The Problem of Evil - Common Sense Atheism

Lecture 4
The Global Argument from Evil
By the global argument from evil, I understand the following argument
(or any argument sufficiently similar to it that the two arguments
stand or fall together): We find vast amounts of truly horrendous evil
in the world; if there were a God, we should not find vast amounts
of horrendous evil in the world; there is, therefore, no God. (The
global argument from evil, you will remember, is named by contrast
to the many local arguments from evil, arguments that proceed from
premises concerning some particular evil. It is my position that the
global argument from evil and local arguments from evil are best treated
separately.)
I will preface my examination of this argument with a defense of the
moral propriety of examining it. My preface is by no means shadowboxing.
It is quite common for people to say that to examine the
argument from evil (in any of its forms), to treat it as if it were just one
more philosophical argument, an argument whose virtues and defects
could and should be weighed by impartial reason, is a sign of moral
insensitivity—or downright wickedness. One might suppose that no
argument was exempt from critical examination. One might suppose
that if an argument had sufficient force that it would be intellectually
dishonest for the opponents of its conclusion to ignore it (a feature that
many ascribe to the argument from evil), it would follow that it would
be intellectually dishonest for advocates of its conclusion to forbid the
opponents of the conclusion to criticize it. But those people to whom I
have alluded assert, and with considerable vehemence, that it is extremely
insensitive (or extremely wicked) to examine the argument from evil
with a critical eye. Here, for example, is a famous passage from John
Stuart Mill’s Three Essays on Religion (pp. 186–7):
We now pass to the moral attributes of the Deity, so far as indicated in the
Creation; or (stating the problem in the broadest manner) to the question,
what indications Nature gives of the purposes of its author. This question bears