Rowe's Controversial Argument Of Evil

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William Rowe’s evidential argument of evil seeks to answer the question of whether or not the existence of evil lowers the likelihood of God’s existence. His argument was presented as follows: These examples “are meant to illustrate the profound difficulty in really believing that an all-powerful, all-knowing being is incapable of achieving his noble ends without having to permit such horrendous, undeserved suffering” If only a few of these evils occurred, an argument might be made for their utility however there occurs an “enormous amount of apparently pointless, horrendous suffering occurring daily,” which makes it difficult to accept that these evils are justified in God’s end (Rowe X). In summary, Rowe claims that since (1) is likely…show more content…
Instead of using supernatural or spiritual explanations, naturalism focuses on explanations that come from the laws of nature” (Dictionary). Being an individual rooted in naturalism, I believe that the existence of evil can be accounted for by free will and the naturalistic view of existence. Evil exists because of a combination of free will and many other factors, such as conflicts and/or accidents that are natural in fallible creatures such as humans and animals. Why would such evils exist without a purpose? Maybe it’s simply because they can. Taking God out of the argument (adopting a naturalist point of view), the explanation for the existence of evil becomes less clear but also less necessary. Maybe the reason why someone would brutally rape and murder a five-year-old isn’t that there’s a greater purpose to it, but rather that the rapist has a neurochemical defect that compelled them to commit such a crime and the five-year-old was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time; both were victims of nature, one of biology and one of circumstance. I am not using this example with a high degree of certainty, but rather I am merely point out that the possibility exists. With God in the picture, evil necessitates explanation beyond that of free-will and circumstance; it requires understanding of a greater purpose and/or end, which is simply impossible for us humans to attain given that God would be more all-knowing than even the smartest of humans. It requires us to assume the existence of a higher being and purpose that may not even exist. Furthermore, as Rowe stated, it would be difficult to justify evils beyond a certain point, which forces us to believe that either God does not exist or that there’s some sort of justification that we cannot see (Rowe X). To me, the naturalistic view is not only more realistic and less contradictory but also a view that explains the existence of evil in the
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