Journal article
Should atheists wish that there were no gratuitous evils?
- Abstract:
- Many atheists argue that because gratuitous evil exists, God (probably) doesn’t. But doesn’t this commit atheists to wishing that God did exist, and to the pro-theist view that the world would have been better had God existed? This doesn’t follow. I argue that if all that evil still remains but is just no longer gratuitous, then, from an atheist perspective, that wouldn’t have been better. And while a counterfactual from which that evil is literally absent would have been impersonally better, it wouldn’t have been better for anyone, not even for those who suffered such evils.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Files:
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 181.2KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.37977/faithphil.2021.38.4.3
Authors
- Publisher:
- Philosophy Documentation Center
- Journal:
- Faith and Philosophy More from this journal
- Volume:
- 38
- Issue:
- 4
- Pages:
- 460-483
- Publication date:
- 2023-04-03
- Acceptance date:
- 2022-02-08
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2153-3393
- ISSN:
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0739-7046
- Language:
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English
- Pubs id:
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1238152
- Local pid:
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pubs:1238152
- Deposit date:
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2022-04-05
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Guy Kahane
- Copyright date:
- 2023
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