This paper will discuss the Logical and Evidential Argument from Evil, Peter Wykstra's Unknown Purpose Defense, and William Rowe's rebuttals in an attempt to further progress the argument of God's existence.
Epicurus, a Greek philosopher, formulated the Logical Argument from Evil (LAE). This is one of history's earliest accounts of an argument against God's existence. It states:.
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(1) God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omni benevolent.
(2) If God is omniscient, then he knows how to prevent evil.
(3) If God is omnipotent, then he is able to prevent evil.
(4) If God is omni benevolent, then he desires to prevent evil.
(5) So, if God exists, there is no evil.
(6) But evil exists.
(7) Therefore, God does not exist.
Since his LAE became known, it has been a hotbed for debate among philosophers. William Rowe, however, came to realize that there is a possibility that a perfect being could permit an evil to allow humans to experience a "greater good", thus causing premise (4) to be false. Human free will is an example many philosophers use as an example of a "greater good". The general argument is that a world where humans are allowed to have a free will but commit moral evils is greater than a world that has no free will with any evil. .
After realizing the flaw to premise (4) of the LAE, Rowe released his own version of the Argument from Evil in which he called the Evidential Argument of Evil (EAE). It states:.
(1) There exist pointless evils that a perfect being could have prevented without thereby losing a greater good or permitting an evil equally bad or worse.
(2) A perfect being would prevent any pointless evils it could, unless doing so would result in losing a greater good or permitting an evil equally bad or worse.
(3) Therefore, there is no perfect being (God).
Philosophers showed that premise (1) of Rowe's EAE had a major flaw. Their flaw was mostly concerned with the language of "pointless evils" and they believed that it cannot be proved that there is such a thing.