William Hasker reviews Peter van Inwagen's The Problem of Evil
Oxford University Press, 2006, 197pp. ISBN 0199245606.
"Peter van Inwagen's The Problem of Evil is a fairly short book, but only about half of it is devoted to his answer to the problem of evil. In the first chapter he discusses various senses of the term, "problem of evil"; not surprisingly, the problem of evil he will be addressing is the problem of answering the argument from evil, the argument, or rather arguments, against the existence of God based on the facts about evil. The second chapter is devoted to the idea of God; it turns out that van Inwagen accepts the views that in some circles are coming to be known as "open theism," though he does not himself use that term. The extremely interesting third chapter is devoted to philosophical failure; in it he contends that all philosophical arguments that aim to establish substantive philosophical theses are failures. (More on this later.) Chapters four through seven present his answers to various versions of the argument from evil. The eighth and final chapter is devoted to the "problem of divine hiddenness," which he insists is distinct from the problem of evil although it parallels that problem and receives a parallel response."
Read the whole review from Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
I logged on this evening to post about this and saw that Matthew had already announced it. I plan to blog my way through the book later this semester when a group of us read it with Ed Wierenga.
I was very glad to see Hasker make a point which I've been insisting on for quite a while: a defense is a low aim. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to have defenses! However, what I'm really interested in is credence raising. I don't find much interesting about deductive arguments (other than what we can extract via the theorem that the uncertainty of the conclusion is at least as much as the sum of the uncertainty of the premises). Defenses show little more than that there isn't a valid deductive argument from Evil. I suppose if I had grown up when people still believed in such critters I'd care more.
Anyway, what Hasker points out is that an agnostic might agree that PvI's defense works as a defense but still significantly lower her credence in theism as a result of considering the data on evil. So I agree when Hasker suggests that "van Inwagen might consider raising his sights a bit." Fortunately--and Hasker points this out too--PvI does tend to claim more for his defenses and I do tend to find what he says persuasive.
Trent,
Are you aware that the hyperlink from your name under your post does not take someone to your blog or personal website?
When I click it from here it does.