The Problem of Evil Revisited

Published: Oct. 7, 2022, 3:13 p.m.

"Abstract": Standard approaches to the problem of evil seem to treat good and bad events as objective and rank-ordered on an absolute scale. Intuitively, however, whether something is good or bad depends on what you value, and what you value in turn depends on what kind of person you are and the events that have shaped the course of your life. In desiring any significantly different existence, therefore, you risk wishing away the very circumstances that make it possible for you to appreciate whatever it is you are wishing for. Conversely, the best of all possible worlds--or at least the best possible past--has a way of being whatever actually happened, almost purely in virtue of the fact that it happened. These reflexive observations make the problem of evil--effectively the question of whether our circumstances bespeak divine providence or negligence--"inevaluable" as standardly posed. Such "inevaluability" is the key theme that this episode circles around. For it and other insights I am indebted to my friend Luke Thompson, to whom this episode is dedicated.