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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
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    Even if the evidential argument from evil is sound, its c... — Carmelics
    Home/Problem of Evil
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    Even if the evidential argument from evil is sound, its conclusion is not really significant.

    Problem of Evil
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Probabilistic arguments establish epistemic conclusions about rational credence, not metaphysical conclusions about God's existence.
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    • 2.A conclusion showing theism is merely improbable relative to evil-evidence leaves the metaphysical question genuinely open, which is itself philosophically significant.
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    • 3.William Alston's 'dwindling probabilities' argument shows that chaining probabilistic inferences about God's reasons yields conclusions too weak to ground confident atheism.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Richard Swinburne's cumulative case methodology demonstrates that no single evidence-strand determines theism's overall probability across the total evidence base.
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    • 2.If the evidential argument's conclusion is confined to a narrow evidential partition excluding religious experience, cosmological fine-tuning, and moral facts, its scope is intrinsically limited.
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    • 3.A conclusion significant only within a gerrymandered evidential subset cannot ground the broader atheistic conclusions the argument's proponents typically claim to establish.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.What matters is not whether there is some evidence relative to which it is unlikely that theism is true, but whether theism is improbable relative to our total evidence.
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    • 2.There may be different observations (e.g., experiences that seem to be experiences of a loving deity) that are more likely if theism is true than if the Hypothesis of Indifference is true.
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    • 3.When such observations are incorporated into the total evidence, it is unclear whether the revised substantive premise of the argument remains plausible.
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    Topics

    Problem of Evil

    Related

    A conclusion showing theism is merely improbable relative to evil-evidence leave...A conclusion significant only within a gerrymandered evidential subset cannot gr...If the evidential argument's conclusion is confined to a narrow evidential parti...Probabilistic arguments establish epistemic conclusions about rational credence,...
    +5 moreShow less
    Richard Swinburne's cumulative case methodology demonstrates that no single evid...There may be different observations (e.g., experiences that seem to be experienc...What matters is not whether there is some evidence relative to which it is unlik...When such observations are incorporated into the total evidence, it is unclear w...William Alston's 'dwindling probabilities' argument shows that chaining probabil...

    Similar

    The argument from evil should be formulated as an evidential (inductiv...86%The argument from evil may or may not be sound, since one or more of i...85%Versions of the argument from evil differ significantly with respect t...84%The argument from evil supports only a probabilistic conclusion.84%

    Source

    AI-extracted
    SEP: evil
    View source passageHide passage
    A familiar and very common sort of inductive inference involves moving from information to the effect that all observed things of a certain type have a certain property to the conclusion that absolutely all things of the type in question have the relevant property. Could the inductive step in the evidential argument from evil perhaps be of that form?

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit