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Much of the literature on religious fictionalism has emphasized that religious fictionalists employing a theistic fiction cannot just leave evil out of the fiction, and that on the contrary, they face worries that very closely parallel the worries raised by the problem of evil. This article argues that when religious fictionalism is construed most charitably, these worries do not arise. It explores three fictionalist approaches to evil (Excision, Completeness, and Inconsistency), shows that each can serve religious fictionalist ends, and recommends a pluralist stance towards them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Book of Job treats of the Problem of Evil. It is divided into two documents: (1) the framework story, that is, the Prologue and the Epilogue (Job 1:1–2:13; 42:7–17); and (2) the speeches by Job, his friends, and God. In the framework story, Job is presented as a just man who serves God in good times and bad (Job 1:21; 2:10). In the speeches, God is accused by Job of 'destroying the hope of man' (Job 14:19). God replies with an ad hominem argument: 'Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?' (Job 38:4). If God argues that it is unfair for humans to judge God, Job argues that it is unfair for God to judge humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

William R. Rowe argues for the low probability of the existence of God given our ignorance of the goods that come from apparently gratuitous evils. After exploring this argument, I present Stephen Wykstra's response, which is known as 'sceptical theism', focusing on the evocation of the so-called 'parent analogy'. According to the parent analogy, God's knowledge, compared to ours, is analogous to the comparison between a parent's knowledge and a one-month-old infant's. After pointing out some difficulties with this analogy, I develop an improved version of sceptical theism. My main point is that the most valuable disinterested love and awe for God can be best developed in a world with two evils: our ignorance about most of the justifying goods and the apparent divine absence to sufferers. Moreover, since disinterested love and awe for God bring numerous benefits to human beings, God has good reasons for creating a world with these two evils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of theistic philosophers have recently denied that God is subject to moral and rational norms. At the same time, many theists employ epistemological and inductive arguments for the existence of God. I will argue that 'no-norms' theists cannot make use of such arguments: if God is not subject to norms – particularly rational norms – then we can say nothing substantive about what kind of worlds God would be likely to create, and as such, we cannot predict the likelihood of any particular evidence given theism. What is more, I argue that this lack of constraint on God's creative act raises a serious sceptical challenge for no-norms theism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his article, 'What's Wrong with Tooley's Argument from Evil?', Calum Miller's goal was to show that the evidential argument from evil that I have advanced is unsound, and in support of that claim, Miller set out three main objections. First, he argued that I had failed to recognize that the actual occurrence of an event can by itself, at least in principle, constitute good evidence that it was not morally wrong for God to allow events of the kind in question. Miller's second objection was then that, in attempting to show that it is unlikely that God exists, I had failed to consider either positive arguments in support of the existence of God or possible theodicies, and thus that I was unjustified in drawing any conclusions concerning the probability that theism is true in the light of the total evidence available. Miller's third and final objection was that one of the approaches to logical probability that I employed – namely, that based upon a structure-description equiprobability principle, rather than a state-description equiprobability principle – was unsound since it has clearly unacceptable implications. In response, I argue that all three of Miller's objections are unsound. The third objection, however, is nevertheless important since it shows that my type of argument from evil cannot be based merely on the evils found in the world. One must also consider good states of affairs, and their relations to bad ones. I show, however, that that deficiency can be addressed in a completely satisfactory manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I show that: (1) There is a transcendence strain in African Traditional Religion (ATR) and traditional African thought that agrees perfectly with traditional monotheism and legitimizes the question of the relation of God with evil in the world. (2) There is incontrovertible evidence of the conception of God as a limited deity that subverts the categories of omnipotence and omniscience. (3) African philosophers of religion must show how a transcendent or, conversely, a limited God is related to the evil that exists in the world, since the overwhelming stance of ATR is that God is the creator of the world and wields effective power. I substitute the categories of omnipotence and omniscience with the novel categories of power and glory and argue that while a powerful and glorious God is not the author of evil and cannot eliminate evil in the world, such a God can be conceived as working to reduce the evil in the world through the instrumentality of human moral agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]