Abstract
Marilyn McCord Adams has defended theodicy by appeal to the idea of post-mortem compensation for the victims of horrendous evil. I have argued that this overlooks the dissociation of theodicy from moral reality that she concedes in her response to criticism of theodicy by D Z Phillips. Joshua Thurow has recently defended Adams against my argument. Here I defend and strengthen that argument against Thurow.
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Notes
Thus my account is not committed to the idea that theodicy must say that God intends the evils, as Michael Almeida (2013) wrongly says I assume in Gleeson (2012a). I explicitly state there that theodicy may speak of God allowing evils rather than doing (and so intending) them (p. 2) and of the evils being an incidental consequence of the goods rather than a means to them (p. 3).
This argument is extracted from my original paper; it is not there in precisely the form he puts it into. I do not agree completely with his formulation, but the differences are not significant. I have added some words of my own in square brackets, just to help make things clear. All the other words are Thurow’s.
The wording should actually be ‘the value of total reality’.
B1 is Thurow’s summary of what I say not my own, but I accept it as fair.
Counting the injustice of allowing crime to go unpunished as a greater evil.
Granting, either (i) there is no indeterminacy in the universe that affects road accidents (perhaps through the exercise of human free will) or (ii) it is true that God fore-knows what will happen even in indeterminate cases.
This would require a change of heart from Monday, including remorse for having performed the torture on Monday. This footnote is not part of the original text.
As the immediately preceding context in my original paper makes clear, I was assuming that I perform the torture on Monday fror the sake of GGs (and not gratuitously or to avoid a worse evil).
This example is my own but I cite actual examples from the theodical literature in Gleeson (2012a) p. 4, footnote 2, and p. 45.
References
Adams, M. M. (2013). Ignorance, Instrumentality, Compensation and the Problem of Evil. Sophia, 52, 7–26.
Almeida, M. J. (2013). Review of ‘A Frightening Love: Recasting the Problem of Evil’ by Andrew Gleeson. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 91(3), 607–610.
Gleeson, A. (2012a). A frightening love: recasting the problem of evil. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gleeson, A. (2012b). ‘God and Evil: A View from Swansea’, Philosophical Investigations 35(3–4), 331–349.
Gleeson, A. (2015). On Letting Go of Theodicy: Marilyn McCord Adams on God and Evil. Sophia, 54, 1–12.
Gleeson, A. (2018). ‘God and Evil Without Theodicy’ (plus six short pieces being comments on other contributors and replies to their comments on me) in Nick Trakakis (ed) The Problem of Evil: Eight Views in Dialogue. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 202–213, plus 142–144, 167–169, 194–196, 219–221, 221–223, 223–225.
Phillips, D. Z. (2005). The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God. Fortress Press.
Thurow, J. C. (2020). Problems with Compensation: Gleeson on Marilyn McCord Adams on Evil. Sophia, 59, 513–524.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful for helpful comments from Joshua Thurow.
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Gleeson, A. Horrendous Evil and the Loving God: a Reply to Joshua Thurow. SOPHIA 61, 419–428 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-021-00883-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-021-00883-z