Peter Van Inwagen on the Problem of Evil

Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian

Philosophers Philosophers

Volume 25 Issue 4 Article 5

10-1-2008

Peter Van Inwagen on the Problem of Evil Peter Van Inwagen on the Problem of Evil

William L. Rowe

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Recommended Citation Recommended Citation

Rowe, William L. (2008) "Peter Van Inwagen on the Problem of Evil,"

Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the

Society of Christian Philosophers

: Vol. 25 : Iss. 4 , Article 5.

DOI: 10.5840/faithphil200825443

Available at: https://place.asburyseminary.edu/faithandphilosophy/vol25/iss4/5

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PETER VAN INWAGEN ON THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

William L. Rowe

In his book The Problem of Evil, Van Inwagen aims to establish that the prob

lem of evil is a failure. My article considers his response to the evidential

problem of evil. His response relies on a fundamental assumption: "Every

possible world God could have actualized contains patterns of suffering mor

ally equivalent to those of the actual world, or else is massively irregular."

While it may not be unreasonable to suggest that it is logically possible that an

omnipotent, omniscient being is unable to actualize a better world, a world

with somewhat less, prolonged animal suffering, this hardly amounts to an

adequate response to the evidential problem of evil, an argument that endeav

ors to establish that it is more likely than not that an omniscient, omnipotent

being could have created such a world.

In his Gifford Lectures, delivered at the University of St Andrews in 2003,

van Inwagen presents a comprehensive examination of the problem of

evil, both the so-called logical problem of evil and the evidential problem

of evil.1 His aim is to show that "the argument from evil is a failure."

Putting aside the logical problem of evil, in this essay I will examine van

Inwagen's discussion of the evidential problem of evil in Lecture 6: "The

Local Argument from Evil," and Lecture 7: "The Suffering of Beasts." By

'a beast,' van Inwagen presumably means any animal other than a human

being. I am assuming here that a human being is correctly characterized

as a rational animal. With that assumption in mind, in this essay I will

take any non-human animal—a fawn or a dog (even a faithful, seeing-eye

dog)—to be one of van Inwagen's beasts. My aim is to critically evaluate

van Inwagen's argument in support of his claim that the horrendous evils

in our world provide no good reason to doubt that there is an omnipotent,

omniscient, perfectly good being who created the world. The evils occur

ring on our planet—the part of the world we are acquainted with—include

not only the sufferings that human beings undergo but also the sufferings

that non-human animals (beasts) undergo.

One further back-ground point should be mentioned before discussing

van Inwagen's response to the evidential problem of evil. Christian theists

tell us that God is a god of love. From my early days as a Christian, I recall

hearing ministers and evangelists placing great emphasis on the love of

God for his creatures. And this love, we were told, remains in force even

when humans turn away from God and choose the path of sin—for "God

hates the sin, but loves the sinner." Moreover, he cares for those who suf

fer. Indeed, he cares for all his creatures, not just human beings. I also recall

that when I was a young lad I saw a movie in which a Christian family had

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Vol. 25 No. 4 October 2008

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a dog they dearly loved. Toward the end of the film, the members of the

family, as well as their dog, died. The final scene pictured the family re

uniting upon entering heaven, and being overjoyed on hearing the familiar

sound of their beloved dog, barking and wagging his tail as he rushed to

meet them. Such stories, of course, have little, if anything, to do with the

issue at hand, except to remind us that human beings are capable of form

ing attachments to non-human animals that are both profound and deep.

I am one of those human beings. Over the years I have loved five different

dogs, and mourned the death of four of them—the fifth is still alive and my

constant companion. Undoubtedly, the God of traditional theism, if he ex

ists, is aware that his human creatures form strong, lasting attachments not

only to other humans, but to some of van Inwagen's beasts as well, attach

ments that for dogs, as well as humans, are often both deep and lasting.

In his discussion of the evidential argument from evil, van Inwagen

says that the amount of evil in the world is not the central difficulty. I think

he is right about this point. If each particular evil were in itself bad, but not

too bad, then even should the total amount of evil in the world be enor

mous, we would not be faced by the central issue raised by the evidential

argument from evil. For it is horrendous evils that are the focus of the

evidential argument from evil. Many such evils appear to be unnecessary

for any outweighing good and would be easily preventable by an omnipo

tent, omniscient being, provided such a being both exists and cares about

the welfare of the sentient beings he has brought into existence. As van

Inwagen notes:

There are many horrors, vastly many, from which no discernible

good results—and certainly no good, discernible or not, that an om

nipotent being couldn't have achieved without the horror; in fact

without any suffering at all.2

He provides an example of such a horror—a young woman whose arms

were chopped off at the elbows by a man with an ax, is raped, and left to

die. Although she undergoes enormous suffering, she survives and must

live the rest of her life "without arms and with the memory of what she

had been forced to endure."3 How does van Inwagen respond to such ex

amples of evil, examples that leave one wondering why an omnipotent,

omniscient, perfectly good being would permit them to occur in such

abundance? He first sets forth an argument for the non-existence of God

based on this particular horrendous evil, an argument he describes as

"modeled" on the central argument of my essay, "The Problem of Evil

and Some Varieties of Atheism." Referring to events in the example as 'the

Mutilation,' van Inwagen's argument proceeds as follows:

(1) If the Mutilation had not occurred, if it had been, so to speak,

simply left out of the world, the world would be no worse than it

is. (It would seem, in fact, that the world would be significantly

better if the Mutilation had been left out of it, but my argument

does not require that premise.)

(2) The Mutilation in fact occurred (and was a horror).

PETER VAN INWAGEN ON THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

427

(3) If a morally perfect creator could have left a certain horror out of

the world he created, and the world would have been no worse

had that horror been left out of it than it would have been if it

had included that horror, then the morally perfect creator would

have left the horror out of the world he created—or at any rate

he would have left it out if he had been able to.

(4) If an omnipotent being created the world, he was able to leave

the Mutilation out of the world (and was able to do so in a way

that would have left the world otherwise much as it is).

There is, therefore, no omnipotent and morally perfect creator.4

As van Inwagen notes, some theists (skeptical theists) respond to my ar

gument concerning the fawn's five days of terrible suffering, due to be

ing severely burned while trapped in a forest fire caused by lightning, by

claiming that, for all we know, had an omnipotent being prevented the

fawn's being trapped and severely burned, or prevented one day of its

five days of terrible suffering, he would have had to forfeit some greater

good or permit the occurrence of some other evil just as bad or worse. Van

Inwagen does not respond to the Mutilation in this way, indicating that

he regards premise 1 of the mutilation argument as "fairly plausible." In

opposition to the skeptical theist's response, van Inwagen tells us that in

his view it is even more plausible, "very plausible indeed, to suppose the

following existential generalization of (1) is true":

There has been, in the history of the world, at least one horror such

that, if it had not existed, if it had been, so to speak, simply left out of

the world, the world would be no worse than it is.5

One might take van Inwagen's existential generalization as suggesting

that had God prevented this terrible evil from occurring, the world may

well have been no worse than it is. But, after reflection,6 I have concluded

that he means to say that the world would have been better had the mu

tilation been prevented. Indeed, when he first presents premise (1) of his

argument he adds the following to that premise:

(It would seem, in fact, that the world would be significantly better

if the Mutilation had been left out of it, but my argument doesn't

require that premise.)7

Given that God is perfectly good, as well as omnipotent and omniscient,

one might infer that van Inwagen would accept, or at least not object to,

this slightly altered version of the premise I use in "The Problem of Evil

and Some Varieties of Atheism":

An omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the

occurrence of any intense suffering he foresees as about to occur un

less he could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or

permitting some evil equally bad or worse.8

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Faith and Philosophy

But since the weaker premise he employs is sufficient for his argument, he

has no need to use a premise stronger than it. So, it seems right to infer that

he also holds that there has been, in the history of the world, at least one

horror such that, if it had not existed, if it had been, so to speak, simply left

out of the world, it is likely that the world would be less bad (i.e., better)

than it is.9 For if it should be true that were God to have prevented one

horrendous evil, or many horrendous evils, he knew that all such efforts

on his part would be in vain, that the world would be just as bad (i.e., no

better) were he to have prevented those evils as it would be were he to

permit them, it may well make no sense for God to make the effort.

Before proceeding further, it must be noted that in van Inwagen's view

God is like us, a temporal being. As opposed to the traditional (standard)

view that God is eternal, outside of time, and thus not limited in knowl

edge of the distant future by existing only in the always changing present,

van Inwagen holds that God's knowledge of the future free acts of crea

tures is limited by the fact that the future has not yet occurred, a point that

necessitates a different understanding of the traditional conception of the

doctrine of divine omniscience. He also holds that "the existence of a being

who knows the future is incompatible with free will."10 This doesn't mean,

of course, that when observing the man raising the ax while chasing the

woman God doesn't know that unless he intervenes the woman will very

likely be severely injured if not killed. For God will be able to anticipate

what that supposedly free creature with the ax is intent on doing. And

in the case of the fawn's five days of terrible suffering, God would surely

know that after all that suffering only death will come, and so he would

know that it would be a merciful act on his part to help the fawn die on the

first day, rather than leaving it to suffer terribly for four more days.11 So,

there is good reason for van Inwagen to see the need of responding to the

argument from evil. What then is his response? It comes, if it comes at all,

in Lecture 4 (The Global Argument from Evil) and Lecture 5 (The Global

Argument from Evil Continued).

It is important to note a view that emerges in van Inwagen's book, a

view that suggests a somewhat different understanding of the problem of

evil. I will call it, the "playthings of chance" explanation for the much of

the evil that occurs in the world. On this explanation, God becomes impa

tient with humans for their failure to come to know, love, and serve him;

and sees the need to enlighten them. As van Inwagen puts it:

They must know what it means to be separated from him. And what

it means to be separated from God is to live in a world of horrors.

If God simply "canceled" all the horrors of this world by an endless

series of miracles, he would thereby frustrate his own plan of recon

ciliation. If he did that we would be content with our lot and should

see no reason to cooperate with him.12

Perhaps realizing that this makes God sound a bit like Al Capone, van

Inwagen adds:

But God does shield us from much evil, from a great proportion of

the sufferings that would be a natural consequence of our rebellion.

PETER VAN INWAGEN ON THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

429

If he did not, all human history would be at least this bad: every hu

man society would be on the moral level of Nazi Germany.13

(To make a claim like this presupposes that if the world were to exist with

out God there would be no such thing as morality, or at least that humans

would be incapable of discovering or developing a system of morality.

What we do know is that as humans have evolved they have developed

(or discovered) a system of morality. And we also know that humans are

able to act morally, even though they all too often fail to do so. What, in my

judgment, we don't know is whether there is such a being as God.)

We've noted the skeptical theist's appeal to human ignorance of the

goods that God will know as a justification for God's permission of the

fawn's five days of terrible suffering: the suggestion that perhaps there is

some greater good that God (even though omnipotent) is unable to realize

should he prevent even one day of the fawn's five days of terrible suffer

ing. And, undoubtedly, skeptical theists will respond in a similar way to

the van Inwagen's argument from evil based on the molestation. They will

reject the first premise of his argument:

If the Mutilation had not occurred, if it had been, so to speak, sim

ply left out of the world, the world would be no worse than it is. (It

would seem, in fact, that the world would be significantly better if

the Mutilation had been left out of it, but my argument does not re

quire that premise.)14

For they will say that for all we know, had God prevented the man from

chopping off her arm and raping her, God, even though omnipotent,

would have had to forfeit some greater good or permit some other evil

just as bad or worse. As implausible as this claim may seem to an agnostic,

one must allow that it is a logical possibility. But since many false claims

are logically possible, I suspect that van Inwagen's aim is to provide a

somewhat stronger response, a response that will be something more than

a logical possibility, a response that will not only provide a way for the

committed believer to retain her belief, but will seem reasonable, if not

persuasive, to an agnostic.

When I wrote about the fawn's suffering,15 I did so on the assumption

that theists do not confine the problem of evil just to what befalls human

beings who are thought to possess free will, but see the problem as ex

tending to the sufferings of animals as well. If so, it does seem reasonable

to think that had the fawn's five days of suffering been prevented, or if not

prevented then mercifully shortened to four or less days, the world would

in some very small degree be better than it is. In chapter 7, "The Suffer

ing of Beasts," van Inwagen apparently denies what seems to me, and to

many others, to be "a reasonable belief."

I will now tell a story, a story that, I maintain, is true for all anyone

knows, a story according to which God allows beasts to suffer (and

in which the extent of their suffering and the ways in which they suf

fer are the actual extent and the actual ways). The story comprises

the following four propositions:

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Faith and Philosophy

(1) Every world God could have made that contains higher-level

sentient creatures either contains patterns of suffering moral

ly equivalent to those of the actual world, or else is massively

irregular.

(2) Some important intrinsic or extrinsic good depends on the ex

istence of higher-level sentient creatures; this good is of suf

ficient magnitude that it outweighs the patterns of suffering

found in the actual world.

(3) Being massively irregular is a defect in a world, a defect at

least as great as the defect of containing patterns of suffering

morally equivalent to those found in the actual world.

(4) The world—the cosmos, the physical universe—has been cre

ated by God.16

When van Inwagen moved from his discussion of the global problem of

evil to the local argument from evil, I thought, on first reading, that in tak

ing up the case of the fawn's suffering he was shifting his attention from

so-called logical arguments from evil to what are often described as evi

dential arguments from evil: arguments that aim at establishing not that

God's existence is impossible, but only that God's existence is unlikely. But

the more one reflects on the argument just stated, the more it appears to

be a response to a logical argument against the existence of God. Consider

the first premise of his argument. Rephrasing it slightly we have:

Every possible world God could have actualized that contains higher-

level sentient contains patterns of suffering morally equivalent to those of

the actual world, or else is massively irregular.

As we've noted, this pessimistic view of possible worlds an omnipotent

being is able to actualize assumes, without any argument, that miraculous

interventions by God either are impossible or useless. Morever, it suggests

that a common religious practice may be senseless. (When Christians pray

to God to heal them, or to lead some poor soul to Christ, they do so in

the belief that should God do so, the world may well be better than it

otherwise would be.) So, if God exists, among the possible worlds will be

worlds that are otherwise the same except for miraculous interventions by

God. And, as we've noted, along with the actual world in which the fawn

suffers for five days, there is a world in which God intervenes to help the

fawn die swiftly. And should he have done so, it simply isn't true that the

world would then and there be massively irregular.17 If that is the best

that van Inwagen can do, the problem of evil will continue to be a serious

obstacle to the credibility of theism.

Purdue University

NOTES

1. His lectures are published as: Peter van Inwagen, The Problem of Evil

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

PETER VAN INWAGEN ON THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

431

2. The Problem of Evil, p. 97. While I agree with van Inwagen on this point,

in making it he departs from what I take to be the traditional theist's response

to the evidential problem of evil. That response is that God permits such hor

rendous evils to occur only to secure some outweighing good or to prevent

some evil just as bad or worse. In the case of human beings, the good in ques

tion is often taken to be the ability to exercise libertarian freedom of will.

3. The Problem of Evil, p. 97.

4. Ibid., pp. 97-98.

5. Ibid., p. 99. This remark is somewhat puzzling. One would think that

if an evil e is subtracted from a whole consisting of e & g, where g is some

thing good, that the result would be either less bad or better than the whole

consisting of e & g. And a similar point holds if the whole consists of two

independent goods, g1 and g2. If we subtract g1 from this whole and are left

with only g2, one would expect the whole is less good than it was—at least

this appears to be so if the goodness of g1 and the goodness of g2 are respec

tively independent.

6. With the help of my colleague, Michael Bergmann.

7. The Problem of Evil, p. 97.

8. “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism," American Philo

sophical Quarterly 16 (1979).

9. I'm ignoring here the remote possibility that the world contains an in

finite number of van Inwagen horrors.

10. The Problem of Evil, p. 80.

11. It is standard Christian doctrine that God is able to bring about mira

cles such as turning water into wine, and bringing back to life someone who

is dead. But not knowing van Inwagen's view on such matters, I won't suggest

that he thinks God could have performed a miracle and simply restored the

fawn to the form of life it enjoyed before being stuck by the falling tree.

12. The Problem of Evil, p. 88.

13. Ibid., p. 88.

14. Ibid., p. 97.

15. “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism," American Philo

sophical Quarterly 16 (1979).

16. The Problem of Evil, pp. 113-14

17. Of course, were God to intervene constantly, or even very frequently,

the world would be massively irregular. But, if anything, the evidence avail

able to us seems to show that he doesn't intervene at all. (It is possible, of

course, that God does intervene but in ways that are hidden from human

understanding.)