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2 results

  • Chapter 14 - Toward a Reactive Attitudes Theodicy

  • Edited by Peter Furlong, Valencia College, Florida, Leigh Vicens, Augustana University
  • Book:
    Theological Determinism
    Published online:
    30 September 2022
    Print publication:
    22 September 2022, pp 231-250

  • Summary

    According to the argument from gratuitous evil, if God were to exist, then gratuitous evil wouldn’t; but gratuitous evil does exist, so God doesn’t. We can evaluate different views of divine providence with respect to the resources they are able to bring to bear when encountering this argument. By these lights, theological determinism is often seen as especially problematic: the determinist is seen as having an impoverished set of resources to draw from in her attempts to respond to the argument from gratuitous evil. In particular, there is an important resource – an appeal to free will – that many have claimed is unavailable to the determinist. I argue that the determinist does not in fact suffer from this particular resource deficit. I do so by examining some recent work on determinist responses to the problem of evil, analyzing some of the ways in which they fall short, and proposing a new response that is informed by those shortcomings. This new response is built on an appeal to the reactive attitudes.

  • God, Tragic Dilemmas, and the Problem of Gratuitous Evil

  • Arash Naraghi
  • Journal:
    Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie / Volume 61 / Issue 2 / August 2022
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    24 January 2022, pp. 311-324
    • Article
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  • Many philosophers have argued that the existence of gratuitous evil is the most serious objection against the existence of an all-perfect God. I argue that the idea of a moral dilemma (or, more accurately, a tragic dilemma) may either (1) provide a moral justification for God to permit the existence of gratuitous evil, or (2) offer a theodicy of divine tragedy to explain why evils in the world are not necessarily gratuitous, or if they are, why they cannot provide a piece of decisive evidence to reject the existence of an all-perfect God.