The evidential problem of evil is the problem of determining whether and, if so, to what extent the existence of evil (or certain instances, kinds, quantities, or distributions of evil) constitutes evidence against the existence of God, that is to say, a being perfect in power, knowledge and goodness. Evidential arguments from evil attempt to ...

May 20, 2022 · In his work titled Arguments/Ruminations from Evil, William Rowe presents an argument against the existence of God that had been captured in two succinct premises, namely: 1) Probably, there is pointless suffering in the world. 2) If God exists, there is no pointless suffering. 3) Thus, probably, God does not exist. As stated in the first premise,

Sep 4, 2010 · In this case E1 stands for the suffering and death of a fawn trapped in a forest fire; and E2 is an actual case involving the rape and murder of a five-year-old girl. Rowe focuses on these because they are striking instances of both moral and natural evil.

~E1 is the case of a fawn trapped in a forest fire and undergoing several days of terrible agony before dying. E2 is the case of the rape, beating, and murder by stran-gulation of a five-year old girl.

philosophers have contended that the existence of evil is logically inconsistent with the existence of theistic God. No one, I think, has succeeded in establishing such an extravagant claim.

Consider the lingering death of the fawn. Such suffering seems preventable and pointless—which suggests (rather than proves) that 1 is true. We could never know that 1 is true, but we could have rational grounds for believing that it is true.

In the fire a fawn is trapped, horribly burned, and lies in terrible agony for several days before death relieves its suffering. E1 is a clear case of natural evil—i.e., a case in which no human agents bear any responsibility for the resulting suffering.

Nov 6, 2006 · By hypothesis, no humans find the fawn, no one exercises the virtues of kindness or sympathy by helping the fawn, and the slow, torturous death of the fawn doesn’t make some causal contribution to some chain of events that ultimately creates more good than evil, or helps to avoid some worse evil.

In this paper I will be concerned with the inductive argument. More specifically, I shall be contributing to a certain criticism of that argument, one based on a low estimate of human cognitive capacities in a certain application. To indicate the point at …

For nearly thirty years, William Rowe has been articulating, defending and refining the evidential argument from evil – the argument that the presence of evil in the world inductively supports or makes likely the claim that the theistic God does not exist.