The Problem of Evil: The Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of St. Andrews in 2003

by Peter van Inwagen

The vast amount of suffering in the world is often held as a particularly powerful reason to deny that God exists. Now, one of the world's most distinguished philosophers of religion presents his own position on the problem of evil. Highly accessible and sensitively argued, Peter van Inwagen's book argues that such reasoning does not his conclusion is not that God exists, but that suffering cannot be shown to prove that He does not.

Genres: Philosophy, Theology, Religion, Atheism, Nonfiction

198 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Peter van Inwagen is an American analytic philosopher and the John Cardinal O'Hara Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. earned his PhD from the University of Rochester under the direction of Richard Taylor and Keith Lehrer.

Today, Van Inwagen is one of the leading figures in contemporary metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of action. He has taught previously at Syracuse University and was the president of the Society of Christian Philosophers from 2010 to 2013. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005 and was President of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association in 2008-2009. Van Inwagen has also received an honorary doctorate from the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland.

Reviews

[Italo Lins Lemos · Rating 2 out of 5]

O Problema do Mal é um dos problemas clássicos da Filosofia. Ele traz a seguinte questão: como Deus pode ser onipotente, moralmente perfeito e, ainda assim, existir o mal?

Inwagen, em um conjunto de 8 conferências que foram ministradas na Universidade de St. Andrews em 2003, parte do pressuposto que deus abraâmico é réu da acusação ateísta de que o Problema do Mal implicaria a não-existência divina. Nesse sentido, o autor se propõe a fazer uma defesa (não propriamente uma teodicéia) que mostraria que o argumento do mal é um fracasso.

É na terceira conferência que o autor define o que seria um sucesso argumentativo: “O argumento é um sucesso se começa com premissas que quase nenhuma pessoa sã e racional duvidaria, e procede por passos lógicos, cuja validade quase nenhuma pessoa sã e racional iria contestar, até a conclusão de que Deus existe” (p. 114), e segue afirmando que este livro pode ser encarado como um tribunal no qual uma plateia de agnósticos não seria convencida de que o ateísmo é consistente.

Se, de um lado, a perspectiva ateísta de fato pode ser considerada inconclusiva, pois não demonstra a inexistência do deus cristão — embora esse não seja o tipo de coisa que possa ser demonstrada. Afinal, poderíamos demonstrar a impossibilidade metafísica da existência do Monstro do Espaguete Voador, por exemplo? —, por outro lado, curiosamente, acompanhar a defesa de Inwagen me tornou um ateísta ainda mais convicto (mais do que a leitura de Hume ou Nietzsche!). Em outras palavras, estou dizendo que os argumentos de Inwagen não têm o sucesso que o autor pensa que eles têm.

Longa história curta, Inwagen classifica dois tipos de Problema do Mal: o global e o local. O Problema do Mal global é aquele que trata da existência do mal em geral; enquanto o local é o que trata de um mal particular (como, por exemplo, o assassinato de uma pessoa específica). A estratégia que ele apresenta para minar o Problema do Mal geral é apostar no que ele chama de "defesa do livre-arbítrio estendida" e, a lá Agostinho (mas com malabarismos extras), indicar que o mal se apresenta porque nós escolhemos mal entre os bens. Achei curiosa a sua defesa de que inclusive o mal natural (como um terremoto) seria uma consequência do mal moral gerado pelo livre-arbítrio, mas ele não amplia essa discussão.

Já o Problema do Mal local parece falhar porque, ainda segundo o autor, incorreríamos no paradoxo da vagueza. Afinal de contas, se o mal é necessário para que possamos nos reconciliar com deus, e se a ausência de um (ou dois, ou três, ou quatro, etc.) mal local tornasse o mundo um lugar melhor, então a ausência de todo e qualquer mal tornaria o mundo um lugar melhor — o que seria uma contradição ou simplesmente uma inconsistência com os objetivos divinos. Parece até um tanto cômico apelar ao paradoxo da vagueza para sustentar essa posição. E no final parece apenas cruel assimilar que o holocausto, por exemplo, tenha acontecido para que pudéssemos ter uma noção melhor da extensão do mal, e como isso é semelhante a estar afastado de deus. (As pessoas que morreram foram usadas de modo instrumental para o nosso discernimento? Nem Kant seria tão cruel).

Apesar de eu considerar o Inwagen um grande filósofo, especialmente por conta dos seus trabalhos em Metafísica, eu confesso que por muito pouco eu não parei de ler o texto na terceira conferência, que é quando o autor começa a puxar a linguagem para o seu limites e definir os termos de acordo com a sua conveniência. Mesmo assim o livro certamente tem as suas virtudes: Inwagen é justo na reconstrução dos argumentos ateístas e argumenta com cautela e elegância. No entanto, os seus argumentos são fantasiosos e, imagino eu, uma plateia de agnósticos teria tendido ao ateísmo ao invés do teísmo.

[Guilherme Smee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Existem filósofos e teólogos que têm o dom da palavra e nos abrem a mente para novas possibilidades e existências. Existem filósofos e teólogos que não têm esse dom. O caso deste livro é o segundo. Um livro que poderia ser muitíssimo interessante se as explicações do escritor Peter Van Inwagen não fossem recheadas de esquemas, equações e aforismos que não levam a nada. Uma leitura cansativa, e muito chata de acompanhar. As propostas das palestras do livro, olhando-se apenas o sumário, parecem incrivelmente interessantes. Mas uma ideia só é interessante se bem executada. Infelizmente não é o caso deste livro, que tem uma capa muito bonita e tudo e tal. Sorte que consegui comprar esse livro com desconto na loja virtual da Editora da Universidade de Brasília, porque se tivesse pago o valor inteiro do livro, teria ficado com muita raiva e o problema do mal rondando a minha mente. Felizmente tinha desconto. Bem, não há solução, então, meus amigos leitores das minhas resenhas. Esse livro vai dar uma bailadinha nos sebos para que eu possa adquirir outros livros que sejam mais interessantes ler e ter.

[Braedon Weigle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter Van Inwagen constructs a defense against the argument from evil in a series of 8 lectures. Van Inwagen provides a clear and discriminating formulation of the problem of evil by bringing out the distinctions between the multifarious angles of the problem. With sights set on answering the problem of evil for the sake of apologetics, he pursues both general and specific iterations of the argument. He provides a defense founded on free will that places an emphasis on love as being the good that justifies the prevalence of suffering. To complement this account, he delivers a justifying reason for animal suffering.
Van Inwagen formulates the problem in lecture 1. He outlines God’s properties in Lecture 2. In Lecture 3 he gives his standards for a failed philosophical argument. In lectures 4 and 5 he provides a defense for general evil. In lecture 6 he responds to the problem of individual evils. In lecture 7 he explores God’s reasons for beast suffering. Finally in lecture 8 he addresses God’s hiddenness.
Defenses and theodicies against the problem of evil are always made with reference to a specific formulation of the question. Evil for the purpose of this discussion is designated as all bad things, be it moral evil or the evil of natural catastrophe. Van Inwagen settles upon the task of answering the apologetic problem from evil, as opposed to personal consolation or doctrinal understanding. He seeks to answer the argument that given evil, God does not exist. Van Inwagen separates these notions into two separate arguments, the global argument which denies the existence of God on the basis of the incredible amount of suffering in the world, and the local argument which denies the existence of God on the basis of specific instances of suffering. Answering these arguments requires one to come up with a justifying reason, a good that can only be obtained alongside or by the risk of some evil. In his defense, Van Inwagen rejects the sufferer centered requirement, and in terms of scope seeks to cover both human and animal suffering.
The aim of Van Inwagen’s lectures is to show that the argument from evil fails the standard for philosophical failure. In lecture 3, he outlines his criteria for what would amount to a failed philosophical argument. His criteria for a philosophical argument to be a failure is that when presented in a debate setting with an excellently opposing interlocutor who aims to refute it, the argument fails to convince an ideal listener who is totally neutral on the subject. His goal is to show that the argument from evil cannot settle the question of God’s existence in the negative.
Van Inwagen’s conception of God follows Anselm in being the greatest possible being. His view, however, is not strictly within the bounds of classical theism. He has distinct notions of the concepts of omnipotence and immutability. Omnipotence according to Van Inwagen is the idea that God can do whatever does not imply a contradiction. For example, mountains have valleys between them, so it would be logically impossible to make two separate mountains that do not have a valley between them. Immutability is the idea that God cannot change, and Van Inwagen maintains that God’s attributes and intrinsic properties cannot change but He can relationally interact with us. Interaction implies change, but not the kind that threatens immutability.
The global argument from evil is that given the large amounts of persistent evils in the world, God must not exist since He would have either prevented or removed them. Van Inwagen gives two responses to this, first, he deployed the classic free will response, which posits that for the existence of free will God had to risk the presence of evil in the world. This is because the very nature of free will is that if God were to have control over it then it would cease to be free will. Van Inwagen operates under a libertarian conception of free will, which while acknowledging his disagreement with other thinkers, he believes is suitable above other views. Van Inwagen acknowledges two objections to the defense, the objection that free will does not defeat the actual suffering, and that free will being the reason for all evils fails in scope regarding natural disasters and things unrelated to human action. In response, he expands his defense with an emphasis on love as the primary good, and communication of our need for repentance as an explanation of natural evils.
In his expanded free will defense, Van Inwagen postulates a lengthy story that turns on two main themes, the fall of man, and the need for redemption. He postulates that the good for which free will was given to obtain is love. Mankind evolved over time to a point at which God miraculously raised them to rationality and gifted them with free will. In the misuse of free will, mankind has ruined itself and destroyed the initial goodness that God had intended. Thus, moral evil became rampant and life for humans was cursed with the burden of suffering evil both moral and natural. Because God is a merciful and loving God, He desires reconciliation with mankind. To that end, He does not intervene in the world to prevent all evils, both moral and natural, that may befall mankind (although he does shield us from many evils). He allows many evils so that mankind would know just how bad the world is without God, that they might realize their need of His help for redemption. Van Inwagen even proposes the idea that God takes the reins off physical processes, allowing them to become chaotic and random. God, the root of order and being, exposes us to what life is like without His ordering that we might understand how horrific a reality that is. As such, humans suffer the consequences of both the moral evil that they bring about, and the natural evils that befall them. In this way, God seeks to reconcile a love relationship with his creation and has a reason to allow natural disasters.
Van Inwagen recognizes however that while this may cover evils generally, it does not explain any particular horrific evil. He has not answered the local argument from evil by the free will defense. It may be granted that the justification for the presence of general evil in the world is successful, but why did God allow some particularly gruesome case of rape? To answer this, he argues for the idea that the number of evils that God can allow which will guarantee the effective communication of the message of necessary redemption is metaphysically vague. Because of this vagueness, the amount of suffering that God allows is slightly arbitrary. Van Inwagen explains this by showing that 99 sufferings would be basically just as bad as 100, this follows for each subsequent amount of suffering. God must draw a line somewhere. Additionally, in His allowances of sufferings, He cannot exempt everyone or His redemptive plan will be thwarted. Thus, even to prevent one more suffering would collapse the whole logic of the plan, as there is no good reason to spare one person over the other.
Finally, there is the objection of Rowe’s Fawn, henceforth called Bambi, who horrifically dies in a forest fire unrelated to human action and unwitnessed by humans. This cannot be a consequence of free will or instrumental to the instruction of mankind. Van Inwagen diffuses this argument by postulating that conscious creatures such as Bambi are required in the evolutionary chain to produce mankind, and that to always prevent their suffering counter to the occurrences of nature would be worse than allowing it because it would render irrelevant the ordered natural laws that God has set in place. Additionally, to spare one instance of Bambi would be arbitrary. Given these reasons, God allows the creature to suffer and perish.
With the problem of evil answered, atheists may raise an argument from God’s hiddenness. Since God wants us to know Him, why does He not directly reveal Himself? Van Inwagen gives two reasons, that it matters that we come to know Him in a certain way, and that our default way of knowing God has been disrupted by sin such that were He to reveal Himself directly we would begrudgingly accept Him rather than repentantly turn to Him.
 

[Matthew Adelstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Both astonishingly clever at times and infuriatingly obtuse at times. His explanation of why God allows evil, which is quite subtle, seems broadly to be on the right track, and is much more convincing than the standard claims that every evil serves some greater role.

As for the infuriatingly wrongheaded parts, there are many. For instance, he argued against the claim that God would prevent random one off instances of gratuitous horrors on the grounds that the principle that one should is false, for it implies that no one should be sentenced to prison, because for any prison sentences of n days, n-1 days accomplishes the same good, so the last day is gratuitous. Problem: this is obviously false and requires denying the transitivity of equal to.

He also suggests that it’s incoherent to ask what is the minimum number of horrors consistent with gods plan of salvation—like asking what the minimum requires rainfall for France to be fertile is. But fertility is imprecise while the number saved is precise. He could always prevent one more horror if doing so did not cause any to lose salvation. There actually will be a number saved for each horror permitted.

Still, broadly his claim that God must allow horrors to show people what the world is like if people turn away from him is broadly convincing. It seems that this is at least part of the story of why a perfect being would allow so much evil--if indeed there is such a reason.

[Raymond Lam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book consists of lecture notes from the author's Gifford Lectures at St Andrew's in 2003. Hence the book reads like as if the author is talking directly to you which makes it smooth reading and easy to follow.

As in typical van Inwagen's fashion, he always has original and organised approach to philosophical problems. His first lecture discusses the taxonomy of the arguments from evil, and, instead of using the popular logical/probabilistic argument from evil distinction, he offers the global/local distinction. The global argument from evil refers to the totality/quantity of suffering/evil while local argument refers to single horrendous event of evil.
Further, he also assesses the merit of these arguments based on their success for an atheist to convince an unbiased agnostic audience in the presence of theist to offer rejoinders.
In this third lecture, he actually addresses what a good philosophical argument is and what a failure is. Though not all philosophical arguments are unsuccessful, it is not easy to meet the mark of a successful argument for an unbiased audience. This lecture is already worth for reading the book.

In terms of his approach to addressing the arguments of evil he formulated, he thinks the burden of the proof is on the atheist to show their arguments. The atheist is the one who wants to establish a point. The theist only needs to present a "possible" answer as defence to disarm the arguments even if the answer is not the most convincing or probable. He is not presenting theodicies. At the same time, it seems any possible answer would at least be enough to show the arguments from evil as unsuccessful to the audience. I don't find his possible answers entirely convincing to the average audience.

His lecture and chapter on the argument from animal suffering is also worth the price of admission. It is an interesting examination of metaphysical modality based on the what we know about our own actual world.

The book's arguments and structure are nicely and clearly set. It is fun to read and a nice ride.

[Pat Reeder · Rating 5 out of 5]

These lectures, while not exactly presented as wholly popular, are fairly accessible for those with some philosophical background, especially compared to some of Van Inwagen’s metaphysics. His playful and humorous writing style makes for relatively quick reading (at least for philosophical material). For philosophers, his discussion of philosophical failure and how to assess arguments is well worth the read in its own right. I’m not sure I totally agree with him but he drills to core of philosophical methodology in that chapter.

[Tynan Brooks]

Didn't like this. Van Inwagen's metaphysical commitments re: free will and omniscience are too pivotal in his account. Given that I disagree with them, there's little for me to glean here, other than a picture of a defense I wouldn't make.

[Ruby Ramgren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of good thoughts, but philosophers have to define SO MANY terms. And I don't think I've read a book with so many parentheses before.

[Kristopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

This series of lectures provides a clear defense of the existence of God in the face of what van Inwagen considers the compound problem of Evil. He considers individually the "global problem" (that there is considerable evil in the world), the "local problem" (that specific evils happen in a way that seems unjustifiable), and the problem of animal suffering (in ways that cannot be traced back to human evil), and his treatment of this distinction is nice, clear and helpful in defining the problems facing theists today. Despite his clear writing style, van Inwagen engages in a project that by the very nature of it is leaves me frustrated and annoyed; his project is to provide merely a defense, which in the third lecture he defines as telling a 'just-so' story that, could be true for all we know. He is not telling a story that is intended to to anything beyond convincing an ideal audience of agnostics to remain agnostic despite this argument. It is not an attempt to argue for theism, or even for theism being a probable conclusion--only that theism could be consistent with what we know about the world and evil.
This is unsettling for, as van Inwagen readily admits, by his account of defense, literally no philosophical argument can ever be successful--he wins by definitional fiat.
Furthermore, van Inwagen engages in what the, what I will call "I'm Famous Dammit!" argument. This style of argument, recently exemplified by Dennett, runs like this: "I make an outrageous claim, give you a terrible argument for it, and then pound my fist and reiterate my name. On the grounds that I'm famous and important enough, I win."
Van Inwagen's just-so story frequently invokes explanations, the grounds of which are "necessarily a mystery to us." His stories have more serious problems, the extent of which I will not handle here, but rest assured that, despite the accessibility of the writing, and the prima facie plausibility (and I mean this very loosely) of his stories, there lie serious concerns based on anthropological history of evolution, and on philosophical grounds with regards to God's abilities--in particular with regards to the omni's. This is a text worth reading, but is ultimately disappointing.

[Declan Ellis]

Reading Inwagen is like spending time in good company. This one contains a fascinating, if controversial, treatment of the problem of evil, pre-Adamic animal suffering and divine hiddenness. The 'arbitrary limits' defense seems deeply unsatisfying, even though I can't fault Inwagen's logic. However, his version of the 'free-will' defense and his 'massive irregularity' defense resonate more deeply.

Recommended

[Dalen Stroh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wish I could have grasped most of these concepts. The lectures were great, but I could only go so far before losing the point. Considering the fact that I am just now starting to learn about this "problem of evil", it would have helped to start with something simpler. I'd recommend this book only to those who have an idea of the issue at hand. Not for first timers like myself!

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know that I'm very philosophical, but this book was fun. I enjoyed the exercise and once we got past all the qualifications I enjoyed the argument. Abstract but accessible, I recommend this one.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Van Inwagen is a genius. Very good book.

[Harrison Dean · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm working on a two part video series that explores van Inwagen's key ideas in this book. Here's part one: https://youtu.be/qNf4gqiZQ_Y

and part two: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtWZQ...