William L. Rowe's Argument For The Existence Of God
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William L. Rowe is a philosopher of religion who provides an argument on the existence of God in his philosophical piece The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism. Rowe’s argument will be the focal point of this paper as it is evaluated for truth. First, this paper will introduce Rowe’s argument that is based on the problem of evil. Next, the argument will be evaluated for conflicts in Rowe’s conclusion. Lastly, criticism will be provided for Rowe’s argument and an argument will be presented that supports the existence of God. Although Rowe presents a probable argument on the non-existence of God, he fails to consider certain aspects that could provide supports that God exists. Through careful consideration and logical support, a counter argument based on the presence of good will be presented to support the existence of God. In Rowe’s philosophical paper, Rowe presents an argument that considers gratuitous evil––evil that is considered unnecessary and does not have an apparent beneficial outcome. An example of gratuitous evil would be a tornado ripping through a city, killing many…show more content… His argument causes the reader to consider gratuitous evil and why it exists. A tragedy that occurs for visibly no reason raises many questions as to why a divine being would allow such a tragedy to occur without some good coming out of it. Yet, this is not a justifiable reason for Rowe to go so far as to say there is no God. Rowe’s assumption that there is good that stems from evil only if it can be seen is unrealistic and fails to support his argument. This is like saying there is no air because air can not be seen. With this in mind, we can not assume gratuitous evil does exist because one can argue that the good is not always seen. However, Rowe was prepared for this answer and flipped his argument into the way a theist (a person who believes in a divine being) would see gratuitous