Description
The thesis looks at what is called the "logical problem of evil": the existence of an all good, omniscient, and omnipotent God is logically incompatible with the existence of evil; there is evil; therefore, we have strong logical reasons not to believe that such a God exists. Several solutions have been proffered to overcome this logical problem, but they fall short. The first goal of this work is to debunk the medieval (mis)conception that evil is a nothing and not a some-thing. The second goal is critically to assess some responses to the problem of evil, first by examining St. Augustine's free-will theodicy, then turning to the more contemporary view of Marilyn McCord Adams. Ultimately, I argue that both accounts fail to defeat the general problem of evil adequately in addition to not satisfactorily addressing the specific problems they both claim to overcome. Lastly, I make the case that the logical problem of evil is not the primary cause of concern for the theist in defending his or her view of God and evil but rather that the evidential problem of evil is. More specifically, I will contend that the problem of animal suffering as part of the evidential problem of evil is the most worrisome in that the more common justifications for God's creating or permitting evil applies only to the human animal, leaving a vast number of sentient beings susceptible to evils for no readily apparent reason. Though I do not make the strong claim that the problem of evil in any of its forms gives incontrovertible reason to deny God's existence, I will agree with J. L. Mackie in asserting that, at the least, the existence of evils makes the belief in God irrational. Wherein Mackie asserts that we can make this claim based on the LPE as it concerns God's omnipotence, I will take a different route to the same conclusion by instead arguing that the belief in God is evidentially unsupported in light of the gratuitous evils instantiated by animal suffering
