Justified True Belief

(P1) The external problem of evil asserts as a positive metaphysical claim about the world that gratuitous evil (evil for which no morally sufficient justifying reason exists) actually exists, and that this fact either entails (deductive form) or makes probable (inductive form) the non-existence of God. + The external problem of evil is distinct from the internal versions previously discussed. The internal versions ask whether the Christian's commitments are internally consistent or whether they make God's existence improbable from within Christian theism. The external version takes a stronger step: it asserts that gratuitous evil is a feature of the world the Christian is committed to denying, and uses that purported feature against the Christian. For the internal logical and probabilistic versions, see the parallel arguments; for emotional and proof-of-God-from-evil treatments, see the other PoE arguments. (1) The external problem makes a positive metaphysical claim, not merely a probability claim. The probabilistic argument from evil asks the Christian to grant only that, given the evils we observe, God's existence is improbable. The external argument goes further: it claims that gratuitous evil actually exists in the world, as a feature of reality. This is a positive metaphysical thesis the atheist must defend, not a mere epistemic comment about how things look to the Christian. The Christian is committed to the existence of evil (which the doctrines of sin and the fall affirm), but not to the existence of gratuitous evil (which Christian theism flatly denies). (2) The argument comes in deductive and inductive forms. The deductive form is straightforward: if God exists, gratuitous evil does not exist; gratuitous evil exists; therefore God does not exist. The inductive form, due especially to philosopher William Rowe, runs from the apparent gratuity of specific suffering (Rowe's famous example is a fawn dying slowly in a forest fire) to the conclusion that some such suffering is in fact gratuitous, and from there to God's non-existence. The two forms share the burden of establishing that gratuitous evil actually exists; they differ only in whether the link to God's non-existence is logical or probabilistic. (3) Contemporary atheist philosophers have largely abandoned the deductive form. Since the deductive form requires the categorical premise "gratuitous evil exists," which is hard to establish, contemporary atheist philosophers have generally turned to inductive and abductive formulations. Rowe's inductive argument, philosopher Michael Tooley's logical-probability argument (which uses a formal Carnapian framework to argue that the action of permitting the Lisbon earthquake is probably wrong on theism), and philosopher Paul Draper's abductive argument (which compares the probability of the observed pain and pleasure on theism versus the "hypothesis of indifference") are the three main contemporary formulations. Each one ultimately asserts the actual existence of gratuitous evil. (4) The dialectical situation is therefore distinctive. Because the external argument makes a positive claim about the world, the burden falls on the atheist to establish that claim. The Christian theist need not show that the atheist's claim is incoherent (the work of the logical version), nor that the Christian's worldview survives probabilistic scrutiny on its own internal terms (the work of the probabilistic version), but only that the atheist has not established the positive metaphysical thesis that gratuitous evil actually exists. Therefore, the external problem of evil stands or falls on whether the atheist can establish, as a positive claim about the world, that gratuitous evil actually exists.

(P2) To establish that gratuitous evil actually exists, the atheist must move from the appearance of gratuity (some evils we observe seem to have no justifying good) to the reality of gratuity (no justifying good actually exists for them). + (1) The atheist's case rests on apparent gratuity. What the atheist actually has access to is the appearance of gratuity: certain evils strike us as serving no purpose, as being pointless, as having no morally sufficient reason for being permitted by God. The fawn's slow death in a remote forest, an infant's suffering from a genetic disease, the killed-without-reason victims of a natural disaster, all of these seem to have no purpose. The atheist's case for the external problem must move from this appearance to the reality, that is, from "appears gratuitous" to "is gratuitous." (2) Apparent gratuity and actual gratuity are distinct. Consider an analogy that philosopher Stephen Wykstra has developed. Suppose you visit a clinic for an inoculation. The nurse drops the hypodermic needle on the floor, picks it up, looks at it, and says, "There appear to be no bacteria on the needle. Roll up your sleeve!" Wykstra observes the obvious problem: while it does not appear that there are any bacteria on the needle, it is false that it appears that there are no bacteria. Bacteria are too small to see; the cognitive faculties relevant to seeing bacteria are simply absent in unaided visual inspection. The same distinction applies to detecting morally sufficient reasons for permitting evils. (3) The inference requires that we would see the justifying good if it were there. The move from "no justifying good appears to exist" to "no justifying good actually exists" is sound only when we have positive reason to believe that, if a justifying good existed, we would see it. This is the same epistemic principle that underwrites everyday inferences (no elephant appears to be in my refrigerator, so probably none is). The question is whether the principle applies to detecting God's reasons for permitting horrendous evils, which would have to be reasons cognizable by an omniscient mind who orders all of history. (4) Specific contemporary formulations all require this inference. Rowe's inductive argument moves from "no good we know of justifies God in permitting horrendous evils" to "no good justifies God in permitting horrendous evils." Tooley's argument moves from "we know of no rightmaking properties counterbalancing the wrongmaking property of permitting the Lisbon earthquake" to a Carnapian probability assignment that yields the conclusion that permitting the earthquake is more likely wrong than right. Draper's argument moves from the observed distribution of pain and pleasure to a comparison of conditional probabilities on theism and naturalism. In each case, the inference from observed appearance to underlying reality is the critical step. Therefore, the atheist's case for the external problem hinges on this inference from appearance to reality, and stands or falls on whether the inference can be sustained.

(P3) This inference cannot be sustained: detecting actual gratuity requires surveying every possible justifying good across the entire providential ordering of history, an epistemic position only an omniscient mind could occupy. + (1) Finite minds cannot survey the relevant possibilities. The justifying good for permitting a particular evil, if it exists, may lie anywhere in the entire providential ordering of history: it may be temporally distant (centuries removed), spatially distant (in another country), or causally distant (affecting persons the sufferer never meets). Christian theism holds that God orders history through middle knowledge of how every free creature would choose in every possible circumstance, weaving together a vast network of causes whose ultimate ends only an omniscient mind could grasp. To survey every possible justifying good for a given evil requires a god's-eye view that finite minds cannot occupy. (2) Christian providence makes the situation worse for the atheist. On the doctrine of divine middle knowledge, God arranges the circumstances of every free creature with a view to maximizing the number of those who would freely come to salvation and minimizing the number of those who would freely reject him. The morally sufficient reason for permitting a given evil may therefore be its place in this providential ordering, an ordering whose details no finite mind can trace. The atheist who asserts that a particular evil is gratuitous is implicitly claiming knowledge of God's providential plan that no finite creature could have. (3) Specific formulations fail at this point. Rowe's argument fails because the inference from "no good we know of justifies God" to "no good justifies God" requires the very cognitive access we lack. Tooley's argument fails because the Carnapian logical probability he uses to assign equal weight to known and unknown rightmaking properties is itself arbitrary; as the mathematician Peter Walley has shown using a bag-of-marbles analogy, complete ignorance about the distribution of unknown properties licenses no positive probability assignment at all. Draper's argument fails because the comparison with the "hypothesis of indifference" assumes biological organisms could exist on naturalism, which is itself extraordinarily improbable given cosmic fine-tuning. (4) Non-theists recognize similar limits in other contexts. The cognitive limits that block the inference from apparent gratuity to actual gratuity are widely conceded outside the problem of evil. Consequentialist ethics faces the well-known difficulty that we cannot estimate which present actions will produce the greatest happiness across the indefinite future. Historians acknowledge that the long-term consequences of historical events (the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the discovery of penicillin) often exceed any contemporary judgment. The atheist's confident judgment that a particular evil is metaphysically gratuitous is a far stronger claim than analogous judgments non-theists would countenance elsewhere. Therefore, the inference from apparent gratuity to actual gratuity cannot be sustained, and the atheist's positive claim that gratuitous evil exists cannot be established.

(P4) Furthermore, since the theist has independent positive grounds for believing in God (the arguments of natural theology, the historicity of Christ's resurrection, religious experience), and since the atheist concedes that "if God exists, gratuitous evil does not exist," the argument can be reversed by modus tollens to conclude that no gratuitous evil actually exists in the world, despite appearances. + (1) "One man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens." The atheist's deductive argument runs: (i) if God exists, gratuitous evil does not exist; (ii) gratuitous evil exists; (iii) therefore God does not exist. But the theist can run the same conditional in the opposite direction: (i) if God exists, gratuitous evil does not exist; (ii*) God exists; (iii*) therefore gratuitous evil does not exist. Which way the conditional should be run depends on the comparative strength of the warrant for the second premise: is the atheist's case for "gratuitous evil exists" stronger than the theist's case for "God exists," or weaker? The dialectical situation is therefore a comparison of cases. (2) The theist's independent case for God is substantial. The Christian theist has at hand a substantial body of positive evidence for God's existence. This includes the cosmological argument for a necessary first cause; the teleological argument for an intelligent designer of the cosmic fine-tuning; the moral argument for an ultimate moral lawgiver; the ontological argument for a maximally great being; the historical evidence for the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; and the widespread testimony of religious experience. Each of these arguments contributes positive warrant for theism that the atheist must outweigh. (3) Howard-Snyder's diagnosis makes the dialectical point precise. Philosopher Daniel Howard-Snyder, himself a major contributor to the literature on the problem of evil, observes that the problem of evil is a problem only for the theist who finds all of the atheist's premises and inferences compelling and who has, in addition, lousy grounds for believing theism. If one has more compelling grounds for theism, then the problem of evil is not a problem at all; it becomes evidence that what appears gratuitous is not in fact gratuitous. The external problem, in other words, is not a freestanding refutation of theism but a comparative argument whose force depends entirely on the relative strength of independent evidence. (4) The modus tollens move is not ad hoc; it follows the same logic the atheist uses. The modus tollens reversal is not a special pleading move available only to theists. It is the standard logical situation that any conditional admits of running in either direction depending on the comparative warrant for the antecedent and consequent. The atheist who insists that only the modus ponens direction is legitimate is implicitly claiming that the warrant for "gratuitous evil exists" is greater than the warrant for "God exists," and that claim itself requires defense and engagement with the positive case for theism. Therefore, given the independent grounds for theism, the atheist's argument is more naturally read as a theistic argument by modus tollens, concluding that no gratuitous evil exists despite the appearances.

(C) Therefore, the external problem of evil fails to establish the existence of gratuitous evil, and so fails as an argument against God's existence.

William Lane Craig, Systematic Philosophical Theology, Volume IIb: On God: Excursus on Natural Theology, On the Trinity. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2026. William L. Rowe, "The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism," American Philosophical Quarterly 16, no. 4 (1979): 335-341. William L. Rowe, "The Evidential Argument from Evil: A Second Look," in Daniel Howard-Snyder, ed., The Evidential Argument from Evil. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996. Stephen J. Wykstra, "The Humean Obstacle to Evidential Arguments from Suffering: On Avoiding the Evils of 'Appearance,'" International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 16, no. 2 (1984): 73-93. Stephen J. Wykstra, "A Skeptical Theism View," in Chad Meister and James K. Dew, Jr., eds., God and the Problem of Evil: Five Views. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2017. Daniel Howard-Snyder, ed., The Evidential Argument from Evil. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996. Daniel Howard-Snyder, "Introduction," in The Evidential Argument from Evil. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996. Alvin Plantinga and Michael Tooley, Knowledge of God, Great Debates in Philosophy. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008. Peter van Inwagen, "The Argument from Evil," in Peter van Inwagen, ed., Christian Faith and the Problem of Evil. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004. Peter van Inwagen, The Problem of Evil. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Paul Draper, "Pain and Pleasure: An Evidential Problem for Theists," Noûs 23, no. 3 (1989): 331-350. Paul Draper, "The Problem of Evil," in Thomas P. Flint and Michael C. Rea, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Graham Oppy, "The Evidential Problem of Evil," in Charles Taliaferro, Paul Draper, and Philip L. Quinn, eds., A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, 2nd ed., Blackwell Companions to Philosophy. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Rudolf Carnap, Logical Foundations of Probability, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962. Peter Walley, "Inferences from Multinomial Data: Learning About a Bag of Marbles," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B 58, no. 1 (1996): 3-34. John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, God? A Debate Between a Christian and an Atheist. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. See also: • CO / PoE: Intellectual PoE: Logical • CO / PoE: Intellectual PoE: Probabilistic • CO / PoE: Emotional PoE • CO / PoE: Proof of God from Evil

+ Philosopher William Rowe's canonical formulation of the external argument is precisely an inductive argument from the appearance of gratuity. Consider his famous example: a fawn is trapped in a forest fire and dies slowly over days. No human ever observes the fawn; the fawn's death contributes to no soul-making, no character development, no human good. After surveying all the goods we can think of, none seems plausibly to justify God's permitting this suffering. So Rowe's first premise is that we know of no good that justifies God in permitting this kind of evil. The inductive step is then standard: we have looked, we have not found, therefore probably there is nothing to find. This is the same pattern of reasoning that grounds ordinary scientific inference.

1. Rowe's argument requires that we would see the justifying good if it were there. The inductive step from "we know of no justifying good" to "probably no justifying good exists" is what philosopher Stephen Wykstra calls a "noseeum inference," from "no see 'um" to "there ain't 'em." This inference is valid only when our cognitive faculties are competent to detect the thing in question if it were there. In ordinary cases (no elephant in the refrigerator), the inference works because elephants are highly visible if present. In God's case, the relevant goods that might justify permitting horrendous evils may lie anywhere across the providential ordering of history, accessible only to an omniscient mind. The conditions for the noseeum inference therefore fail. 2. Wykstra's bacteria analogy makes the gap concrete. Suppose you visit a clinic for an inoculation. The nurse drops the hypodermic needle, picks it up, and announces: "There appear to be no bacteria on the needle. Roll up your sleeve!" The nurse is right that no bacteria appear to be on the needle, but Wykstra points out the inference is faulty: it is false that it appears that there are no bacteria. Bacteria are simply too small to see without a microscope. Similarly, in a world providentially ordered by an omniscient God, God's morally sufficient reasons for permitting a given evil may simply not be apparent to us. Rowe's argument confuses "we cannot see the reason" with "no reason is there to be seen." 3. The doctrine of divine middle knowledge makes things worse for Rowe. Christian theism on the Molinist view holds that God orders history with comprehensive knowledge of what every free creature would do in every possible circumstance. The morally sufficient reason for a particular evil may consist in its place within an unfathomably complex providential plan ordered toward maximizing the number who freely come to salvation. The fawn's death may matter to a chain of events centuries removed from the forest, involving persons the fawn never affected directly. Rowe's confidence that no such reason exists exceeds anything finite cognition can support. 4. Rowe's own friendly atheism softens his argument's force. Rowe himself, in the same 1979 paper that introduced his argument, distinguished "friendly atheism" (which grants that some theists are rationally justified in believing in God despite the evidence of evil) from "unfriendly atheism" (which denies this). Rowe defended friendly atheism. While not a concession that his argument fails, this position effectively grants that the inductive inference does not bear the weight required to refute theism for those with independent grounds for theistic belief; it supports atheism only as one reasonable position among others. That is a much weaker conclusion than the strong external problem requires.

+ Philosopher Michael Tooley has developed the most rigorous contemporary formulation of the external argument, using a formal Carnapian framework of logical probability. The argument focuses on a specific historical horror: the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, which killed approximately 60,000 people. The action of choosing not to prevent that earthquake has, Tooley argues, a known wrongmaking property (causing 60,000 deaths) with no known counterbalancing rightmaking property. As for unknown properties, there are four possibilities (the action has neither, only a rightmaking, only a wrongmaking, or both). Assuming each is equiprobable, the action comes out wrong in three of the four cases. Therefore the logical probability that the action is morally wrong, given all its properties known and unknown, is greater than 0.5. Therefore no omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect being would have permitted it. Therefore God probably does not exist.

1. The first premise (wrongness is a sum of independent properties) is implausible. Tooley's argument treats the wrongness or rightness of an action as a sum or amalgam of independent right- and wrongmaking properties. But this is an idiosyncratic and counterintuitive way to assess moral worth. Consider the property of choosing not to prevent someone's sticking a knife into another person's chest: that seems like a wrongmaking property. But if we add the information that the agent is a heart surgeon performing surgery, the property no longer seems wrongmaking at all. The moral character of the action is not the sum of independent properties; it is determined by the action as a whole in its context. Tooley's premise misconstrues the very nature of moral evaluation. 2. Whether a permission is wrong is person-relative. Tooley's argument also assumes that the moral status of an action is the same for any agent. But consider: it would be wrong for a mother to choose to permit her child to throw a tantrum in the grocery store; it would not be wrong for a stranger across the aisle to choose not to discipline her child. The question of what is wrong depends crucially on who the agent is and what authority and duties they have. God's permitting an event is not equivalent to a stranger's permitting it. The first premise of Tooley's argument is therefore malformed, ignoring the person-relativity of moral obligations. 3. The crucial probability assignment is arbitrary. The crux of Tooley's argument is premise 16: that in the absence of known counterbalancing rightmaking properties, the logical probability is greater than 0.5 that the unknown properties also fail to counterbalance. This rests on Rudolf Carnap's theory of logical probability, which assigns equal probabilities to mutually exclusive state descriptions in the absence of information. But as the mathematician Peter Walley has shown using a bag-of-marbles illustration, complete ignorance about the contents of the bag does not warrant assigning probability 0.5 to drawing red versus non-red (it could equally warrant 0.5 for blue versus non-blue, and these cannot both be 0.5). Walley's alternative model assigns vacuous probability intervals to states of complete ignorance, which is exactly where Tooley's argument should land. 4. On Divine Command Theory, the Lisbon earthquake has a known rightmaking property. Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga points out that on a Divine Command Theory of ethics (or a Divine Will Theory), an action's being permitted by God is itself a rightmaking property. Since God obviously did not forbid the Lisbon earthquake (it happened), permitting it has the rightmaking property of being permitted by God. Tooley dismisses this on the ground that Divine Command Theory is unjustified, but the dialectical situation is question-begging: the atheist who argues from the apparent absence of rightmaking properties to the conclusion that God does not exist cannot assume from the outset that no theistic ethical theory is in play.

+ Philosopher Paul Draper has offered an abductive version of the external argument that bypasses many traditional objections. Draper compares two hypotheses: theism and what he calls the "hypothesis of indifference," which holds that neither the nature nor the condition of sentient beings on earth is the result of actions performed by benevolent or malevolent non-human persons. He argues that the observed facts about pain and pleasure, including the biological roles of pain in evolutionary history, the suffering of animals across hundreds of millions of years, and the apparently gratuitous distribution of pain in nature, are far more probable on the hypothesis of indifference than on theism. Therefore the pain-and-pleasure evidence constitutes positive evidence against theism, regardless of whether other arguments for theism succeed.

1. Draper's argument depends on three probability estimates, all dubious. Draper's abductive comparison rests on three claims about conditional probability: that theism and naturalism are equally probable on background knowledge alone; that the observed distribution of pain and pleasure is more probable on naturalism than on theism; and that evolution is more probable on naturalism than on theism. Each of these claims requires defense, and none is obviously true. The first is contested by the entire cumulative case for theism; the second runs into the cognitive limitations developed in the main argument; the third runs into the fact (established by the teleological argument) that evolution requires extraordinarily fine-tuned initial conditions that naturalism cannot explain. 2. Biological organisms are virtually impossible on naturalism. This is the most striking problem with Draper's comparison. The hypothesis of indifference, by excluding any benevolent or malevolent agent behind the natural order, must accept the cosmic fine-tuning as a sheer brute fact. But as philosophers John Barrow and Frank Tipler have documented, the development of intelligent life requires a long sequence of independent improbabilities (the formation of the DNA-based genetic code, aerobic respiration, autotrophic photosynthesis, mitochondria, and many others), each of which is so improbable that, on naturalism, the sun would burn out before they could occur. On naturalism we would expect a lifeless world. Without sentient life there is no pain and pleasure to be distributed; the very data Draper appeals to require theism to obtain at all. 3. Christian theism does not predict the comfortable distribution Draper assumes. Draper's comparison implicitly assumes that theism predicts a more comfortable distribution of pain and pleasure than we observe, and that the gap between predicted and observed is what makes naturalism more probable. But as philosopher Daniel Howard-Snyder has argued, theism does not straightforwardly predict any particular distribution of pain and pleasure. Christian theism in particular, with its doctrines of human rebellion, soul-making, and the role of suffering in producing the knowledge of God, makes the observed distribution far less surprising than Draper's bare-theism comparison assumes. 4. The hypothesis of indifference is not a positive alternative. Even if Draper's comparison succeeded as far as it goes, it would not establish naturalism. The hypothesis of indifference is the negative thesis that no benevolent or malevolent agent stands behind the natural order; it leaves open whether any agent at all does. The cosmological, teleological, moral, and ontological arguments for a personal and good Creator are positive arguments that rule out indifference on grounds independent of the pain-and-pleasure data. Draper's abductive argument compares theism against an underdetermined alternative; the underdetermined alternative loses when the positive case for theism is included.

+ Even Christian philosopher Peter van Inwagen, a leading theist in the contemporary debate, has conceded that there must exist a certain amount of gratuitous evil in any world capable of containing the goods God seeks. On van Inwagen's view, while God could eliminate this or that specific evil without decreasing the goodness of the world, he cannot eliminate all gratuitous-looking evil without making the world less good. The Christian must therefore concede that gratuitous evil exists. But this is precisely the second premise of the atheist's deductive argument: gratuitous evil exists. With that premise conceded by a leading Christian philosopher, the atheist's argument goes through, and God does not exist.

1. Van Inwagen's "gratuitous" is not the atheist's "gratuitous." The key move here is to notice that van Inwagen and the atheist are using "gratuitous" in different senses. The atheist means: evil for which no morally sufficient reason of any kind exists. Van Inwagen means: evil that cannot be individually justified by a specific outweighing good, but whose existence is required for the overall goodness of the world. On van Inwagen's view, every evil has a morally sufficient reason (the goodness of the overall world that requires some quantity of such evils); the evil simply does not have a particular good that it serves. The atheist's deductive argument requires the stronger claim, which van Inwagen has not conceded. 2. Van Inwagen's account is non-Molinist; the Christian theist has further resources. Van Inwagen does not accept the doctrine of divine middle knowledge (the Molinist account of providence). On a Molinist view, God knows exactly what every free creature would do in every possible circumstance and orders history with meticulous providence. On Molinism, evils that appear gratuitous (even in van Inwagen's looser sense) may all serve specific purposes within God's providential plan, such as maximizing the number who freely come to salvation. The Christian theist need not accept van Inwagen's concession; alternative theistic frameworks (such as Molinism) avoid the concession entirely. 3. Even on van Inwagen's view, the atheist's premise fails. Premise (12) of the atheist's argument is "if God exists, gratuitous evil does not exist." On van Inwagen's view, this premise is false: God could exist and gratuitous-in-van-Inwagen's-sense evil could also exist. So van Inwagen's concession does not give the atheist (12), but actually undermines it. The atheist must either reformulate (12) to use van Inwagen's weaker sense (in which case it ceases to be obvious) or insist on the stronger sense (in which case van Inwagen has not conceded it). 4. Concession by one theist does not establish the metaphysical claim. Even if van Inwagen had conceded the atheist's claim in the strong sense, the question would still be whether the concession is correct. The truth of "gratuitous evil exists" is a question of fact, not a question of theological consensus. The Molinist Christian theist has principled reasons to deny van Inwagen's concession. The atheist who appeals to one theist's concession against another theist's view has not established the metaphysical thesis; they have only documented an internal Christian debate.

+ The fourth premise's modus tollens reversal commits a serious logical error: it assumes the very conclusion in dispute. The atheist's argument says: if God exists, no gratuitous evil exists; gratuitous evil does exist (here is the Lisbon earthquake); therefore God does not exist. The theist responds: if God exists, no gratuitous evil exists; God exists (here is the cosmological argument); therefore no gratuitous evil exists. But the theist's second premise (God exists) is precisely what the atheist disputes. Using "God exists" to defeat an argument against God's existence is question-begging, and the modus tollens move is therefore illegitimate.

1. Modus tollens reversal is a standard logical move, not question-begging. The objection misunderstands the dialectical structure. The atheist's argument is itself an attempt to defeat the theist's positive case for God's existence by establishing a counter-premise (gratuitous evil exists). The theist's modus tollens response is the symmetric reply: the theist's case for God's existence defeats the atheist's premise (gratuitous evil exists), via the conditional both parties accept. Neither argument begs the question, both deploy the same conditional in opposite directions. The question is which direction is supported by the comparatively stronger warrant for the second premise. 2. The atheist's argument equally presupposes its conclusion if we apply the same standard. If "running an argument with a contested second premise" counts as begging the question, then the atheist's argument equally begs the question. The atheist's second premise ("gratuitous evil exists") is precisely what the theist disputes. By the objection's own standard, the atheist's argument is also illegitimate. Neither side can use a contested premise to settle the dispute. What both sides must do is examine the comparative warrant for each second premise, which is precisely what the modus tollens move invites. 3. The dialectical situation favors the theist with independent grounds. The theist's modus tollens move is most powerful when the theist has substantial independent grounds for the premise "God exists." Such grounds are available: the cosmological, teleological, moral, and ontological arguments; the historicity of Christ's resurrection; the testimony of religious experience. Each of these grounds is independent of the problem of evil. By contrast, the atheist's premise "gratuitous evil exists" depends on the appearance-to-reality inference shown to fail in the main argument. The comparative warrant favors the theist's direction of reasoning. 4. Howard-Snyder makes the dialectical point explicit. Philosopher Daniel Howard-Snyder, a major contributor to the literature on evidential arguments from evil, observes that the problem of evil is a problem only for the theist who finds the atheist's premises compelling AND who has lousy grounds for believing theism. This is not a self-serving claim by theists; it is a recognition that all probabilistic arguments must be assessed against the total available evidence. The atheist who insists that the theist cannot deploy independent grounds for God against the argument from evil is asking the theist to ignore relevant evidence, which is itself an epistemic vice.

Natural Theology

Cosmological

Teleological

Moral & Rational

Five Ways

Christian Evidences

Resurrection of Jesus

Divinity of Christ

Prophecy Fulfillment

New Testament Criticism

Old Testament Criticism

Common Objections

Problem of Evil

Intellectual PoE: External

Science

Bad Claims

World Religions

Mormonism

Islam

Jehovah's Witness

Philosophy

Logic

Logic: Common Fallacies

Epistemology

Philosophical Theology

Prolegomena

Bibliology

Theology Proper

The Trinity

Creation

Anthropology

Christology

Soteriology

Ecclesiology

Eschatology

Public Theology

Theology of the Family

Biographies

Ancient History

Classical Antiquity

Medieval Period

Early Modern Period

Late Modern Period