More on reductios and the AFe

I'm Skeptical wrote: 


If I understand Victor's position, a skeptic can't defend the argument from evil unless he concedes that there are objective moral values. This is a parlor trick. It's equivalent to saying that if I want to make the statement "If A then B" I must first concede that A is true.

If you accept Victor's position, why not take the same logic one step further and demand that the skeptic concede that God exists before he can defend AE?


VR: No, you don't understand my position. I admitted that reductio versions of the argument from evil are possible, even for those who don't believe in moral objectivity.  The problem is going to arise when the atheist/subjectivist tries to defend the moral premise of the argument. The subjectivist can't appeal to his own value theory to argue about what it is for God to be good. 


Let's take this statement from Rowe:


An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.


Now, does  theist necessarily have to believe this? And if they do believe it, do they have to agree with the atheist about what would be a greater good or the prevention of some evil equally bad or worse? If there are any value-theoretic conflicts, someone committed to objective moral values can argue that the theist's value system is faulty. They can argue that the theist has some misplaced values, and in particular, perhaps, undervalues the prevention of intense suffering and makes inflates the legitimacy of other values which, he argues, are not sufficient justifiers for intense suffering. A subjectivist can't do that. The logic of his argument forces him to concede the value-theoretic position of his theist opponent at every turn, since he cannot


The most serious objection to this line of argument comes in the Mark Nelson  post, from Thrasymachus. I will need a separate post to respond to that. 

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Reductios and the argument from evil

This links to a bunch of posts I did on the topic of the argument from evil as a reductio. What happens when someone who doesn't believe in moral objectivity defends the argument from evil?

The problem arises when the argument requires are fairly finely tuned moral claim. Someone might say "If God is good, then he can't allow gratuitous suffering. The theist answers "Why? What's wrong with permitting gratuitous suffering?" The atheist can't say that it's objectively wrong for God to do that, so he has to argue that the theist believes that it is wrong for God to do that? The atheist then has to work from inside the moral belief system of the person with whom he is arguing. But moral belief-systems amongst theists, and even Christians differ from one another.

Calvinists think that God is justified in creating people for the sake of reprobating them in hell forever, for the sake of God's own glory. I happen to disagree with them, but I believe in objective moral values. How can a subjectivist argue with them?

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Evil and the Atheism of the Gaps

A redated post.

Anonymous wrote:
First off, I think you're right when you say that you're at a disadvantage when you, as a theist, must first set out your proofs for god and how they square everyone's observations of the natural world. It's not an unfair disadvantage, though; it's perfectly fair and right that things are tougher for you than for the atheist, because you're making the positive claim ("God Exists"). If you want that claim to have any weight, you must present the positive arguement and then let others attack the logical edifice to see if it holds together. What you're doing right now is just avoiding your responsibility at a theistic philosopher, trying to get the athiests to do your work for you. I can understand why you want your opponents to play the besieged party (it's easier to be on the attack, sure), but just because you don't want to do the work of establishing your premise doesn't mean you can assume it's true and rest on your laurels.

There are some mistakes in this discussion that need to be addressed. First of all, I am not at all sure that "making the positive claim" places a burden of proof on the theist. Until somebody converts me to classical foundationalism my view of burdens of proof is that the burden of proof falls on someone trying to get someone else to change his or her mind. We have the right, as rational persons, to believe what we already do believe, unless we receive evidence against what we believe. Someone claiming that the external world exists is making a positive claim, so by the above logic he or she should have to prove to a skeptic that the external world exists in order to be rational in believing it.

Second, I have myself defended theism with arguments. So that isn't my problem.

My problem is this. The argument from evil is the attempt to shoulder a burden of proof on behalf of atheism. It is, after all an argument for atheism. It as attempt to argue that God does not exist. It is an argument against theism. For it to be successful, we need to see how it works, what moral principles are invoked, and what factual claims are being made, to see if the argument is a good one.

What I am objecting to is what I will call atheism-of-the-gaps. Theists are rightly criticized when they take a gap in the naturalistic understanding of the world as automatically proving that God must exist, so that the gap can be filled. A gap in our scientific understanding of the world might be as a result of the limitations of our present understanding rather than providing a foundation for world-view change. But when they come to the evil in the world, they point to some evil and say "Explain this, otherwise, you're being irrataional." This in spite of the fact that the omnipotence of God and the teaching of Scripture strongly predict that there will be gaps in our understanding of evil.

Now we need something more than the contention that we have a gap here.

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Subjectivism and the argument from evil as a reductio

The reductio requires that you establish that a particular conception of goodness is essential to Christianity. I think it's a mistake to just say "no problem, it's just a reductio." Even if you argue that a theist must accept an objective standard of right and wrong, you then have to show that the standard that God supposedly violates by allowing the type of evil you are highlighting is a standard that Christians, in virtue of being Christians, are committed to. That's a bit of a demanding chore, in my book.

If you're a subjectivist, you can't say "This is the true standard of right and wrong, God violates that in virtue of allowing the evil he does allow, therefore, an omnipotent being, if he exists, can't be good." What you have to say is that Christians are committed to the standard that God is violating. Showing that commitment on the part of Christians is bound to be difficult.

A two or three years back on DI I got into some dialogue with Calvinists, in which I argued that a God who predestined some to heaven and some to hell would not be a good being in any recognizable sense. I still think that's right, but they argued that what it is for God to be good is that God's actions promote his own glory, and by glory they mean that God acted in such a way as to be able to exercise as many of his attributes as possible. God's goodness, as they understood it, required him to required him to exercise both his merciful forgiveness of sinners, which he does by giving them saving grace and welcoming them into heaven, but also by leaving people in sin and exercising his attribute of hostility to and punishment toward sin, which he exercises by punishing people eternally in hell. The Calvinists I was discussing with denied that they were theological voluntarists. God is seeking glory in this sense is, on their view, satisfying an objectively true standard of ethical conduct. Nor would I make the case that Calvinists aren't Christians.

I still think that this leaves us with too big of a disconnect between goodness as we understand in human relationships and goodness as practiced by God. But making that case as someone who believes in an objective moral standard is difficult enough. Making such a case if you are an ethical subjectivist strikes me as being just plain impossible.

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