Liz Jackson on Romans 1

Liz Jackson writes ("Permissivism About Religious Belief", https://philpapers.org/rec/JACPAR-11):

 

In Romans 1:20, St. Paul writes, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—God’s eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” Given passages like this one, those in the Christian tradition might argue that theism is not a permissive case. Paul seems to be arguing God is clearly seen from creation (and in a later passage, the moral law). From this, some conclude that theistic belief is rationally required of most or all of us, given the evidence.

 

In reply, my arguments in this chapter are consistent with a relatively straightforward reading of Paul in this passage (and similar passages). In Paul’s time, people had drastically different evidence that more clearly pointed toward theism. When Paul was writing, belief in God and/or the supernatural was extremely common and widespread (perhaps the divine hiddenness problem wouldn’t have gained much traction in the first century!) People spent much more time in nature, staring at starry skies and breathtaking sunsets; today, much more time is spent walking around concrete jungles and staring at computer screens. Furthermore, as Charles Taylor (2017) argues, the Reformation, Enlightenment, and Romanticism involved deep cultural and intellectual transformations that gave rise to a much more secular society. My arguments in this chapter regard our current evidential situation, and while I maintain that permissivism about theism is supported by the widespread historical disagreement about God’s existence, I don’t claim that permissivism about theistic belief extends to all historical periods, places, and times.

 

I see a few issues with this response to Romans 1. First, Christians usually believe in some form of inerrancy and inspiration: Because the Bible is inspired by the Holy Spirit, anything it teaches to be true is true. (I acknowledge Randal Rauser's thesis of providential errantism and set that aside.) Combine this with the interpretation that Paul is teaching us that those with non-belief are without excuse and you arrive at the interpretation that this is an inspired and therefore inerrant teaching of the Bible.

 

Even if Paul is saying something from the point of view of his time and place, the Holy Spirit can inspire teachings that are applicable well into the future, and modern Christians usually see themselves as reading something that was in a sense meant for them. Very few Christians, in fact this is probably a heresy, see the Bible as a fossil or snapshot of a particular time and place—this would basically be a rejection of inspiration.

 

There's two aspects of the Holy Spirit view of scripture: The Holy Spirit guides the authors of the Bible to write from their own perspective in a way that includes layers of meaning and timeless truths applicable to future generations, and the Holy Spirit guides the modern Christian to the knowledge that a particular interpretation of a passage applies to the modern Christian and their life despite the gap in time and culture. Viewing the Bible as a fossil would mean to jettison both aspects of the Holy Spirit view of scripture. So a very natural and Christian way of interpreting Romans 1 is that its teaching applies for all time.

 

Second, Paul says since the creation of the world . . . from what has been made . . . This kind of language has a universality to it. We look at the time interval from the creation of the world to Paul's time; Paul says God's attributes have been obvious in that interval. It would be strange for God's attributes to be obvious for such a long interval, but suddenly change in the comparatively negligible interval of Paul's time to ours. (And sure, Paul's phrasing of "since creation" need not be literal, but this applies even if we think of it as "since human civilization" or "since humans began believing in gods".)

 

Plus, if God's attributes are made obvious by "what has been made", then there is no relevant difference from Paul's time to ours. Paul is surely citing objects of creation like the starry sky, the planets, the trees, the animals, the sun and moon, and humanity. We have all these today, but it's not at all obvious that any of this were made by a perfectly loving God. For some of us, it's painfully obvious that a perfectly loving God almost certainly does not exist because of what has been made: death, war, disease, murder, poverty, and so on. While Christians view these as accidents of sin, for some of us it's apparent that the systems of our world systematically produce these evils. This is perhaps most apparent with the evils of evolution, and the predation, starvation, parasitism, and mass amounts of death it took to create us.

 

If anything, because we have more rigorous philosophical arguments for God from fine-tuning, the inference from "what has been made" to God's existence should be more powerful than ever, and so all the more are modern humans without excuse in their non-belief in God. And yet we also have more rigorous philosophical arguments from evil, and for some of us the problem of evil trumps the argument from fine-tuning, and it's not a remotely close contest.

 

Third, what Paul says is arguably false even in his own time. For much of human history, humans believed in multiple gods, and didn't necessarily believe in a singular all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good creator. So it's just not true that most groups of people have clearly seen the workings of a singular God; many, maybe most, interpret creation as the workings of multiple gods.

 

Plus, even for Jewish people and Christians, who both believe in a singular God, they strongly disagree who this God is. Christians believe Jesus is God incarnate, while Jewish people strongly disagree. God's invisible qualities have been clearly seen – including the invisible qualities of begetting the Second Person of the Trinity or "spirating" the Third Person of the Trinity? Not at all.

 

Even Christians disagree among themselves, with some viewing the Holy Spirit as a person in some sense separate from the Father and Son, and others viewing the Holy Spirit as something more like a force or essence that is not separate from the Father or Son; or some viewing Jesus as purely man while others view Jesus as both man and divine. How many heresies were there in the first few centuries leading up to the Councils and Creeds?

 

Even if you extend the idea of God to the Greeks like Plato and Aristotle, it's obvious from the Greek texts that this conception of God is radically different from the God that Christians believe. So it's very misleading to say everyone in antiquity believed in God or gods as if there were anything resembling a consensus as to what that means.

 

If the conception of God or gods is radically different between cultures, and Christians are the only ones who got it right, then it's not true that since the creation of the world God's attributes have been known. It's only thanks to the events of the Old Testament and the recent events of the Gospels that we now know the most important attributes of God, namely that God incarnated and died for our sins and you must have faith in Jesus, the incarnation of the Father (if you are a binitarian) or the incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity (if you are a trinitarian) or a man who is somehow special enough to die for our sins but whose righteousness only imputes to us if we have faith in him? (if you are a unitarian?). God's attributes are related to our salvation, and so the lack of consensus among Christians as to how salvation works means even Christians haven't seen God's attributes. Invisible qualities indeed. Besides, many Christians emphasize God's ineffability; no one has a mind great enough to grasp God to any serious degree, which just is to say that God's invisible qualities have not been clearly seen at all.

 

Because Christians made up a tiny minority in Paul's time, Paul must have had a broader understanding of God when orating what became Romans 1. But if that's right, then Paul is not speaking from this local perspective, but is speaking universally; God's eternal power and divine nature have been seen by everyone, so that everyone is without excuse. Why assume that Paul is making an exception for future generations? And if you're not assuming this, then you grant that Paul could be, for all you know, applying what he's saying to future generations too, and so you should at least be agnostic with respect to whether Romans 1 is committing Christians to impermissivism.

 

Regardless, because of the problem of evil, God's eternal power and divine nature, even in some broad sense, haven't been seen by everyone. If anything, what has been seen by everyone is either God's non-existence or God's permitting of evils that for the life of us we cannot figure out why he'd permit. And when Christians, or even ex-Christians like me, try to come up with plausible theodical goods, we fail, and in my case I'm more convinced than ever that there are evils—unbearable suffering—for which there could not possibly be justifying theodical goods.

 

But putting Paul's mistakes aside, the question is whether Romans 1 commits Christians for all time to an impermissivistic attitude about the rationality of belief in God, and there's an interpretation where yes, it does, and this interpretation appears at least as solid as any other.

A proof against God's existence from evil would explain the sociological data

I heard the recent story of Noelia Castillo, a woman who died in Spain at 25 years old from euthanasia. She was sexually assaulted multiple times, and became paralyzed after a suicide attempt. (https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/26/europe/euthanasia-spain-noelia-castillo-latam-intl)

My argument from unbearable suffering is a suggested proof against God's existence. Proofs either for or against God's existence do not fare well in the history of ideas; they always fail to generate any kind of consensus among experts that God either must or must not exist. So chasing after proofs about God might seem like a wild goose chase.

And yet here is reason to chase after proofs. There is a strong, deep, global intuition that there is a tension between God and the evils we see.

Someone might be tempted to cite global statistics on belief in God and show that this tension must not be that strong, because a significant percentage of humans believe in God. But this statistic does not show how many of these believers are nominal, how many will come to lose faith, how many are struggling with doubts caused by evil, how many are engaging in self-deception or believe because of the comfort these beliefs bring in the face of evil.

Plus, we see religiosity dying in Western countries, and we see an inverse relationship between level of education and religiosity. This is what we expect to see if it were the case that God does not exist and if belief in God were ultimately a superstition sustained by a lack of awareness of facts about our world, and a lack of careful, critical thought – things cured by education.

When we look to the intellectual world, we see much more widespread disbelief in God. Within the intellectual world, but also very much outside of it, we see this deep and encompassing force, like a gravity, that the problem of evil exudes, pushing down belief in God.

The question is: Why does this broad, deep, powerful intuition that God and evil are incompatible exist? There are two general answers: Either this force comes from a place of widespread confusion, or comes from the truth.

I doubt this Zeitgeist comes from a place of widespread confusion. One reason why is because of how intimately familiar we are of pain and happiness. We have vivid experiences of pain and happiness. Goodness and badness are constant, everyday, familiar concepts. Another sociological fact is found in the perceived failure of theodicies and the failure of responses to evil. Even theists often remark about how poor the responses to evil and divine hiddenness are, and acknowledge how there are evils that are resistant to go-to theodicies of free will and soul-making.

Why are things like this? Why is the problem of evil so compelling? Why are responses to the problem of evil so embarrassing?

Here's an explanation: Because the problem of evil proves that God does not exist, and this wide and deep gravity that pervades everything has as its source this proof, whatever and wherever it is.

David Bentley Hart on the Problem of Evil

https://youtu.be/AdCVWvixua8?t=4795

 

1:19:55 

 

Miles Donahue: Which of your philosophical commitments do you hold most tenuously, do you hold with the most uncertainty?

 

David Bentley Hart: The benevolence of being. I have lots of arguments against metaphysical naturalism, on logical grounds, but on the moral picture of the Absolute or of God, the problem of evil for me is sufficiently grave and intractable that my trust in the goodness of God in a way that's comprehensible to me is not something that I can say. I don't know if it's my most tenuous commitment, but it's certainly the thing for which I have the most tenuous arguments.

Craig on the problem of evil

"When you consider the extent and the depth of human suffering in the world, whether it is due to natural disasters or to man's own inhumanity to man, then I think we have to admit that it is hard to believe in God."

 

-William Lane Craig

 

https://www.reasonablefaith.org/podcasts/defenders-podcast-series-4/excursus-on-natural-theology/excursus-on-natural-theology-part-28-the-problem-of-evil

Brandon Ambrosino admits that suffering cannot be solved

Ambrosino, Brandon. Is it God's Will? New York: Morehouse Publishing, 2025.

 

Here's a recent book on the problem of evil I spotted in a Barnes & Noble. The author Brandon Ambrosino is addressing the problem of evil from a Christian perspective. So the book is a work of apologetics. I read the first few pages and was surprised at how conceding they were to the problem of evil. Consider:

 

“Still, I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if my goddaughter were to grow up believing that God took her dad because he wanted to be with him. Does that mean God is selfish? Doesn’t God know that Carl’s [the dad] family also wants to be with him? Did God send the heart attack [at age 44] to get him to heaven quickly? Could he not have found a less horrific way to do it? Could he have given Rusty [Carl’s wife] some advanced notice? Or maybe my goddaughter will start to wonder why God doesn’t take all of us to heaven right now—does he not love us as much as he loves Carl?” (3) 

 

Good questions! 

 

“How, then, ought we think about God’s relationship to our world, a world that continues to go wrong, to spin off course, to wound us daily?

     We might not be able to construct an answer, as in the answer, as in the one and only answer. Anyone who’s suffered knows on a gut level that this kind of answer doesn’t exist. Suffering is unanswerable.” (6)

 

What a confession! I totally agree. On a gut level we know that evils are apparently unjustified. And until that changes, say, by a compelling theodicy, God apparently does not exist. But is there any hope of a compelling theodicy? Not so, says Ambrosino. "Suffering is unanswerable." And: 

 

“There is no system, theological or otherwise, within which suffering makes sense. . . . We cannot solve suffering, and attempting to do so only discounts the suffering and degrades the sufferers.” (7)
 

Taken out of context, I would think that this author is about to give a defense of an argument from evil!

 

Question: If the author thinks there is no answer to suffering, and that even attempting to give an answer to suffering betrays a misunderstanding of suffering and insults victims of suffering, then what exactly is his book for? It's not for answering the question of suffering, because, per the author, there is no answer. It's not for solving suffering, because, per the author, suffering cannot be solved. It's not for providing a theological system in which suffering makes sense, because, per the author, there is no such system. So by the author's own admission in the first few pages, the book is not providing an answer, a solution, or a systematic account of suffering. How then is this meant to be a defense of Christian belief? Only an answer to suffering or a solution to the problem of evil or a systematic account of suffering can act as a defense of Christian belief. So if none of these things are possible, then that is just to admit that it's not possible to defend Christian belief against arguments from evil.

 

There is a system in which suffering makes perfect sense, and it's called naturalism. There is an answer – a very simple, elegant, and obvious answer – to the problem of evil: evils are apparently unjustified because they are unjustified.

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.

A theodicy even better than the Grand Story Theodicy? The All Possible Persons theodicy

I had thought that the Grand Story theodicy was the best theodicy available. But maybe something along the following lines is even better:

• God is obligated to prevent worst possible depriving evils.
• So God is obligated to create all possible persons and to give them all fundamentally good lives. (Lives that are totally consciousness-affirming, meaning that every person loves being alive to the point of strongly preferring being alive to not, this preference is fixed and never wavers, and they always get what they want, namely, to live.)
• It would be such a shame to miss out on living a fundamentally good life. In fact, it would be a worst possible depriving evil. God knows this about you, and me, and about every possible person. So God has no choice but to create every possible person and give them a best possible life, which really is any life in which the person wants to live and gets to live. (Thus, a person on this view is minimally something that has the ability to prefer living to not living.)
• Here's the problem. The only possible way for certain persons to be created is through really complex, messy systems like our universe. In fact, all possible universes must be created across all possible levels of complexity, so that the entire range of all possible persons, from the most to the least complex, will eventually be created.
• This requires an infinite amount of time, and there will never be a time such that an infinite amount of time has passed, so there will never be a time at which all possible persons have been created, and so God has no choice but to create a potentially infinite number of persons in an unfolding manner requiring space and time. (Maybe some possible persons do not require space and time to exist.)
• But you couldn't exist without evolution being exactly the way it is, and without all the evils of the world being exactly the way they are.
• We are but one of a potentially infinite number of universes carving out person-space out of the infinite ocean of possible persons. Think of a child scooping up a cup of seawater. Our universe's job is to be that cup and scoop up its share of possible persons.
  
• So evils, even horrendous evils, are necessary to create all possible persons. Then, either all at once at some later time in a mass resurrection, or immediately after death, each person's fundamentally good life starts. God explains to that person that the reason why all the evils they faced (and/or witnessed other people face) were necessary to create them and others.
• You could even have a temporary hell where some individuals don't have their fundamentally good life starting immediately upon resurrection, but only after they've been through a rehabilitation process (or, in the case that we have free will, retributive punishment).
• For any evil whatsoever, the answer to "Why did God allow that?" is "Because if God didn't, a possible person wouldn't have been born, and that possible person would have been deprived of eventually getting to live a fundamentally good life."

This combines the "metaphysical necessity" theodicy with the "heaven" theodicy. In short, God is obligated to prevent all worst possible depriving evils, which means preventing any possible person from being deprived of the best possible good of living a fundamentally good life. But creating all possible persons requires allowing, temporarily, even horrendous evils, as you can only exist if certain physical events happen to generate the complex neurobiological system that gives rise to your exact subjective consciousness. So God is forced (by obligation) to force us a trade: experience horrendous evils in a temporary life so that we can be created (and so that other possible persons can be created), so that you can then eventually live a fundamentally good life. Being deprived of the fundamentally good life is infinitely worse than suffering finite horrendous evils. So, it's a good trade.

A few problems:

1) Usually theists want to say that before creation, reality is already perfect and maximally good, because God is maximally good. So to say that God is obligated to create to maximize value would seem to imply that God alone is not maximally good.

My response to this is that it seems self-evident that a world with more happiness is a better world than a world with less, and that a world with my happiness in it (or your happiness in it) is a world with greater happiness than a world without my happiness (or without yours), ceteris paribus. So basically, I don't understand why people say a world with only God is maximally good; that just seems self-evidently false. 

However, God himself is maximally good in the sense that God himself is the greatest possible extrinsic good, because God gives rise to all fundamentally good lives.

This is a bit tricky because I also want to say that a fundamentally good life is a best possible extrinsic good with respect to an individual.

We might distinguish between degrees of extrinsicality. A best possible extrinsic good (degree 1) is a fundamentally good life, and God is a best possible extrinsic good (degree 2). Being "deprived of God" doesn't exactly make sense, but being deprived of a fundamentally good life does. We might also say that degrees are tied to individuals versus groups. A degree 1 best possible extrinsic good is a best possible extrinsic good with respect to an individual. A degree 2 best possible good is a best possible extrinsic good with respect to a group of people.

We might think of it this way: When we ask what is the best possible thing that could happen to a person, it would be strange to say, "The best possible thing that could happen to you is God," because that demands an immediate question, why is God the best possible thing that could happen to you? The obvious answer: because God will give you a fundamentally good life. So while technically God is the ultimate greatest possible extrinsic good, that's only because of how value is ultimately cashed out, which is through maximizing intrinsically positive states (both in quality and quantity). And so we can trace God's value, just as we can trace our own value (or the value of anything), to the phenomenal value that that thing produces.

In fact, due to considerations of eudaimonia, what counts as a fundamentally good life for an individual might not allow for the best possible life for a group of people. So we might say that there are further and further degrees of best possible goods as we zoom out to cover larger and larger groups of individuals. This brings us to problem 2 below:

2) There are possible individuals for whom living a fundamentally good life (you always prefer to live and you always do) entails living a profoundly evil (or mediocre) life. It stands to reason that God would not want to sustain these lives despite the fact that they are fundamentally good. Consider a person who lives all by themselves, and their psychology is such that they are happy to live alone and do nothing but watch obscene images and videos (fill in the blank). No one else exists in this world but them, so it's not like they are hurting anyone. But it seems clear that this is a massively impoverished life, and one with no virtue. It's hardly a good life despite this individual strongly preferring to live over not living and getting to live forever. In fact, the fact that their disturbing existence goes on forever seems to just add to the problem. So it cannot be the case that consciousness-affirmation is the only meaningful consideration.

Here's a potential solution to this problem: There is a distinction to be made between someone's subjectivity and the quality of their consciousness. The example I like to give is the math genius who sustains a brain injury and loses their math skills. They remain the same person after the injury; they have the same first-person subjective experience. But the quality of that experience, what it is like to be them, has changed. So when we go to heaven, we retain our subjectivity, and thus our personhood, but the quality of that subjectivity is significantly enhanced.

This might require a stint in hell or purgatory for rehabilitation purposes. The renewal of one's mind needn't be an instantaneous, pain-free experience. In fact, the increasing of the quality of one's consciousness could take place over an infinite amount of time; we are always improving the quality of our consciousness.

What matters is not only what we affirm, but what we would affirm were our consciousness to be of high quality. The man who is happy to live alone doing nothing but watching obscene material would not be happy for long. Once his mind had been renewed to an extent, he would be profoundly unhappy with his existence, in which case God would again be obligated to move him to a better world. (And so God would perhaps move him to heaven from the beginning, anticipating this change of heart and mind. Or we might say that these bad worlds that include solitary disturbed individuals (or whatever disturbing features) are the exact hells and purgatories people exist in until their minds have been renewed to the point that they can now fit in heaven.)

This also provides an important resource when it comes to disability theology. It seems cruel of God to keep someone's severe mental disability forever in heaven. And yet, at the same time, it seems cruel to just annihilate these persons out of existence. The solution is to keep their souls, but improve them over time (or all at once; or to improve them to a degree all at once (an initial boost) and then improve them thereafter slowly over time).

So we must modify our understanding of a fundamentally good life. Consciousness-affirmation alone is not enough; it's something more like: consciousness-affirmation when the quality of your consciousness is high (or ever-improving). This makes sense, because if happiness is how value is cashed out, then the quality of that happiness matters greatly. Greater quality of happiness is a greater degree of happiness. So God could never settle for creatures living lives of diminished quality of happiness, as that would fail to maximize happiness.

So if someone could experience eternal consciousness-affirmation without living a fundamentally good life, does this imply that someone could experience eternal consciousness-denial without living a fundamentally bad life?

I don't think so, and here's why. In the former case, you need higher degrees of consciousness in order to maximize happiness. God is disturbed by the happy evil individual (which, incidentally, makes God unable to maximize his own happiness) because God knows how this person would feel about their own choices were the quality of their consciousness leveled up. God knows that this person would be horrified and ashamed, exactly because a deeper understanding of things comes with a recognition of what is good and what is bad. Only a fully recognition of what is good and bad can result in a full appreciation of good and bad, right and wrong, and thus a full instantiation of phenomenal value.

This does suggest that the feeling of ought-to-be-ness that comes with phenomenal value is highly misleading; we might never know whether our happiness is the kind of happiness we would approve of were our consciousness of a higher quality (unless God tells us).

But in the case of living a fundamentally bad life, quality of consciousness doesn't seem relevant. Someone could experience unbearable suffering for a time, as long as it's required for this person to eventually live a fundamentally good life (either due to necessity or rehabilitation). But no one could ever experience consciousness-denial forever without that person's existence being unjustified. So while living a fundamentally good life requires high (or ever-increasing) quality of consciousness, living a fundamentally bad life remains a worst possible evil regardless of the quality of your consciousness. 

This is a categorical worst possible evil; we can imagine God increasing one's capacity for pain, thus causing their torture to be ever-increasing. This high-fidelity fundamentally bad life would be far worse than a low-fidelity fundamentally bad life. So we might be tempted to say it's really the high (or ever-increasing) fidelity bad life that is the worst possible extrinsic evil, but any fundamentally bad life is a categorically worst possible extrinsic evil.

An analogy would be this: Imagine being overdrafted is a worst possible evil. In that case, it makes no difference if someone overdrafts by a dollar or by a thousand dollars; either way, a worst possible evil has occurred, and the fact that one is a greater degree doesn't make a relevant difference to the permissibility of the lesser degree worst possible evil. (It does sound strange to speak of degrees of worst possible evils. But again, if we allow 'worst possible evil' to be categorical, then degrees shouldn't be problematic.)

If consciousness-denial is what makes life not worth living, then maximal consciousness-denial is what makes life maximally not worth living. Not-worth-living-ness is thus the measure of badness that can befall an individual. Once that measure has crossed a threshold where life is officially not worth living for the individual, then it's not relevant (as far as justification is concerned) to what degree beyond that threshold that life is not worth living.

If maximizing phenomenal value depends on quality of consciousness, then the maximizing of phenomenal disvalue depends on the quality of consciousness. But when it comes to whether evils are justifiable or not, there is an asymmetry between living a fundamentally good life, which requires consciousness-affirmation of a high or ever-increasing degree, and living a fundamentally bad life, which requires eternal unbearable suffering regardless of the quality of that suffering.

So perhaps more simply we could just say that a life not worth living in the long run is a categorical worst possible evil (regardless of the details of its not-worth-living-ness), which generates a categorical best possible saving good with respect to that evil, and so God cannot allow for anyone to live a life not worth living in the long run, as that would be to allow an unjustifiable evil (an evil which cannot possibly generate outweighing good). The best possible good grounded by such an evil would be to be fully saved from that evil, either by annihilation, by being sent to a fundamentally good life, or by being sent to a fundamentally neutral life.

But because God is obligated to give us fundamentally good lives anyway, it follows that God could not allow worst possible evils anyway.

3) Another problem is a matter of power. Why would God be limited to creating us only by specific physical inputs? Why couldn't God create us wholecloth out of nothing? The question of how God could create a person at all, or how a person could possibly exist in the first place, is one of the deepest questions in philosophy. It may be that God does in fact create all possible persons he can ex-nihilo or de novo. Presumably, in Christianity the angels are like this. But if God is obligated to create all possible persons, then again it's hard for us to wrap our minds around the fact that this involves God creating trillions upon trillions upon trillions (really, approaching infinity) of persons. It's all possible persons, after all. This would involve any coherent account of person-generation, and that just so happens to include persons that are created through a DNA, RNA, evolution, biological process brought about by the laws of chemistry and physics we observe in our universe. Maybe there are countless persons God can create that don't require all these things, but that doesn't change the fact that we require these things to exist, and God must create us lest we are deprived of a best possible good, which would indict God on charges of allowing worst possible depriving evils.

The Logical Problem of Hell

Part 1: Introduction and Core Argument

Does God exist? I argue that the God that sends people to hell, as featured in orthodox Christianity and Islam, not only does not exist, but certainly does not exist. More precisely, I argue that an infernalist God is logically incompatible with being a perfect being. So if a perfect being exists, hell doesn’t.

There are two reasons why this matters. First, many religious traditions have taught both that God sends people to hell and that God is perfect – perfectly loving, just, worthy of worship, and so on. If we prove that hell is incompatible with a perfect God, then we prove that these religious traditions have been sorely mistaken all this time. For a religious tradition to get hell, a doctrine of infinite importance, so wrong for so long is to deal a serious blow to its credibility. You would think that a God of perfect love would ensure proper communication of such an important doctrine. But it gets worse. If my argument succeeds, then members of these traditions have the following options: 

 

1) Opt for the view that life in hell is not fundamentally bad because hell does not last forever ('fundamentally bad' is explained under Part 2). In other words, opt for some form of universalism.

 

2) Opt for the view that life in hell is not fundamentally bad because although it lasts forever, members of hell do not wish for death.

 

3) Conclude that the God they worship is not perfect.

 

4) Conclude that the God they worship does not exist.

 

If options 1–3 are unacceptable for theological reasons, then members will be forced to give up their religion entirely.

The second reason why this matters is because some people—both religious and non-religious—suffer from ‘hell anxiety.’ Some religious folks may suffer from hell anxiety not for themselves, but for non-religious loved ones. For Christians, Jesus twice depicts scenarios where characters are in hell, desire to get out, and are refused by God.[1] On one interpretation, Jesus says that some sincere believers will go to hell.[2] Furthermore, Jesus mentions a mysterious unforgivable sin of ‘blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.’[3] Combining these items, we can see how some Christians may worry that they have committed the unforgivable sin unbeknownst to them, and will find themselves rejected by God with no recourse despite the fact that their faith in God is sincere. Such Christians are at a high risk of severe hell anxiety.

Hell anxiety is not a common issue,[4] but for those afflicted by it, proofs against hell can in theory be a precious resource for treating hell anxiety. Proofs against hell can further be used to prevent hell anxiety from taking root in the first place, and to combat attempts to spread hell anxiety through "fire and brimstone" preaching.

 

Below are the three steps of my core argument. After defending the first two premises I will draw out the full argument, which ends with the conclusion that God doesn’t exist (though the argument can be inverted to say that because God exists, hell doesn’t).

1) A fundamentally bad life is the worst possible evil for an individual. (Premise 1)

2) Every evil corresponds to a good of equivalent magnitude of being saved from that evil. (Premise 2) 

3) Therefore, being saved from a fundamentally bad life is the best possible good for an individual living a fundamentally bad life. (Conclusion 1; From 1,2)

 

Part 2: Defending Premise 1

To live a fundamentally bad life is to be stuck in an unwanted existence forever, eternally wishing for death but unable to die. Note that while the word ‘evil’ is associated with immorality, here ‘evil’ means ‘bad thing.’ So a fundamentally bad life is the worst possible bad thing to happen to an individual.

A Christian might respond in the following way: We have free will, and with free will comes moral responsibility. With moral responsibility comes just deserts, including retributive punishment. People who do evil must pay for what they’ve done. When we imprison murderers and child abusers for their crimes, we don’t feel bad for them. We see their suffering in prison as good. Justice demands that they suffer. So while hell is bad for the individual, this badness constitutes justice, a great good.

My rebuttal has two parts. First, this fails to understand the concept of ‘good.’ What does it mean to call justice good? Good for whom? Good in what way? Joshua and Rachel Rasmussen, in their book When Heaven Invades Hell, argue for a universal reconciliation view of hell. In that book the question is posed: Do people serve justice, or does justice serve people? Immediately we should see that justice serves people. Isn’t this the point Jesus makes when he says that "The Sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the Sabbath"?[5]

The person who thinks people serve justice has a poor understanding of value. Here’s a better understanding. If there were no persons, no consciousness at all, then there would be no goods or evils. There could be no suffering, or harm, or injustice if no one is there to suffer or be harmed or be wronged. So goods and evils depend on consciousness.[6] Intrinsic goods (intrinsically positive qualia, or ‘happiness’) just are those things that make consciousness worth having, and intrinsic evils (intrinsically negative qualia, or ‘pain’) just are those things that make consciousness not worth having. That which makes consciousness most not worth having is therefore the greatest evil for a conscious being. Hence, Premise 1.

Second, and this follows from the preceding point: free will is not worth the risk of eternal suffering. Joshua Rasmussen paints the following picture for us[7]: Imagine your children playing on a playground. There’s an infinitely deep pit on the playground, and anyone who falls down that pit will fall down forever and will suffer forever. Would you give your children the freedom to play on the playground if it meant running the risk of them falling in? Of course not. In the same way God, who loves like a parent, and who knows how value works, would never give us freedom at the risk of eternal suffering. Like Rasmussen, I "can’t see how the value of freedom could possibly be worth that kind of a risk."[8]

 

Part 3: Defending Premise 2 and Expanding the Core Argument

Intrinsic goods—various kinds of happiness—are good in virtue of their phenomenal quality. By being directly aware of this quality, we are directly aware of what makes happiness worth pursuing for its own sake. Extrinsic goods by contrast are good in virtue of their giving rise to intrinsic goods. The same is true, mutatis mutandis, of intrinsic and extrinsic evils. Most things we call good (good movies, good food, good friends, good jobs, etc.) are extrinsically good, with the experiences they generate being the intrinsic goods that ground their goodness.

But this leaves us with a puzzle. How can death be bad for us? If death is the cessation of consciousness, then there is no consciousness to ground the badness of death for the one who dies. But clearly, dying is bad for the one who dies, and indeed we consider death to be typically the worst harm that can befall a person. This calls for a third kind of evil, depriving evils, which derive their badness not from their giving rise to intrinsic (or extrinsic) evils, but from their preventing the intrinsic goods that would have taken place. Not only are we directly aware of the goodness of happiness and the badness of pain, but we are directly aware of the difference between the two, and of happiness being better than pain and better than an absence of happiness. When a young person dies, we say they have been robbed of life, that they had their whole life ahead of them. We are acknowledging the directly accessible superiority of having intrinsic goods over not having them. The direct awareness of this superiority provides the consciousness needed to ground the badness of depriving evils. Despite death not being intrinsically bad, we know death is bad for the one who dies because we know that it’s better to enjoy intrinsic goods than not to, all else being equal.

We need a ‘deprivation theory’ (some version of it) to make sense of the badness of death.[9] But depriving evils imply the existence of saving goods. And just as being deprived of a greater good is worse than being deprived of a lesser good, being saved from a greater evil is better than being saved from a lesser evil. As bad as an evil is, it is that good to be saved from it. Hence, Premise 2.

But this leads to another puzzle. Consider the depriving evil equivalent of Premise 2:

Premise 2(d): Being deprived from a fundamentally good life is the worst possible evil for an individual living a fundamentally good life.

 

On one hand, this sounds commonsensical. It does sound right that the worst thing that can happen to you if you’re in heaven is to lose heaven. But there is more than one way to lose heaven. You could be annihilated, or sent to hell (or sent to purgatory, or earth, or a slightly worse heaven). Surely getting sent to hell is infinitely worse than being annihilated. So how could being annihilated be a worst possible evil when being sent to hell is infinitely worse?

 

My answer is that living a fundamentally bad life is the worst possible extrinsic evil. Being fully deprived of heaven is the worst possible depriving evil. These evils are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, living a fundamentally bad life includes being deprived of a fundamentally good life for the person who otherwise would have lived a fundamentally good life.

Applying this to Premise 2, then, we see that there is more than one way to be saved from a fundamentally bad life. You could be saved by being annihilated or saved by being sent to a fundamentally good life. Again, clearly, being sent to a fundamentally good life is infinitely better than being annihilated. And yet, if Premise 2 is right, being annihilated or sent to heaven would both be best possible goods. How can this be? We can apply the same distinction here: living a fundamentally good life is the best possible extrinsic good while being fully saved from a fundamentally bad life is the best possible saving good. As long as you are fully saved from a worst possible fate, you enjoy a best possible saving good no matter how you are fully saved.

To ensure there is no equivocation over the terms 'good' and 'evil', here is the core argument updated:

1) A fundamentally bad life is the worst possible extrinsic evil for an individual. (Premise 1*)

2) For every evil there is a saving good of equivalent magnitude of being fully saved from that evil. (Premise 2*)

3) Therefore, being fully saved from a fundamentally bad life is the best possible saving good for an individual living a fundamentally bad life. (Conclusion 1*; From 1,2)

 

These clarifications allow the argument to be filled out, showing its final conclusion:

 

4) People in hell live fundamentally bad lives (and thus, suffer worst possible extrinsic evils). (Premise 3)

5) The best possible good for an individual will either take the form of a best possible extrinsic good or a best possible saving good (with best possible extrinsic goods entailing best possible saving goods for those saved from worst possible evils). (Premise 4)

6) Therefore, there are worst possible evils that fail to give rise to best possible goods. (Conclusion 2; From 4,5)

7) If there are worst possible evils that fail to give rise to best possible goods, then there are unjustified evils. (Premise 5)

8) Therefore, there are unjustified evils. (Conclusion 3; From 6,7,modus ponens)

9) If God exists, there are no unjustified evils. (Premise 6)

10) Therefore, God does not exist. (Conclusion 4; From 8,9,modus tollens)

 

In Part 4 I defend Premise 3 and in Part 5 I defend the remaining argument. While the first four steps are crucial, steps 5–10 present opportunities for variations of the argument. This is just one variation. The key idea behind steps 5–10 is that because the best possible goods with respect to worst possible evils are necessarily eliminating in nature, worst possible evils cannot possibly generate justifying goods. The best you can do with respect to worst possible evils is prevent them.

 

Part 4: Defending Premise 3:

Do members of hell live fundamentally bad lives? Recall the two criteria for a life to count as fundamentally bad: the rejection of consciousness (preferring death to life) and eternal duration. According to the orthodox account of hell, hell explicitly lasts forever. That criterion is easily checked off. But according to the orthodox account, do members of hell wish for death? While this is not explicit, there is strong evidence that this is implied. In the case of Christianity, consider the following responses:

 

1) The first is the common sense response. Given descriptions of hell (of which I'm sure you are familiar), it's just obvious that yes, anyone suffering the torture of being burned alive, or what have you, would shortly be wishing for death. This response applies to Islam's orthodox account of hell as well.

 

2) The second is the salvation response. If hell is not a bad place to be, then why is it so urgent that we be saved from it?

 

You could argue that hell is a purgatory where life is fundamentally neutral. That is, life is always just good enough that you could take it or leave it; or life bounces evenly back and forth between being more worth living and less worth living. Then life in hell would still be infinitely worse compared to life in heaven. This retains the urgency and importance of salvation, nullifying the salvation response.

 

But the orthodox account does not remotely paint a picture of hell being like purgatory, with hell and purgatory being explicitly separate fates in Catholicism.

 

3) The third is the candidate response. There are at least five good candidates of figures in the New Testament who plausibly prefer death over their fate: the rich man (Luke 16), the devil, the beast, and the false prophet (Revelation 20:7-10), and Judas.

Jesus says of Judas, the disciple who betrays him, "It would have been better for that one not to have been born."[10] Now, if universalism is true, then ultimately all souls go to heaven. So ultimately, it’s always better to have been born on universalism. So on a plain reading, Jesus is saying that at least one person, Judas, will not end up in heaven (indicating that universalism is false). This means either Judas will end up in hell as tradition teaches, or Judas will be annihilated and, per Jesus, it’s better to have never been than to live a life like Judas’ only to be annihilated. If Judas ends up in hell, and it's true that it's better to have never been than to be in hell, then hell is a worst possible fate. Even if this only applies to Judas (or only to any of the other candidates), that's enough to enable the argument.

 

If Judas ends up annihilated, then the orthodox account of the fate of Judas is sorely mistaken, and again one wonders how a religious tradition could be so wrong about something so important. If Judas ends up saved in a universalist scenario, then Jesus is mistaken, or exaggerating to the point of being misleading when he says that it would have been better for Judas to have never been.

4) The fourth is the Revelation 9:6 response.[11] This verse reads (NRSVUE): "And in those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will flee from them." This is described as a period of punishment that lasts five months when God is sending his wrath on earth against the unbelievers. If we suppose that the suffering of this period is no worse than the suffering of hell’s final form, then this description will apply to hell as well.

 

5) The fifth is the Revelation 20 response. Consider the relevant passages:

 

And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. (10)

And the dead were judged according to their works, as recorded in the books. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and all were judged according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire, and anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire. (13–15)

If we suppose that the translation of "forever and ever" is accurate, and that the torment in question causes one to wish for death, and that the lake of fire in verse ten is the same lake of fire as in verse fifteen, and that there is no difference between the torment of the first group (devil, the beast, the false prophet) and the second (the damned non-believers), then this would confirm the orthodox view of hell and the view that hell is a worst possible evil for all its members.

 

On one interpretation, the second death means the destruction of the soul, supporting annihilationism. But on another interpretation, the death of death refers to the eternity of hell (if death "dies" then no one can die after that).

Christians might argue that members of hell, despite their torment, prefer hell to heaven in their stubbornness. But this clashes with Luke 13:25 where those casted out of heaven are depicted as wanting to be in heaven.[12] The rich man in Luke 16 is depicted as wanting relief from his suffering, and as wanting to save his family members from hell.

Despite these verses, it’s debated whether the Bible teaches a doctrine of eternal conscious torment.[13] In addition to infernalism you have universal reconciliationism (hell is a temporary period of rehabilitation) and annihilationism (the eternal punishment is permanent death). There are conflicting interpretations of the relevant Bible passages, and a number of verses seem to outright contradict each other. All three views can be argued from scripture. Authors arguing against the traditional doctrine of hell have responses to the verses I’ve quoted here.

 

At the very least, my argument, if not an argument against Christianity (or Islam) in its best light, remains as an argument against Christianity (and Islam) in its contemporary orthodox form. In that case, as already pointed out, if contemporary orthodoxy is mistaken, then this proves to be quite the embarrassment for Christianity (and Islam), especially if one takes the Church to be guided by the Holy Spirit toward true doctrine. The Christian (and Muslim) is left with a dilemma: Keep the orthodox doctrine of hell and face the logical problem of hell, or give up the orthodox doctrine and face the problem of having a tradition that is unreliable in arriving at the truth of its most important doctrines.

 

But it's even worse than that. Giving up the orthodox doctrine of hell may prove impossible given its scriptural and cultural support, and debates over hell may do little more than reveal that scripture is ambiguous at best and contradictory at worst about one of if not the most important doctrine, casting doubt on the inerrancy and inspiration of the Bible.

Indeed, if the arguments from defenders of universalism and annihilationism as to the true interpretation of scripture have merit, and there are multiple defensible interpretations of hell, then the Christian has no choice but to admit that the Bible is ambiguous at best and contradictory at worst about one of if not the most important doctrine. In that case, no matter which interpretation the Christian chooses, the damage will have already been done to the credibility of the Bible and the Church.

 

But to make matters even worse, annihilationism is itself an undeniably morally abhorrent doctrine, placing further philosophical pressure on Christians to accept universalism and to explain away passages that imply annihilation.

 

A Christian might say that the Holy Spirit is guiding the Church into the truth of universalism (or annihilationism) today. But I would argue, one, that the Holy Spirit ought to have prevented the Church from ever adopting a doctrine as horrible (and logically impossible) as hell in the first place, and two, both universalism and annihilationism remain unsupported by most denominations. Given the obvious scriptural support for infernalism[14], and the endorsement of infernalism by major denominations, Christianity may be stuck with the orthodox account of hell.

Part 5: Defending the remaining argument

What the rest of the argument is getting at is the fact that worst possible evils cannot possibly be justified. Intrinsic badness is self-evidently worth eliminating (and thus, preventing). So to justify an intrinsic evil (or an evil that gives rise to an intrinsic evil, or an evil that deprives one of an intrinsic good), the evil must lead to an intrinsic good that outweighs the intrinsic evil (or lead to a saving good that saves one from a worse intrinsic evil) and the good must depend on the evil to be realized (that is, if you can get the same good without the evil, then the evil is not justified). Because worst possible extrinsic evils lead to maximum intrinsic evils, worst possible extrinsic evils are maximally self-evidently worth eliminating (and thus, preventing). Anything that is maximally worth eliminating cannot possibly be justified.

Another way to see this: because intrinsic evils are conscious, and thus positive[15], the best possible goods that depend on worst possible evils are negative, or saving, in nature. So it’s impossible for a worst possible evil to generate a positive good that both depends on it and exceeds (or even matches) its magnitude.[16] If someone is suffering a worst possible evil, it’s necessarily the case that the sufferer has missed out on the best possible good that depends on this evil. Put another way, because the best thing that can happen to someone with respect to a worst possible evil is being saved from that evil, then necessarily if that person is suffering a worst possible evil, they haven't been saved, and thus haven't enjoyed the best possible good with respect to that evil. 

 

Whatever dependent goods the worst possible evil might generate (e.g., God’s justice, or alleged justice), they cannot possibly reach the magnitude of the best possible saving good. The person living a fundamentally bad life would have to live a fundamentally good life (or not at all) to cancel out the worst possible evil, but it’s impossible to live a fundamentally good life (or not at all) and a fundamentally bad life at the same time. Even if this were possible, the fundamentally good life would have to depend on the evil of living a fundamentally bad life to count as justifying, and even then the good would not exceed the evil, only match it in magnitude, making the good more arbitrary than justifying.

God, as a perfectly good, perfectly rational, perfectly powerful being, would be perfectly aware of all of this and would have the power to prevent worst possible evils. And therefore, if there is a perfect being, there are no worst possible evils. In simplified form, my argument is therefore the following:

 

1) Worst possible evils cannot possibly be justified.
2) Hell is a worst possible evil.
3) Therefore hell cannot possibly be justified.

While this rules out the possibility of a perfect being creating hell, my argument does not rule out all conceivable hells. For all that’s been established here, there could be an evil God who sends everyone to hell. Or, there could be no gods at all, and yet our consciousness survives our deaths and drifts on for eternity. I trust that there are proofs out there against these hells too.

---

1 - See: The Narrow Door: Luke 13:22-28 and The Rich Man and Lazarus: Luke 16:19-31.

 

2 - Matthew 7:21-23, Luke 13:22-28.

3 - Matthew 12:31-32, Mark 3:28-30, Luke 12:10.

4 - In a study of 353 undergraduate students at a religious university, 82% held moderate to confident belief in hell. Students were asked to rate how well various statements applied to them (e.g., “Sometimes I worry that my beliefs are not enough to keep me from Hell”) from 1–5, with 1 being “not at all” and 5 being “very much.” Scores were low, ranging from 1.34 to 1.88 across questions reported. The study still notes that hell anxiety is “a significant mental health concern for many individuals given the extreme nature of the traits attributed to Hell,” especially given how common belief in hell is. For details, see: “Hell anxiety as non-pathological fear” (2018) from Cranney et al. An obvious explanation for why hell anxiety is not common is because religious people believe they are saved and non-religious people believe there is no hell. Besides anxiety, belief in hell is linked to negative well-being. See: “The Emotional Toll of Hell: Cross-National and Experimental Evidence for the Negative Well-Being Effects of Hell Beliefs” (2014) from Shariff, Azim and Lara Aknin.

 

5 - Mark 2:27, NRSVUE.

 

6 - This account of good and evil (‘philosophical hedonism’) is ancient, tracing back to Epicurus who says that “good and evil implies awareness” ("Letter to Menoeceus"), and to Plato via Socrates ("Protagoras", 352d – 355e). Recently, philosophical hedonism has been defended by Sharon Rawlette (The Feeling of Value, 2016).

7 - Majesty of Reason. “Universalism and Eternal Hell | Dr. Josh Rasmussen & Dr. Eric Reitan.” YouTube. October 22, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxQyKw04Ncg?t=3495, 58:15-1:00:25 and 1:25:55-1:26:25.

 

8 - Ibid. 59:31. David Lewis is another philosopher that questions the value of free will in light of the risk of eternal suffering (and argues that hell is certainly incompatible with a good God). See “Divine Evil” in Philosophers Without Gods (2007), edited by Louise Antony, 231–242.

9 - For a partial defense of the deprivation theory and discussion of some of the tricky puzzles surrounding it, see Death (2012) by Shelly Kagan, 206–233.

 

10 - This is true of traditional, orthodox accounts of hell within Protestant, Catholic, and Islamic traditions. However, a number of recent works from Christian authors have argued that the Bible does not teach this traditional, orthodox account. See:
“Universalism and the Bible,” by Keith DeRose, https://campuspress.yale.edu/keithderose/1129-2/.
God’s Final Victory (2011) by John Kronen and Eric Reitan.
Rethinking Hell (2014), edited by Christopher Date, Gregory Stump, and Joshua Anderson.
That All Shall Be Saved (2019) by David Bentley Hart.
When Heaven Invades Hell (2020) by Joshua and Rachel Rasmussen.
One can’t help but wonder whether the motive to deny traditional views of hell is attributable in large part to the philosophical problems of hell. Certainly, arguments against hell are motivated by a reexamination of the biblical data and the history of the doctrine itself. But what motivated this reexamination in the first place if not the obvious difficulty in justifying hell?

11 - There is also Revelation 7:14–17, which features the damned asking for rocks to fall on them:

 

14 The sky vanished like a scroll rolling itself up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. 15 Then the kings of the earth and the magnates and the generals and the rich and the powerful and everyone, slave and free, hid in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, 16 calling to the mountains and rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of the one seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, 17 for the great day of their[h] wrath has come, and who is able to stand?"

Curiously, the passage says that all mountains are removed and yet are still there.

 

12 - Matthew 26:24, NRSVUE.

 

13 - This conflicts with Revelation 9:20 and 16:9–11 where the damned are depicted as unrepentant despite their torment.

 

14 - It's important to point out not only what the Bible says, but what it doesn't say. It doesn't depict Judas, the devil, the beast, or the false prophet as being redeemed. It doesn't depict anyone, ever, being rescued from hell. We don't see universalism played out in the Bible, something you would expect were universalism true. Why would scripture, inspired by the Holy Spirit, fail to appropriately emphasize a universalistic message were universalism true? Shouldn't such an important doctrine be featured front and center?

 

15 - Intrinsic evils are ontologically positive, but phenomenally negative. Intrinsic goods are ontologically and phenomenally positive.

 

16 - Even if a worst possible evil gave rise to a best possible good by way of someone’s going to hell somehow giving rise to someone else going to heaven, you still would have a worst possible evil failing to generate a best possible good with respect to the person in hell.

---

Bibliography

 

Cranney, Stephen, Joseph Leman, Thomas Fergus, and Wade Rowatt. “Hell anxiety as non-pathological fear.” Mental Health, Religion & Culture 21, no. 9-10 (March 2018): 867–83. https://doi.org/10.1080/13674676.2018.1443436.

Date, Christopher, Gregory Stump, and Joshua Anderson. Rethinking Hell: Readings in Evangelical Conditionalism. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2014.

DeRose, Keith. “Universalism and the Bible.” n.d. https://campuspress.yale.edu/keithderose/1129-2/. Accessed March 31, 2025.

Epicurus. "Letter to Menoeceus." Translated by Robert Drew Hicks. The Internet Classics Archive. https://classics.mit.edu/Epicurus/menoec.html. Accessed March 31, 2025.

Hart, David Bentley. That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019.

Kagan, Shelly. Death. Yale University Press, 2017.

Kronen, John, and Eric Reitan. God’s Final Victory. Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.

Lewis, David. “Divine Evil.” In Philosophers Without Gods, edited by Louise Antony, 231–242. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Majesty of Reason. “Universalism and Eternal Hell | Dr. Josh Rasmussen & Dr. Eric Reitan.” YouTube. October 22, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxQyKw04Ncg?t=3495, 58:15-1:00:25 and 1:25:55-1:26:25.

Plato. “Protagoras.” In Plato: Complete Works, edited by John Cooper and D.S. Hutchinson, 746–790. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997.

Rasmussen, Joshua, and Rachel Rasmussen. When Heaven Invades Hell. Great Legacy Books, 2020.

Rawlette, Sharon. The Feeling of Value. Self-published, 2016. First published as Normative Qualia and a Robust Moral Realism by Sharon Hewitt, 2008.

Shariff, Azim and Lara Aknin. “The Emotional Toll of Hell: Cross-National and Experimental Evidence for the Negative Well-Being Effects of Hell Beliefs.” PLoS ONE 9, no. 1 (January 2014): e85251. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0085251.