5.2 The No Best of All Possible Worlds' Response
A second way of attempting to show that the argument from evil does
not even get started is by appealing to the proposition that there
is no best of all possible worlds. Here the basic idea is that if
for every possible world, however good, there is a better one, then
the fact that this world could be improved upon does not give one
any reason for concluding that, if there is an omnipotent and
omniscient being, that being cannot be morally perfect.
This response to the argument from evil has been around for awhile.
In recent years, however, it has been strongly advocated by George
Schlesinger (1964, 1977), and, more recently, by Peter Forrest
(1981) though Forrest, curiously, describes the defense as one
that has been neglected, and refers neither to Schlesinger's
well-known discussions, nor to the very strong objections that have
been directed against this response to the argument from
evil.
The natural response to this attempt to refute the argument from
evil was set out very clearly some years ago by Nicholas La Para
(1965) and Haig Khatchadourian (1966) among others, and it has been
developed in an especially forceful and detailed way in an article
by Keith Chrzan (1987). The basic thrust of this response is that
the argument from evil, when properly formulated in a deontological
fashion, does not turn upon the claim that this world could be
improved upon, or upon the claim that it is not the best of all
possible worlds: it turns instead upon the claim that there are
good reasons for holding that the world contains evils, including
instances of suffering, that it would be morally wrong, all things
considered, for an omnipotent and omniscient being to allow. As a
consequence, the proposition that there might be better and better
worlds without limit is simply irrelevant to the argument from
evil.
If one accepts a deontological approach to ethics, this response
seems decisive. Many contemporary philosophers, however, are
consequentialists, and so one needs to consider how the no best of
all possible worlds' response looks if one adopts a
consequentialist approach.
Initially, it might seem that by combining the no best of all
possible worlds' response with consequentialism, one can construct
a successful, total refutation. For assume that the following
things are true:
(1) An action is, by definition, morally right if and only if it
is, among the actions that one could have performed, an action that
produces at least as much value as every alternative action;
(2) An action is morally wrong if and only if it is not morally
right;
(3) If one is an omnipotent and omniscient being, then for any
action whatever, there is always some other action that produces
greater value.
Then it surely follows that it is impossible for an omnipotent and
omniscient being to perform a morally wrong action, and therefore
that the failure of such a being to prevent various evils in this
world cannot be morally wrong.
Consider an omnipotent and omniscient being that creates a world
with zillions of innocent persons, all of whom endure
extraordinarily intense suffering for ever. If (1), (2), and (3)
are right, then such a being does not do anything morally wrong.
But this conclusion, surely, is unacceptable, and so if a given
version of consequentialism entails this conclusion, then that form
of consequentialism must be rejected.
Can consequentialism avoid this conclusion? Can it be formulated in
such a way that it captures the view that allowing very great,
undeserved suffering is morally very different, and much more
serious, than merely refraining from creating as many happy
individuals as possible, or merely refraining from creating
individuals who are not as ecstatically happy as they might be. If
it cannot, then it would seem that the correct conclusion is that
consequentialism is unsound. On the other hand, if consequentialism
can be so formulated that this distinction is captured, then an
appeal to consequentialism, thus formulated, will not enable one to
avoid the crucial objection to the no best of all possible worlds
response to the argument from evil.
5.3 The Appeal to the Ontological Argument
A final way in which one could attempt to show that facts about
evil cannot constitute even prima facie evidence against the
existence of God is by appealing to the ontological argument.
Relatively few philosophers have held, of course, that the
ontological argument is sound. But there have certainly been
notable exceptions such as Anselm and Descartes, and, in the last
century, Charles Hartshorne (1962), Norman Malcolm (1960), and
Alvin Plantinga (1974a, 1974b)
If the ontological argument were sound, it would provide a rather
decisive refutation of the argument from evil. For in showing not
merely that there is an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect
being, but that it is necessary that such a being exists, it would
entail that the proposition that God does not exist must have
probability zero on any body of evidence whatever.
The only question, accordingly, is whether the ontological argument
is sound. The vast majority of present-day philosophers believe
that it is not, and one way of arguing for that view is by
appealing to strengthened Gaunilo-type objections where the idea
behind a strengthened Gaunilo-type objection is that, rather than
paralleling the ontological argument, as Gaunilo did in responding
to Anselm, in order to show that there is an overpopulation problem
for reality in the form of perfect islands, perfect unicorns, and
so on, one can instead construct versions that lead to mutually
incompatible conclusions, such as the conclusion that there is a
perfect solvent, together with the conclusion that there is a
perfectly insoluble substance (Tooley, 1981). But if the logical
form of the ontological argument is such that arguments of
precisely the same form generate contradictions, then the
ontological argument must be unsound.
A more satisfying response to the ontological argument would, of
course, show not merely that the ontological argument is unsound,
but precisely why it is unsound. Such a response, however, requires
a satisfactory account of the truth conditions of modal statements
something that lies outside the scope of this article
6. Attempted Defenses
In this section, we shall consider three attempts to show that it
is reasonable to believe that every evil is such that an omnipotent
and omniscient person would have a morally sufficient reason for
not preventing its existence, even if one is not able to say, in
every case, what that morally sufficient reason might
be.[/quote]
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evil/
