In a world where mass famine and genocide are allowed to occur and the murders by tyrants, terrorists and petty thefts persist to plague us, instilling fear and insecurity. We at sometime in our lives are coerced into questioning the existence of God. The main question being “If God truly does exist why does he allow evil to occur, why doesn’t he protect the innocent”. In the dialogue between Athea, Bea and Agnos, Bruce Russell uses the characters to tackle that exact question by focusing on the argument of the problem of Evil. Athea in this dialogue is used as the protagonist in the attack of theism, he lays the foundation of the dialogue by providing the premises on which he believes that God must not exist due to the presence of evil. Bea in this dialogue is considered the protagonist in the defense of theism, he role is to highlight the weakness in the problem of evil argument and furthermore suggesting alternative reasons for the presence of evil despite God’s existence. In this essay I shall summarize the setting of the dialogue between the two main characters, then delve into the arguments that are presented. I shall first highlight Athea’s argument against the presence of God, explaining the structure and conclusion of the problem of evil argument, as this lays the foundation for the whole dialogue. I shall then focus on Bea’s reaction to Athea’s argument, clarifying her perceived weakness of the argument and furthermore pointing out her theories on why the presence of evil exists despite Gods existence. Finally I shall present my opinion on the Problem of evil, illustrating the weakness in the premises and its inadequate consideration of the ways in which God might prevent evil without our knowledge while letting certain evils to exist that lead to a greater good than evil.

Focusing on the above, my explication relies on The “Inductive” Argument from Evil: A Dialogue by Bruce Russell. The argument is based upon a conversation between three friends. The reason being that one of their friends lost a child named Carrie, six years. She was murdered by her own father Bo, and her mother Iris, is in the hospital due to ultimate shock. The key issue of the dialogue between the three friends is if there is God how is it possible that he did not stop this act from occurring. The characters are Bea, Athea and Agnos. For Bea discusses the points from the side of a Theist, Athea from the view of an Atheist and Agnos for agnostic. I would like divide my explication into two parts. The first part will be an exposition of the author’s positions and the other part of criticism.
The Argument starts off with Agnes setting out an argument against the incident of Carries death. He fist compares the role of a mother with God. A mother allows suffering to her child but knowing that it will serve her some good later on. He called it “serve some sufficient good”. Agnes thought of an alternative and called it “Plan B” where a person will not have to suffer any sort of pain but will ultimately attain the sufficient good that the person would have attained even by suffering, following this he stated “if God exists, then (being all-good) he would not allow any instance of intense suffering unless doing so served some sufficient good, and there were no “Plan B”- no equally good way to get this good without such suffering.” Agnes retrieves a logic here. 1. God exists 2. If God exists he is omnipotent. 3. Therefore is able to prevent instances of intense suffering. 4. But there is intense suffering. 5. There is no stop to the suffering 6. Therefore there is no God.
Athea brings up a very vital point of free will, as he states “Free will Defense- to have creatures with real moral freedom. God has to allow the possibility of the creature choosing evil” and continues with an example regarding to inductive interference. The non-existence of an object gives the “good-reason” to believe that it does not exist. Since it gives inductive evidence it justifies a high degree of confidence. Accordingly Athea lays out a set of premises and conclusions, ending with a statement that there is no God. Additionally, stating that there is no God-justifying good in this case. Because if there was God then he would have clearly prevented the horrible matter from occurring or someone must have benefitted in a good way out of this act. Athea posts her central argument as follows:
“(P1) Carries murder was in itself a very bad thing
(P2) If there was no sufficiently good point served by allowing this very bad thing to happen, then God, if he exists would have prevented it.
(P3) There was no sufficiently good point served by allowing this very bad thing.
(C1) Therefore, if God exists he would have prevented this thing from happening.
(P4) God did not prevent this thing from happening (since it did happen)
(C2) Therefore, God does not exist. “ Athea lays out another sub argument for (P3) which is;
“(p1) After careful reflection we see no good point seved by allowing this bad thing to occur.
(p2) if, after careful reflection, we see no sufficiently good point served by allowing some bad thing to occur, then we have some reason to believe there is no sufficiently good point served by allowing it to occur.
(c1) Therefore, we have some reason to believe there is no sufficiently good point served by allowing it to occur.
(p3)We have no outweighing reason to believe the contrary (that there is a sufficient good point served by allowing this evil).
(p4) If we have some reason to believe some proposition, and no decent reason to believe the contrary, then on balance, reason requires us to believe that proposition.
(c2) Therefore, reason requires us to believe that there is no sufficient good point served by allowing this bad thing to occur.”
I would like share my view here for (p3). With what confidence does Athea confirm that there is no outweighing good for this act? It could be that Carrie was going to end with a deadly disease like Cancer or AIDS, and God actually helped Carrie from suffering and in this way Iris also wouldn’t have to see her daughter die through the disease.
Bea adds another argument and calls it “noseeum argument”. He explains it with an example that there are bugs around us and we can only feel their bite but we cannot see them, in the same way how is it possible that there is no good in allowing this evil act to occur. How can we forget about freewill and if free will does not work than is it true that seeing no good really gives us the evidence to believe that there is no good? Another point to be mentioned here, life dwells upon uncertainty. For example we know that four years of hard work in a renowned University, confirms us a highly paid job. But it does not confirm a “no recession” year for the coming years. Or that a drunk driver will not hit me and leave me paralyzed for the rest of my life!
Following the same line of argument Athea adds that an omnipotent God would have been able to give freedom and make people do the right thing, and keeping this case in mind it clearly shows that there is no God, as this act is of evil. Besides, he gives an example of a mother who sometimes allows her child to do certain things so that the child can learn from their wrong doings. If necessary then the mother can intervene and so can God. But he does not and ends that there is no God. Bea brings out a valid point here, “May be Bo was first going to kill the whole family, and God intervened by helping Iris to knock him out.” This then brings them all in one position and they all agree “God can sometimes intervene without destroying this good of freedom.” Accordingly it is continued that it could be that God intervenes for limited number of times such as a threshold and after that he stops so that the being does not feel that he lacks freedom of action. This concept is termed as “freedom threshold”.
Bea than talks about a very important philosopher Richard Swinburne who criticizes this “There is, he says no reason to think that God is in the same position as we are. For one thing, if God exists he knows much more than we do; and differences in knowledge can make differences in duties. If someone is choking, it might be right for a doctor to cut open his throat but wrong for me (lacking his medical knowledge or skill) to do so.”
Keeping the above example in mind, if I am choking I will expect my family or friend to take me to a doctor or call an ambulance and not try open my throat. Or, he/she can even call the doctor and probably ask for instructions that could be taken till the time we get a proper assistance.
They all turn to Athea’s (p2) and Bea explains his two objections against this argument. He renames the “noseeum argument” to “noseeum rule” and gives an example of strep virus. Not seeing something does not give us a strong ground to believe that it does not exist like the virus. His second point is that whether there is some good purposed God justifying this murder, and calls it “God-purposed good”. Further he explains if we cannot see a being as such does not mean that there is no such being. In relation to this, another example. We cannot say that there is no other world than this. There could be world where everything is mechanized in a different way. We do not have the knowledge of that certain world therefore forces us to believe that there is not any, but there couldbe. There is a swift turn towards the argument of Stephen Wykstra, who observes “God’s mind can grasp goods that are beyond our ken. The idea, then, is that since God grasps goods beyond our ken, we have reason to think it likely that the goods in relation to which God permits many sufferings that occur would be unknown to us”, His reasoning’s are presented by Athea; 1. “God’s mind grasps goods beyond our ken 2. It is likely that the goods in relation to which God permits sufferings are beyond our ken and concludes with: 3. It is likely that many of the sufferings in the world do not appear to have a point- we can’t see what goods justify God permitting them.”
Against this they start discussing William Rowe’s argument who concludes that if there is God who has knowledge beyond ours than he would know the reasons of suffering and a concept of “moral depth” comes in connection. That God would allow evil only if it serves some outweighing good. Hence they end the conversation with the narrowed concept of “evil counts against theism”.
The above explication shows that Athea has a strong ground to believe that there is no God. I disagree with Athea on that. Despite the fact there are evil surroundings, and I strongly believe on Free will. Bo, had the freedom to choose to kill his six year old daughter. It could be possible that he did not want to kill her, and was going to kill his wife, and Carrie tried to stop, which made him aggressive and this resulted to Carrie’s death. It could be that God’s intervention meant nothing to him, maybe he was an atheist. Not to forget the example of sourness of milk, and that a person who has cold will not know whether the milk is sour or not. Above all we will need a further explanation for this. Firstly, whether the person has coldor not. If he does than he will not be able to smell the sourness of the milk. In the same way it necessary to find out what made Bo perform such an act, and not jumping to conclusions.
On the other hand Bea, disagrees with Athea, and holds strong on free will. I wholly agree with him. This dialogue does not give evidence to believe that there was no intervention by God. It was solely up to Bo, to be responsible of his activity. In the same way a company is held responsible if there is a downfall in their share price. For further judgment, it could be that the company was not hiring proper employees, where as they had all the pros and cons of each prospective employee in front of them. Similarly, it could be that Bo, could absolutely see or understand what he is doing. It could also be that he was drunk while he performed this act. Wasn’t this his free will to drink. All the above possibilities, makes me believe that free will is of utmost importance in our lives. If there is God, who has given us free will than we are misusing it.