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Evil and Evidence
Matthew A. Benton, John Hawthorne, and Yoaav Isaacs
Introduction
The problem of evil presents the most prominent argument against the existence of God. The basic idea of the problem of evil is simple enough for anyone to understand, but there’s still some philosophical work to be done regarding it—some general work about epistemology and some spe- cific work about God and evil. The problem of evil once took the form of an argument claiming a logical incompatibility between the existence of God and the existence of evil; such arguments are widely agreed to fail.^ But soon after, a variety of evidential or probabilistic arguments arrived. Such arguments typically involve a theological premise, one according to which some sort of evil would be strong evidence against the existence of God,^ and an empirical premise, one according to which that sort of evil obtains. Given these two premises (and sometimes other background assumptions), the arguments conclude that God’s existence is improbable, perhaps highly improbable. A prominent response to such arguments goes by the name “skepti- cal theism.”^ Although authors advocating this approach have taken a As acknowledged by Rowe , fn. , Alston , , and many others, due largely to work by Plantinga (esp. , ch. , and , ch. ; see also , ff.). Unless otherwise noted, we use the term ‘God’ in a fairly loose, minimal way. Our arguments are consistent with, but do not presuppose, the traditional conception of God as omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. For these purposes, take the hypoth- esis that God exists to be the hypothesis that an extremely knowledgeable, extremely powerful, extremely benevolent being exists. This is, as many have pointed out, an inapt label, since one can endorse the skeptical
wide variety of positions, they share two basic epistemological sensibili- ties. First, skeptical theists think that we are not in a position to know or competently judge which features of the world, if any, could justify God in allowing all the evils of the world. Second, skeptical theists think that this impoverished epistemic position substantially diminishes the force of the evidential problem of evil. Skeptical theists offer a variety of addi- tional claims to substantiate their judgment that our impoverished epis- temic position has this effect. This essay will critically scrutinize some of these additional claims. Yet there is a thought—a reasonable thought, a true thought—underlying the core of skeptical theism. This thought can be presented clearly: “I don’t know why God would allow these evils. I certainly wasn’t expecting them. But it’s not crazy to think that God has good reasons for running things this way that I don’t understand. I don’t have a firm grip on the divine mind; God could be up to all sorts of things. So while I agree that it’s strange to think that God would allow these evils, it’s not as strange as some people say.” But skeptical theists often go on to argue that evil provides no evidence against the existence of God.^ They deny that the problem of evil is a problem at all. This is, to our minds, a mistake. Instead, skeptical theists should deny that the problem of evil is as much of a problem as it is often alleged to be.^ Even in the absence of a satisfying theodicy, the problem of
component of skeptical theism without being a theist at all. (^) Wykstra (, , ) originally claimed that evil was not evidence against theism at all (though he retracted this in Wykstra , n. ). Others talk this way as well: e.g. Robert Pargetter () and Keith Yandell (). Peter van Inwagen (, –) says that “While the patterns of suffering we find in the actual world constitute a difficulty for theism... , they do not—owing to the availability of the defense I have outlined—attain the status of evidence ” (–). Daniel Howard-Snyder and Michael Bergmann (, ) argue for the conclusion that “grounds for belief in God aside, evil does not make belief in atheism more reasonable for us than belief in theism”; Richard Otte argues that “theists should not believe evil, or our ignorance of a good reason for God to permit evil, is evidence against religious belief or the existence of God, at all” (, ), and “at best, the theist should refrain from judgement about whether evil is evidence against the existence of God” (, ); see also Dougherty (, §.) for discussion. Like everyone else. Plantinga (, ) seems to strike the right note here. Cf. also Oppy (, ).
In what sort of case will a piece of evidence be evidence for a hypoth- esis? In what sort of case will Pr( H | E ) > Pr( H )? That’s easy—just in case that evidence is likelier to come about if the hypothesis is true than if the hypothesis is false. (That is, just in case Pr( E | H ) > Pr( E | ¬ H ).) These likelihood ratios don’t just tell us whether evidence confirms or disconfirms a hypothesis, the likelihood ratios also tell us how strongly a piece of evidence confirms or disconfirms a hypothesis.^ If the evidence is a little bit likelier given the truth of the hypothesis than it is given the falsity of the hypothesis, then it is weak evidence for the hypothesis. If the evidence is much likelier given the truth of the hypothesis than it is given the falsity of the hypothesis, then it is strong evidence for the hy- pothesis. Specifically, what matters is ratio of the likelihood ratios, their geometric difference—is the evidence twice as likely if the hypothesis is true? Five times as likely? Ten times? A million times? Any two pieces of evidence with the same ratio of likelihood ratios will have the same effect on a hypothesis. If E is . likely if H is true and . likely if H is false and E is . likely if H is true and . likely if H is false, then E and E would have the same confirmatory effect on H. E and E have the same ratio of likelihood ratios——and so they give equally strong confirma- tion. The ratio of likelihood ratios is all that matters. Because “the ratio of likelihood ratios” is a bit of a mouthful, confirmation theorists refer to it as “the Bayes factor”. With respect to H , both E and E have a Bayes fac- tor of . (We’ll discuss the import of the Bayes factor when we consider “levering” evidence in §.)
confirm that hypothesis in another context. This only holds given the assumption that all evidence has nonzero prior probability. We make this assumption in what follows. Of course, given this standard usage a hypothesis can be strongly confirmed without being probably true. In order to determine whether or not a hypothesis is probably true, both likelihood ratios and prior probabilities are needed.
The Problem of Paradise
Many skeptical theists argue that evil isn’t evidence against theism (see fn. above for some offenders). For example, many skeptical theists seem to endorse one or both of these theses:
No Weight: Considerations pertaining to evil do not disconfirm theism at all.
Non-starter: Evil does not even provide a prima facie reason against theism that would need to be countered by skeptical considerations. (cf. Dougherty , §.)
We’d like to start out by explaining why we think that such theses as No Weight and Non-starter are deeply misguided. So, why should one think that evil is evidence against the existence of God? For the same reason anything is evidence against anything—the ratio of likelihood ratios. Intuitively, the probability of there being evil given atheism is higher than the probability of there being evil given the- ism.^ While it’s a bit hard to say what justifies a particular probability assignment, we can say a bit more about our comparative judgments of the probabilities. Consider a world of pleasures with no pain, of goods with no evil— an Eden.^ If the world were like that, then we think that would consti- tute a fairly overwhelming argument for the existence of God.^ In such an Edenic world, atheists would face the problem of paradise.^ But if Contra Stone (, ): “As the appearance of lots of pointless suffering is as prob- able given theism as atheism, given cornea it cannot lower theism’s probability.” Hold fixed as best as possible the amount and kinds of goodness of our world, but remove all the evil and su ffering. Note that our argument does not depend on an Edenic world being fairly over- whelming evidence for the existence of God, but merely on it being some evidence for the existence of God. At least assuming that the existence of atheists is consistent with a world without evil. But one can imagine the epistemic position an atheist would face regardless.
Note that one needn’t have perfectly precise probabilities in mind to follow this sort of reasoning. There is a wide range of reasonable-seeming probability assignments for which our reasoning holds. The authors of this paper are not in total agreement regarding the prior probabilities, but we all think that evil is evidence against the existence of God, and do so for similar reasons. If your uncertainty about prior probabilities ranges over probability assignments for which evil is evidence against the existence of God, then—however you resolve your uncertainty about prior probabilities—evil will be evidence against the existence of God.
The Problem of Evil and the Problem of Ignorance
The world is full of horrors. Pain and death are inflicted in tremendous quantity, and are inflicted both by inexorable nature and by malevolent people. Such horrors could be evidence against the existence of God—this is the problem of evil. We don’t know of any good reason why God should allow there to be some of these horrors. Our ignorance of any such good reason could be evidence against the existence of God—this is the problem of ignorance. The problem of evil and the problem of ignorance are related. The problem of ignorance cannot exist without the problem of evil. If there were no evils there could be no problematic mystery about why there are evils. But the problem of evil can exist without the problem of ignorance. Even if our ignorance about evil is not evidence against the existence of God, the evil itself can still be evidence against the existence of God. We don’t think it’s unreasonable to be underwhelmed by the problem of ignorance. We see no compelling reason to think that God would re- veal to us his reasons for allowing evil. But the weakness of the problem of ignorance does nothing to blunt the problem of evil. Let’s divide pos-
We discuss a more radical version of uncertainty about prior probabilities in §. The problem of ignorance fits squarely into the problem of divine hiddenness. We are thinking of the problem of evil narrowly, so that the problem of divine hiddenness is not subsumed by the problem of evil.
sible worlds into categories: [] theistic worlds with no evils, [] theis- tic worlds with evils, [] atheistic worlds without evils, and [] atheistic worlds with evils:
Theism no evil
Theism evil
Atheism no evil
Atheism evil
[] [] [] []
Now suppose that one were completely certain a priori that one would not know of any good reasons for God to allow evils. Then the fact that one did not know of any good reasons for God to allow evils would have no evidential significance—it wouldn’t matter at all. In such a case the exis- tence of evils for which one knows of no good reason would not provide any evidence to think that the actual world is in category [] rather than in category []. Instead, the existence of evils for which one knows of no good reason would just confirm the worlds in categories [] and [] at the expense of the worlds in categories [] and [], which would be falsified. It is often presupposed that the problem of evil depends upon it being the case that if there were a God who allowed evils to exist it would be very likely that God’s reasons for allowing those evils would be discernible. But this is not so. The problem of evil can proceed without any dependence whatsoever on that sort of expectation. Since we know that there are evils, we know that the worlds in categories [] and [] are falsified:
Theism no evil
Theism evil
Atheism no evil
Atheism evil
[] [] [] []
evidence against Christianity, evil is evidence for Christianity.^ Chris- tianity entails the existence of evil, so the discovery of evil must confirm Christianity. It may seem strange that the horrors that disconfirm theism confirm Christianity, but it shouldn’t. Consider the horror that an inno- cent man was unjustly crucified. Such a horror is bad news for theism, but good news^ for Christianity. Of course, these formal considerations don’t entail that evil isn’t a problem for Christianity. These formal considerations merely entail that the existence of evil isn’t an empirical problem for Christianity. This doesn’t mean that Christianity is off the hook, it just means that what- ever problems the existence of evil poses for Christianity must be found in its prior probability .^ Observing a friend smiling does not disconfirm the hypothesis that the friend is miserable and smiling. Observing a friend smiling confirms the hypothesis that the friend is miserable and smiling. But it’s generally unreasonable to think that smiling people are miserable because the prior probability that someone is smiling and miserable tends to be hugely less than the prior probability that someone is smiling and happy. If it is strange (and it is) that Christian ideology has both a lov- ing, sovereign God and unspeakably horrific suffering, that strangeness translates into Christianity having a lower prior probability than it would otherwise have. We now turn to some specific discussions by skeptical theists. Cf. Rowe’s (, –) point about the differential effect of evil on the likelihood of “expanded standard theism” compared with “restricted standard theism.”
We use the term advisedly. This doesn’t mean that there can be no empirical problem for Christianity (or other religious traditions) posed by specific evils. There are evils that are not entailed by Chris- tianity, and thus that might well be evidence against Christianity; whether they are would depend on one’s prior probabilities. Calculations of Christianity’s prior probability are problematic, as Christianity’s specificity also makes it less likely a priori. It’s hugely less probable that God would incarnate as a man named Jesus than that God would incarnate as a man, but there’s nothing particularly bad about the name “Jesus” so it’s not quite right to hold its atten- dant improbability against Christianity. If one is methodical one can deal with these issues, but it’s easy enough to make mistakes that we recommend painting in somewhat broad strokes.
Seemings and CORNEA
Early work on the evidential problem centered around epistemic seemings or appearances (Rowe , §; Wykstra ; more recently Matheson and Tucker ). The evidence brought to bear against the exis- tence of God was not evils, but rather what we think about how the evils appear to us. This is, to our minds, a mistake. We are moved by someone crying out, “How could a good God allow such suffering as mine?” We are less moved by someone crying out, “How could a good God allow such epistemic states as mine?” Rowe’s (, , ) work on the problem of evil famously considers a fawn painfully dying in a forest fire, and his most succinct version of the argument is this:
(P): No good we know of justifies God in permitting [the fawn’s suffering]. Therefore, it is probable that (¬ G): There is no God. (, )
Here is a popular way to characterize Rowe’s argument, where () and () serve to unpack the above (P):
() We can, try as we may, see no God-justifying good served by the fawn’s suffering.
() Hence, it appears that there is no such God-justifying good served by the fawn’s suffering.
() So: Probably , there is no God-justifying good served by this suffer- ing.
Wykstra & Perrine , ; cf. Wykstra , .
. CORNEA Holding Experiences Fixed
cornea doesn’t work as advertised when it holds experiences fixed. We don’t think that cornea is meant to hold experiences fixed. But when peo- ple consider worlds like ours in which God exists and has reasons for al- lowing the evils we see, this is precisely what they do. We thought it would be illustrative to show how disastrous that sort of reasoning is. Consider the following story of Tom and Susan. Tom and Susan are co-owners of a small business. They get along passably well, and not much about them is of note except for the fact that Tom, who keeps the accounting books, has been embezzling money. One day, Susan confronts Tom, shouting, “You jerk! You’ve been stealing from the company!” and proceeds to trash the office by throwing things across the room. Now Tom, being philosophically minded, begins to consider the possibility that Susan’s reasons for doing this relate to his embezzling their business’ funds. (It does seem like a plausible hypothesis.) Tom reasons as follows:
Tom’s Reasoning:
() I can, try as I may, see no non-embezzling reason why Susan is trashing the office.
() Hence, it appears that there is no such non-embezzling reason why Susan is trashing the office.
() So: Probably , there is no non-embezzling reason behind Susan’s trashing the office.
But Tom is well-versed in the literature on skeptical theism, and thus thinks to himself, “True, I cannot see any non-embezzling reason why Su- san is trashing the office. But does this really support the hypothesis that Susan is doing this because I embezzled our funds? I’m skeptical. My in-
ference to it appearing that there is no non-embezzling reason why Susan is doing this is suspect. After all, in the closest experientially-matching worlds in which Susan has a non-embezzling reason for shouting ‘You jerk! You’ve been stealing from the company!’ and proceeding trash the office, things aren’t likely to be discernibly different. Thus the inference vio- lates counterfactual cornea. Moreover, in all the experientially-matching worlds in which Susan has a non-embezzling reason for shouting that and proceeding to trash the office, things aren’t likely to be discernibly differ- ent. Thus the inference violates probabilistic cornea. I guess I don’t have reason to think that Susan is trashing the office because I embezzled our company’s money. This is quite a surprising result.” Tom’s problem (at least his philosophical problem) is that he’s pay- ing attention to unimportant features of his situation, and construing the epistemic significance of those features in a ludicrous way. The important feature of the situation is that Susan shouted out “You jerk! You’ve been stealing from the company!” and proceeded to trash the office—that’s the evidence. It’s hugely less likely that Susan would shout these particular words and trash the office conditional on her having a non -embezzling rea- son for her actions than conditional upon her having an embezzling reason for her actions. That’s all that matters. There’s no point at all to thinking about whether it appears to Tom that Susan had no non-embezzling reason for shouting that and trashing the office. But it gets worse—since Tom is holding his experience fixed, no propo- sition that goes beyond his experience can satisfy cornea. Suppose Tom’s experience doesn’t entail that p. The closest ¬ p worlds with the same ex- perience as the actual world have the same experience as the actual world. All of the ¬ p worlds with the same experience as the actual world have the same experience as the actual world. If one holds experiences fixed, cornea is a bad principle.
(in a counterfactual sense) if the needle weren’t clean, the situation would likely be discernibly different to the doctor. In most of the closest worlds in which the needle isn’t clean it’s not the case both that the needle looks the way it does and the die lands on —in most of those worlds the die doesn’t land on . Similarly, it passes probabilistic cornea. It’s true that (in a probabilistic sense) if the needle weren’t clean, the situation would likely be discernibly different to the doctor. In most of the worlds in which the nee- dle isn’t clean it’s not the case both that the needle looks the way it does and the die lands on —in most of those worlds the die doesn’t land on . Clearly, it’s bad news for cornea if all it takes to bypass its constraints is an accessible game of Parcheesi.^ And there’s a good case to be made that the game isn’t necessary: Our evidence is typically fine-grained enough that it’s improbable given just about any coarse-grained hypothesis, so cornea will be satisfied no matter what. When cornea allows experiences to vary, those very variations mean that it can’t do the work it was supposed to do. But is there a principle nearby that can do the work that cornea was supposed to do? Is there a principle that can get at what’s wrong with the doctor’s inference that the needle is clean? Sure there is. The needle is just as likely to look the way it does (die or no) whether or not it’s clean, so the way it looks doesn’t give any evidence one way or the other. If we want (for some reason) to trans- late this trivial observation into the language of epistemic appearances, we can tie epistemic appearances directly to likelihoods. Thus we can say that it’s wrong for the doctor to think that the needle appears clean (at least if he means “appears clean” as opposed to “appears unclean”) be- cause the needle was no likelier to look the way it did conditional upon it being clean than conditional upon it being unclean. Of course, in that case the epistemic appearance does no work and only serves to obscure what’s going on in the argument. Having thus tidied up the meaning of (), the remaining problem is that the inference from () to () flagrantly commits As several authors are aware, counterfactual cornea will inherit the problems faced by sensitivity-based accounts of knowledge. We feel this theme is already well- understood, and so we won’t belabor it.
the base-rate fallacy, for it relies only on the likelihoods of the appearance and ignores the base-rate probability of a needle having a virus on it.
Radical Uncertainty About Prior Probabilities
We have argued that evil is evidence against the existence of God. Our arguments are compatible with a moderate degree of uncertainty about the probabilities involved. But our arguments are not compatible with radical uncertainty about the probabilities involved. If one’s uncertainty about the prior probabilities for evil and theism led one to entertain all possible prior probability assignments about them or to entertain none at all, then it would be genuinely unclear what import evil had for theis- tic belief. And many skeptical theists do seem drawn to just this sort of radical uncertainty—but they shouldn’t be. Our view is that this radical uncertainty cannot be sensibly maintained, that it can only be (to borrow a phrase from Samuel Johnson) “the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Skeptical theists are pointedly reserved regarding probabilistic judg- ments concerning evil and theism. Thus van Inwagen says that “we do not know what to say about the probability of S [the amount, kinds, and distribution of suffering] on theism” (, ). Similarly, Howard-Snyder and Bergmann say,
We just aren’t in a position to judge that Pr( P | G & k ) is low, that it is middling, or that it is high. We should shrug our shoulders and admit that we don’t have enough to go on here.^ (, )
Note that although skeptical theists claim not to know what to say about these probabilities, they are not worried that the probabilities might be For example, imagine that clean needles always look pristine and that dirty needles usually look sullied but sometimes look pristine. But suppose also that dropped needles are almost invariably dirty. Then although a needle that looked pristine might appear to be clean, it would not probably be clean. Here G is theism, P is ‘No good we know of justifies God in permitting E and E [putatively gratuitous evils]’, and k is our background knowledge.
Even if our epistemic position regarding God and evil were maximally murky, that murkiness would not dissolve the problem of evil. But we should not judge our epistemic position regarding God and evil to be max- imally murky. We have no obviously sound basis for the prior probabili- ties concerning God and evil, but we have no obviously sound basis for the prior probabilities concerning just about anything else either. In general, we think things through as best we can and believe as seems reasonable to us. We are not entirely comfortable with this blithe approach to episte- mology. But we are convinced that the prior probabilities regarding God and evil pose no problems that are not also posed by the prior probabili- ties regarding cosmology, linguistics, trends in teen dating, the weather, or just about anything else.^ The alternative to our way of thinking is thus not skeptical theism, but total skepticism. At the very least, there is surely no rational basis for maximal skepticism about probabilities concerning God and evil but minimal skepticism about probabilities concerning God and religious experiences, or God and prophetic revelations, or any of the other aspects of philosophical theology about which skeptical theists are less than skeptical.^ The special pleading required to get radical uncer- tainty about the relationship between God and evil, but about nothing else, is untenable.
Two Kinds of “Gratuitousness” (Both Gratuitous) and
Two Kinds of “Pointlessness” (Both Pointless)
Many arguments in the skeptical theism literature concern “gratuitous” or “pointless” evils. The existence of gratuitous or pointless evil is meant to be stronger evidence against the existence of God than the bare existence
This lack of obvious foundations is not limited to matters of probability. Our beliefs about logic also lack an obvious foundation. But this needn’t be worrisome. In general, one doesn’t need to know how one knows something in order to know it. Note also that given standard accounts of vagueness in probability assignments, maximal vagueness regarding the relationship between God and evil will, given evil, require maximal vagueness about God.
of evil. There are numerous notions of gratuitousness and pointlessness, but they may be divided into two basic kinds: one which does not entail that there is no God and one which does entail that there is no God. Nei- ther kind of gratuitousness or pointlessness is of any use, but for different reasons. Definitions of the first kind tend to be variants of the idea that an evil is gratuitous or pointless if it is not necessary for the existence of some greater good or for the non-existence of some greater evil.^ Such gratu- itous or pointless evils are perfectly consistent with the existence of God. Perhaps it’s a good thing for God to give agents libertarian freedom. If those agents were to freely perform evil acts, those evil acts would not be necessary for the good of libertarian freedom. Had those agents performed good acts instead of evil acts the world might well have been strictly bet- ter. Endowing creatures with libertarian freedom risks gratuitous evil, but that risk might well be worth taking. Or perhaps there is no max- imally good world that God could create, but an infinite progression of better and better worlds. Then whatever world God chose to create would gratuitously lack the goodness of worlds better than it. But that sort of gratuitous lack would be completely unavoidable. Of course, the mere fact that gratuitous or pointless evils are consistent with the existence of God doesn’t resolve the problem posed by those evils. It still remains to determine the evidential significance of those evils. But that’s always the case; this ideology of gratuitousness and pointlessness does no real work. Definitions of the second kind tend to be variants of the idea an evil is gratuitous or pointless if it is such that God could not permit it to ex-
There is now a small literature concerning how to understand “gratuitous” evil: see Rowe , Yandell , Draper , for his notion of “biologically gratuitous,” Alston , –, Rhoda , Hasker , Judisch , f., Frances , –, Kraay forthcoming; cf. also Dougherty , §.. A popular variation on this theme defines an evil as gratuitous or pointless if God could have prevented it without thereby preventing some greater good or leading to some greater evil. Definitions of the first kind are not all coextensive, but their differences are irrelevant to our arguments.
