Evil and Double Counting

Some worry that in claiming the problem of evil (PoE) counts toward rather than away from the existence of God we may be double counting evidence. For example, if we’ve already counted consciousness against naturalism (adjusting our credence accordingly), we can’t go back and recount consciousness after it has already been moved into our background knowledge when considering PoE, which might be tempting since PoE depends upon consciousness. True enough.

However, whether evidence is double counted depends on whether it has been counted in the first place, and from what evidential basis we launch into worldview comparison. In the way I’ve handled this — and others, including Joshua Rasmussen — we often take PoE (or some particular aspect, like mysterious evils) as the evidential starting point. At this point, we haven’t counted anything yet. 

For example, imagine the atheist says (without either party having teased out their background knowledge) PoE is highly expected on naturalism because naturalism is run by a principle of indifference, but PoE is not highly expected on theism because God is (supposedly) all good. The theist can then say (certainly among other things), the following:

The PoE entails minimally the following: a contingent universe, a fine-tuned set up, continued existence, principles of morality, principles of reason, conscious agents, moral communities, and moral knowledge, ALL of which are far more probable (if only possible) given the existence of God. 

Now, if A entails B then A is the logical equivalent of A&B. Thus, the evidential impact of A is INCOMPLETE without the evidential impact of B (and whatever else is entailed by A). Take A to be evil and B, C, D, E, etc., to be the other things entailed by evil. It is in this sense (that is, in light of our total understanding) that our encountering evil points toward, rather than away, from the existence of God, and notice we have not counted anything twice (like consciousness). It only gets counted once assuming we begin from the challenge of evil and tease everything else out from there. 

The move from there is to suggest however low we might think PoE would be given God’s existence it is far lower given God’s non-existence. Hence, in light of our total understanding, PoE points toward, rather than away, from the existence of God.

Of course, I grant there are ways one COULD set up the problem such that evil is seen to be the less expected given the existence of God, but doing so will (in my humble estimation) concede far more than I believe a theist should, including perhaps that naturalism and theism are intrinsically equally probable, or that features of the world are as well explained by naturalism as theism, or both. At THAT point one may say evil is not low on naturalism but this is really quite different from saying evil on naturalism is not low in light of our total understanding. I maintain that if naturalism were true, there would be no problem of evil, because there would be none of those features – or certainly not enough of those features – upon which PoE depends for its emergence. 

Easiest way to think about this (even if you think this is too extreme): if consciousness is impossible on (mindless) naturalism, and if PoE depends upon consciousness, then PoE is impossible on (mindless) naturalism.