Micah Edvenson

The argument for atheism from the problem of evil can be strengthened by taking advantage of the traditional view that God’s existence, if possible, is necessary. Given that, if there is just one possible world in which there are evils that cannot be reconciled with God’s existence, God does not exist in any world. This argument has been tried before, but the major obstacle it faces is that in appealing to situations much worse than any in the actual world, the genuine possibility of the imagined situations might reasonably be called into question. We argue that this obstacle can be overcome by considering a couple of “near misses”: situations that seem obviously possible because they nearly happened. We identify two such situations and defend two critical claims. The first is that, absent any independent warrant for theism, there is excellent reason to believe these situations are genuinely possible. The second is that in the worlds thus delineated, there are evils that cannot be excused by any plausible theodicy. Call this the argument from possible inexcusable evil. Our main thesis is the modest one that absent independent warrant for theism, the argument from possible inexcusable evil is a cogent argument for atheism. Further, however, we suggest that a stronger thesis may be warranted, since the way the argument works may well block independent evidence for theism—at least, independent evidence of the sort that is especially relevant in the context of disputes over the significance of evil.