Faith and Philosophy

Volume 25, Issue 4, October 2008

PETER VAN INWAGEN ON THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

In his book The Problem of Evil, Van Inwagen aims to establish that the problem 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 morally 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 endeavors to establish that it is more likely than not that an omniscient, omnipotent being could have created such a world.