The problem of evil

Abstract

The epistemic question posed by evil is whether the world contains undesirable states of affairs that provide the basis for an argument that makes it unreasonable for anyone to believe in the existence of God.This discussion is divided into nine sections. The first is concerned with some preliminary distinctions; the second, with the choice between deductive versions of the argument from evil, and evidential versions; the third, with alternative evidential formulations of the argument from evil; the fourth, with the distinction between three very different types of responses to the argument from evil: attempted total refutations, defenses, and theodicies.The fifth section then focuses upon attempted total refutations, while the sixth is concerned with defenses. Some traditional theodicies are then considered in section seven. The idea of global properties is then introduced in section eight, and a theodicy with religious content that is based on that idea is considered in section nine.