evil

Problem of Evil and the Moral Argument

by Leave a Comment

The Problem of Evil is intended to show that God does not exist, but interestingly enough one of the premises it rests on--indeed, the most surprising one--can be used to prove the exact opposite: the premise that "Evil exists." How can the existence of evil show God exists? Is there a way to avoid this result?

NOTES

The Moral Argument for the Existence of God

  1. If evil exists, then an objective, obligatory standard of being exists
    • A1: analytic truth
  2. If it is obligatory, it was designed by an intelligent agent
    • A1: we are not obliged to standards from non-persons
    • A2: the concept of being wrong assumes the standard was an intentional creation
  3. If it is obligatory and designed by an intelligent agent, that intelligent agent was a creator that endued the obligation
    • A1: avoids the externalist-only regress (and the internalist-only lack of motivation)
  4. So, if evil exists, an intelligent creator exists
  5. Evil exists
    • A1: claimed in the Problem of Evil
      • O1: give up the claim from the Problem of Evil
        • R1: special pleading
      • O2: "If God existed, then this would have been evil."
        • R1: impossible counterfactual
  6. So, an intelligent creator (God) exists
  • O1: entails that atheists can't be moral or that atheists can't have an ethical system
    • R1: this is an argument about what makes the moral system true, not what needs to be believed to be moral or have an ethical system

Further Reading

My version of this argument is similar to that found in Robert Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods, though I think an amalgam of DCT and Aristotelian natures is the most convincing grounding of morality.