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Ivan Karamazov is a Hopeless Romantic

Ivan Karamazov, from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, is often paraded across the philosophical literature on the problem of evil, made to stand as an example of a particular kind of argument from evil, one that is concerned not with the quantity or severity of evil in this world but with a certain qualitative type of evil. I think Ivan is often misunderstood. Or rather, Dostoevsky is often misunderstood, in the way that Ivan is put to use in the context of the philosophy of religion. […]
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Evaluative Claims within the Problem of Evil

When it comes to the problem of evil, I’ve always felt there was something wrong with someone trying to argue for a factual conclusion on the basis of moral premises. Saying ‘God does not exist’ sounds an awful lot like a statement of a fact, like a claim that ‘no human being that exists is over 10ft tall’, but the grounds for this fact are at times little more than a report of your moral feelings. Ordinarily, we wouldn’t give this kind of argument the time of day. […]
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Consequentialism, Instrumentalism, Unrestricted: A Dilemma for Theodicy

A collection of moral anti-theodicy’s accusations revolve around theodicy’s being either covertly or overtly consequentialist or instrumentalist in its moral reasoning. According to theodicy, all evils are capable of being justified on consequentialist grounds. As long as the consequence is worth the cost, and as long as the consequence is realised, then there is no problem. There is a problem here, though, because we would not normally endorse such an unrestricted consequentialism, and it’s particularly unusual for theists to do so. Are there no limits on what can be permitted in order to reach our goal? […]
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Theodicy is Morally Insensitive

Theodicy doesn’t take the evils of the world seriously enough. It’s always trying to downplay and diminish and claim that things aren’t as bad as they seem. In the construction of theodicy, routine examples are used such as trips to the dentist, cars breaking down, or discordant music. You’ll rarely find a theodicy explicitly discussing the worst evils in the world. Not many theodicists are willing to openly defend the value of child abuse or genocide. They stick to the easy cases. […]
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What is Moral Anti-Theodicy?

If theodicy is the attempt to offer a morally-sufficient justification for the evils of the world, moral anti-theodicy is the morally-motivated rejection of that justification. Moral anti-theodicy doesn’t dispute that it’s possible to solve the problem of evil in the way that theodicy suggests; what it disputes is whether it’s permissible to solve the problem of evil in this way. To paraphrase a “famous scientist”: Theodicists spent so much time wondering if they could find a justification for all the evils of the world, they never stopped to think if they should. […]



