On Necessary Gratuitous Evils
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24204/ejpr.v12i3.3019Keywords:
evil, gratuitous, necessary, gratuitous evil, problem of evil, necessity of evilAbstract
The standard position on moral perfection and gratuitous evil makes the prevention of gratuitous evil a necessary condition on moral perfection. I argue that, on any analysis of gratuitous evil we choose, the standard position on moral perfection and gratuitous evil is false. It is metaphysically impossible to prevent every gratuitously evil state of affairs in every possible world. No matter what God does—no matter how many gratuitously evil states of affairs God prevents—it is necessarily true that God coexists with gratuitous evil in some world or other. Since gratuitous evil cannot be eliminated from metaphysical space, the existence of gratuitous evil presents no objection to essentially omnipotent, essentially omniscient, essentially morally perfect, and necessarily existing beings.References
Almeida, Michael. 2012. Freedom, God, and Worlds. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Cantor, Georg. 1955. Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers. Mineloa: Dover Publications.
Chrzan, Keith. 1994. “Necessary Gratuitous Evil: An Oxymoron Revisited.” Faith and Philosophy 11, no. 1: 134–37. doi:10.5840/faithphil199411126.
Dauben, Joseph. 1979. Georg Cantor: His Mathematics and Philosophy of the Infinite. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Davison, Scott. On the Intrinsic Value of Everything. New York: Continuum Publishing Group, n.d.
Divers, John. 2007. “The Modal Metaphysics of Alvin Plantinga.” In Alvin Plantinga, edited by Deane-Peter Baker, 71–92. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Hasker, William. 1992. “The Necessity of Gratuitous Evil.” Faith and Philosophy 9, no. 1: 23–44. doi:10.5840/faithphil1992911.
—. 2010. “Defining ‘Gratuitous Evil’: A Response to Alan R. Rhoda.” Religious Studies 46, no. 3: 303–9. doi:10.1017/S0034412509990497.
Hewitt, H., ed. 1991. “Reply.” In Problems in the Philosophy of Religion: Critical Studies of the Work of John Hick. London: MacMillan.
Hick, John. 1978. Evil and the God of Love. 2nd ed. London: MacMillan.
— . 2008. “C.S. Lewis on the Necessity of Gratuitous Evil.” In C. S. Lewis as Philosopher: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, edited by Baggett, D., G. Habermas, and J. Walls, 175–94. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press.
— . 2015. “Evil and Soul-Making.” In Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, edited by Michael Rea and Louis Pojman, 7th ed., 319–24. Stamford: Cenage.
Howard-Snyder, Daniel, and Frances Howard-Snyder. 1999. “Is God Compatible with Gratuitous Evil?” American Philosophical Quarterly 36, no. 2: 115–30. doi:10.2307/20009958.
Inwagen, Peter van. 1988. “The Magnitude, Duration, and Distribution of Evil: A Theodicy.” Philosophical Topics 16, no. 2: 161–87. doi:philtopics198816218.
— . 1991. God, Knowledge, and Mystery: Essays in Philosophical Theology. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press.
— . 1991. “The Problem of Air, the Problem of Evil, the Problem of Silence.” Philosophical Perspectives no. 5: 135–65. doi:10.2307/2214093.
Johnston, Mark. 2019. “Why Did the One Not Remain Within Itself?” In Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion, edited by Lara Buchak and Dean Zimmerman, 9: 106–64. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Kraay, Klaas. 2016. “God and Gratuitous Evil Part I.” Philosophy Compass 11, no. 12: 905–12. doi:10.1111/phc3.12389.
Leftow, Brian. 2014. God and Necessity. Oxford Univ. Press.
Mackie, John. 1955. “Evil and Omnipotence.” Mind LXIV, no. 254: 200–212. doi:10.1093/mind/lxiv.254.200.
Peterson, Michael. 1981. “The Inductive Problem of Evil.” Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation 33: 82–87.
— . 1982. Evil and the Christian God. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.
Plantinga, Alvin. 1977. God, Freedom, and Evil. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing.
Rhoda, Alan R. 2010. “Gratuitous Evil and Divine Providence.” Religious Studies 46, no. 3: 281–302. doi:10.1017/S0034412509990503.
Rowe, William. 1979. “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism.” American Philosophical Quarterly 16, no. 4: 335–41. doi:10.2307/20009775.
Smith, Quentin. 2003. “Moral Realism and Infinite Space-Time Imply Moral Nihilism.” In Dyke, Heather, ed. Time and Ethics: Essays at the Intersection, 43–54. Dordrecht-Holland: Kluwer Academic Press.
Swinburne, Richard. 1996. Is There a God? Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Wykstra, Stephen. 1984. “The Humean Obstacle to Evidential Arguments from Suffering: On Avoiding the Evils of ‘Appearance.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 16, no. 2: 73–93. doi:10.1007/bf00136567.
Yandell, Keith. 1989. “Gratuitous Evil and Divine Existence.” Religious Studies 25, no. 1: 15–30. doi:10.1017/s0034412500019697.
