sense is in terms of success/failure.

 

These two senses of good/bad can come apart. For example, someone might be much happier believing in God. But believing in God could be a mistake relative to the goal of believing what's true about God, because God doesn't exist. In that case belief in God would be undeniably good (phenomenal) for this person, and yet undeniably bad (mistake).

 

To avoid confusion, you could reserve the terms 'good' and 'bad' for phenomenal goods and bads (intrinsic, extrinsic, and depriving), and reserve the terms 'right' and 'wrong' for successes and failures, which are always goal-relative and not necessarily phenomenally relevant. Another example: A bad (wrong) chess move is a mistake relative to the goal of winning the chess game or drawing if a win is unlikely. Even if there were no intrinsic, extrinsic, or depriving evils associated with the bad chess move, the move would still be bad in the failure sense, a mistake.

 

Reasons are related to mistakes in this way: If someone has the goal of winning the chess game, then that person has a reason (an answer to a why question) to make moves that improve their chances of winning, and has a reason to avoid making blunders. Mistakes are those things you have reason to avoid; they are failures to achieve a goal. If someone's goal is to make beautiful music, then they have reasons to follow principles of music theory when composing, and reason to avoid composing randomly. If someone's goal is to maximize their true philosophical beliefs, then they have reason to follow those principles of epistemology that when followed maximize one's true philosophical beliefs, and reason to avoid disregarding evidence, etc.

 

If someone makes a chess move, it makes sense to ask, "Why move that piece there?" There are right (correct) and wrong (incorrect) answers. If my answer is "Because this move develops my pieces", with the underlying implication that the move develops my pieces without creating an exploitable weakness, then my answer is simply incorrect in the case that the move does create an exploitable weakness. Chess moves are described as being more or less accurate, reflecting the fact that there are degrees to how right or wrong an answer can be. When someone has a goal, their actions can contain a mix of failure and success in pursuit of that goal.

I'm not sure how useful the "internal vs external" distinction is for reasons. It's perhaps better to talk of motivating vs justifying reasons. The chess player was motivated by some reason to play the move they did (clock was running out; it intuitively seemed like a good move, etc.), but that reason did not necessarily justify the move given the goal of winning.

 

This matter is complicated further still by the fact that there are different, competing logics. While classical logic is the "default", there is controversy surrounding the correct system of logic. This is relevant because if someone "fails" to spot a logical entailment or spots the logical entailment but "fails" to follow through because "success" in that context would require an adherence to classical logic, and this person adheres to a different logic (subclassical, intuitionistic, etc.), then whether these failures are real depends on which logic is the one true logic. So in the background we are relativizing logical success and failure to logical systems, again with classical logic as the default. There are undeniable mistakes relative to classical logic, but it's not undeniable that classical logic is the one true logic.

 

Where I am at in my journey:

• a) There is no successful proof from evil, which is why there is no strong convergence. At least, if there is a successful proof from evil out there, it's not well-understood or disseminated enough to cause such a convergence.
• b) The problem of evil enjoys a great deal of sociological success, which is why we see a partial convergence where the problem of evil is a very common reason for loss of faith and for confidence in one's agnosticism or atheism. This is also why theists routinely admit that the problem of evil is the greatest problem facing belief in God.
• c) Note: This is an empirical question and I have no empirical data to support an answer. Someone might cite studies that show the high rate of church attendance or religious belief in the US to indicate that the problem of evil does not enjoy much sociological success, at least in the US. You might suggest, given the very low rates of religiosity in countries in northern Europe, that the problem of evil might hold more sway in those populations, but even that is speculation. The reason why belief in God is rare in those countries might have very little to do with the problem of evil and more to do with basic factors of culture and tradition. There is a further question of what percentage self-described Christians in the US are true believers versus nominal Christians, and whether survey reports capture the difference. We also don't necessarily see what percentage of Christians are currently struggling with faith and we don't see what's causing that struggle. I imagine a fairly high percentage of Christians struggle with doubts and I imagine a high percentage of those doubts are caused by the problem of evil. Again, I'm just speculating here, and I'd need sociological data to have a good answer. It may be, for all I know, that even philosophically studied atheists and agnostics tend to reject / withhold belief in God for reasons other than the problem of evil (not enough evidence, theoretical costs, etc.)
• d) I'm aware that Graham Oppy, a leading defender of atheism within academic philosophy, does not believe that any argument from evil succeeds (meaning something like: succeeds in establishing the irrationality of belief in God). He instead uses theory analysis to defend atheism.
• e) Anecdotally, it nonetheless seems to me that the problem of evil is widely considered a formidable problem for belief in God. Often philosophers, including Oppy, will say that an accumulative case argument is the right kind of argument to give for and against God. But I see the problem of evil as driving the show when it comes to that accumulative case. It provides something of a limit or a ceiling. I'm aware that Nick Trakakis makes this point in his 2006 book The God Beyond Belief, that even arguments for God, like the design argument, are compatible with problem of evil, because strictly speaking the problem of evil doesn't say that God doesn't exist, only that a loving and powerful God doesn't. So there could be, as far as the problem of evil is concerned, a creator God, it will just turn out that this God is not loving and powerful.
• f) I'm convinced that there is at least one argument from evil that is sound and that my belief in its premises is justified.
• g) Here's where I take issue with Oppy's permissivism: I don't see how Oppy can say that there are no good arguments for God and yet say that belief in God is rational. Oppy might have in mind that what I refer to above as internalistic rationality is something theists have. I would agree with that. But I feel like I'm committed to (and I would say any confident atheist like Oppy is committed to) some kind of external irrationality of theism (in my case, in light of evil). When the theist says, as they must, that evil provides evidence for God, or does not provide any evidence against God, or provides merely outweighed evidence against God, I'm committed to the view that these are all mistakes. The problem of evil provides at least enough evidence to render belief in a perfect being irrational in the external sense. To my mind, it sounds like Oppy is saying something contradictory: there are no good arguments for God, and so there are no good reasons to be convinced that God exists, and yet it's rational to believe in God, and so there are good reasons to be convinced that God exists. Which is it? If I'm not mistaken Oppy would say (and Peter van Inwagen would say basically the same thing) that for an argument to succeed you need a neutral, rational, impartial person who is aware of all pertinent facts to be convinced of the argument. But a neutral, rational, impartial person who is aware of all pertinent facts need not be convinced of any argument from evil nor any argument for God. And so these arguments fail in that sense. But I take three issues with this: a) William Lane Craig's objection might succeed, which says that this standard of argument is so strong that it's self-refuting. Any argument in favor of this standard of success for arguments would itself not be able to convince a neutral, rational, impartial person who is aware of all pertinent facts, and so this argument for the standard would fail according to the standard. b) If it really is the case that a neutral, rational, impartial person who is aware of all pertinent facts would be convinced of no arguments for or against God, then I don't see why Oppy wouldn't consider himself an agnostic and why he wouldn't consider agnosticism the correct position. c) I don't think this theoretical person exists. There is no neutral, rational, impartial person who is aware of all pertinent facts. So it's an irrelevant standard of success. I would think that a better standard of success is the more basic kind, something like: an argument is successful when it is valid, has true premises, and belief in its premises can be justified. (Given Oppy's affirmation of truth as basic, I would think he would be attracted to a basic notion of success like this.) I imagine Oppy would say something to the effect of "theories precede arguments," meaning that atheism (and theism) is defensible first by theory analysis. Arguments are irrelevant until theories have been articulated. It's only once you have a theory that you can then analyze that theory and use arguments to show that the theory in question contains a contradiction and needs work done to restore its coherence. My reply to this would be that it's very difficult to articulate theories, and arguments are an essential tool that we use to build theories. Someone might not realize what their theoretical commitments are until they see an argument and realize that this argument forces them to update their commitments. On this view, there's a back-and-forth relationship between arguments and theories and it's not really true that one or the other comes first. Maybe we start with pre-theoretic concepts and use those to understand arguments we encounter, and then use those arguments to build a theory, and then use further arguments to refine the theory and build upon it. On this view, saying there are no good arguments for or against God just is to say there are no materials with which to build a respectable worldview that includes either atheism or theism at its center, which again would be to affirm a kind of agnosticism.
• h) I feel committed to this in part because I lost faith, and it's mysterious how I could have lost faith unless there were reasons causing me to do so. So I'm committed to the realness of these reasons. Even while I had faith, these reasons existed; I just wasn't fully aware or appreciative of them. (So this does sound like reasons-externalism. This makes sense: Good answers to why questions are good independent of anyone's awareness of the answer. The point of science and philosophy is to discover what's true, which involves discovering which theories have good or bad reasons for believing in them, which means discovering which answers to why questions are, given the goal of believing what's true about the world, accurate and devoid of mistakes.)
• i) When I really reflect on what caused me to lose faith, I suppose it's a combination of 1) I think the only two interesting worldviews are some kind of Christianity and some kind of naturalism, leaving the Christian God as the only God that interests me (in large part due to my past religious experience), and 2) I become convinced that the challenges to Christian belief were too numerous and severe, and that it's far more likely that some kind of evolutionary story about religion is true. The problem of evil is absolutely part of my conversion. (I call it a conversion and not a deconversion because I never converted to Christianity; I was Christian as soon as I could form memories, and I was from the start absolutely certain that God was real and that Christianity was true. But that certainty went away when I had an epiphany at age 12 that 1) I want God to exist and for Christianity to be true more than anything and 2) I never get what I want.)
• j) Life experiences first convinced me, by intuition, that the problem of evil succeeds through unanswered prayers and apparently gratuitous evils. When I started reading books and papers on evil and first approached the issue with an open mind, I concluded that the argument was successful – the intuition became more concrete.
• k) While I've been aware of the problem of evil as an argument against God since age 13, I didn't consider it to be a serious problem until I experienced evil first hand, and even then I defended my faith through various theodicies. I didn't officially lose faith until around age 26. The point is that if the reasons to be convinced by one or more arguments from evil are real, their reality is not obvious, and there can be all sorts of psychological barriers, or just simple ignorance, preventing someone from being convinced. My aforementioned desire for God to be real formed a deep bias in my case.

Summary:

• The problem of evil refers to the general idea that there is a rational tension between belief in God and evil.
• Arguments from evil attempt to demonstrate that this rational tension is real, and attempt to uncover the logic causing this tension.
• This rational tension can be explained in at least two different ways.
• In the first way, the tension consists in true premises that logically entail that God does not exist. Example: If God exists, there are no unjustified evils. But there are unjustified evils. So God doesn't exist. The person who affirms the two premises (and affirms the principles of propositional logic) but denies the conclusion would be irrational, meaning that they fail to understand that the conclusion follows from the premises by modus tollens. Relative to the goal of affirming truths and not affirming falsehoods, it's a mistake, a logical mistake, to affirm the premises but deny the conclusion of a valid argument. If someone affirms the truth of the premises, then this person is, apparently, in the business of affirming truth, in which case this person should affirm truths whose truth are preserved by a logical structure like modus tollens. 
• In the second way, the rational tension between God and evil can be described in terms of reasons. Reasons are answers to why questions and always begin, at least implicitly, with a reason marker, which is by default the word 'because' in English (though 'since' and 'for' are also used as reason markers). Reasons are connected to goals, successes, and failures. To meet a goal is a success while failing to meet a goal is a failure. Goals give us reasons for acting and believing. ("Why did you do that?" – "Because it furthered my goal.") Good reasons are correct answers to why questions. Bad reasons are incorrect answers to why questions. You can also simply lack a reason. The answer "Because it furthered my goal" can be true or false. Insofar as it's true, then it's a good reason. Insofar as it's false, it's a bad reason, a mistake.
• This notion of 'good' and 'bad' are in the sense of success and failure and not in the sense of leading to phenomenal goodness or badness. Someone could have a good reason in terms of success that is a bad reason in terms of maximizing happiness and avoiding pain. If someone has an evil goal, then success in that goal entails a failure with respect to the goal of making the world a better place. Often, success towards one goal means failure towards another goal (opportunity cost).
• Good reasons (correct answers to why questions) lead to success while bad reasons (incorrect answers to why questions) lead to failure (having no reason at all also leads to failure). To have a reason to do or believe something is to have an answer to a why question.
• Given the question "Why don't you believe in God?", the problem of evil provides an answer: "Because evil makes it highly unlikely that God exists." If it's true that evil makes it highly unlikely that God exists, then it's a good (correct) answer. The goal in this case is to believe what's true, or at least to believe what's true about the existence of God.
• In the first way, the rational person is the person who understands logical entailment and updates their beliefs accordingly. In the second way, the rational person is a reasonable person, a person disposed to give good answers to why questions.
• Both of these senses of 'rational' fit together, because a true answer to a why question obviously depends on truth, and the ability to see truth depends on one's ability to understand logical entailment.