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    The soul-making theodicy is at best an incomplete answer ... — Carmelics
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    The soul-making theodicy is at best an incomplete answer to the problem of suffering.

    Divine Attributes
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    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

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    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.John Hick's soul-making framework presupposes that epistemic distance from God is necessary for authentic virtue, yet this assumption leaves vast categories of suffering—animal pain, infant death, catastrophic natural disasters—entirely unaccounted for within the developmental logic he proposes.
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    • 2.Dostoevsky's Ivan Karamazov argument establishes that even if soul-making produces net moral benefit, the suffering of a single innocent child cannot be morally justified by any aggregate developmental outcome, exposing a fundamental unit-of-analysis failure in Hick's theodicy.
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    • 3.A theodicy that requires supplementation by additional theodicies—free will defense, eschatological compensation, skeptical theism—to cover its explanatory gaps concedes by its own structure that it is incomplete as a standalone account.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.D.Z. Phillips argues that the soul-making theodicy commits a category error by treating persons instrumentally—as raw material for virtue production—which itself violates the moral framework any adequate theodicy must presuppose.
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    • 2.The empirical distribution of suffering is inversely correlated with soul-making utility: those with fewest psychological and social resources to convert suffering into growth receive disproportionately severe suffering, which directly falsifies the theodicy's implied proportionality claim.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Not all of the suffering of the world enters into soul-making.
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    • 2.The sufferings of lower animals pass without even being remarked by rational beings and seem to serve no purpose whatever.
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    • 3.Among humans, intense suffering is often followed simply by death and contributes to no apparent moral development.
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    Topics

    Divine Attributes

    Related

    A person may simply die suddenly, which serves no end of soul-making.A theodicy that requires supplementation by additional theodicies—free will defe...Among humans, intense suffering is often followed simply by death and contribute...D.Z. Phillips argues that the soul-making theodicy commits a category error by t...
    +8 moreShow less
    Dostoevsky's Ivan Karamazov argument establishes that even if soul-making produc...God could presumably have contrived to achieve virtue at less cost in suffering.In much of human pain and hardship we see little or nothing of the heroic, but o...John Hick's soul-making framework presupposes that epistemic distance from God i...Not all of the suffering of the world enters into soul-making.The empirical distribution of suffering is inversely correlated with soul-making...The sheer amount of natural evil that exists in the world is incommensurate with...

    Similar

    Not all of the suffering of the world enters into soul-making.79%Soul-making is not possible except through the experience of suffering...76%There is a deep problem for perfect being theology regarding the co-re...73%The sheer amount of natural evil that exists in the world is incommens...72%

    Source

    AI-extracted2/3 agreementValid
    SEP: providence-divine
    The opponent's objection
    View source passageHide passage
    Soul-making, according to its defenders, is not possible except through the experience of suffering. Because this is so, and because a world in which humans are brought to spiritual maturity through this process is incomparably better than a hedonistic paradise, there is every reason to expect that a perfectly good and loving God would create a world in which there is suffering. Still, the opponent may object that this answer is at best incomplete. For, he will argue, not all of the suffering of the world enters into soul-making. Consider again the case that was mentioned earlier, of the fawn ...
    Extraction notes

    Validity: The premises are all drawn directly from the source passage and collectively provide rational support for the conclusion that the soul-making theodicy is at best incomplete, by identifying multiple categories of suffering that do not serve soul-making purposes and questioning the proportionality of suffering to its alleged ends.

    The sufferings of lower animals pass without even being remarked by rational bei...

    Confidence: Clearly articulated counter-argument in the text.

    Details

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