See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/329799647

Some Philosophical Objections to Paul Draper’s Evidential Problem from Pain

and Pleasure

Article · December 2018

CITATIONS READS

0 772

1 author:

Bon Ha Gu
Biola University
11 PUBLICATIONS   0 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Some Philosophical Objections to Paul Draper’s Evidential Problem from Pain and Pleasure View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Bon Ha Gu on 20 December 2018.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Introduction
Evidential or probabilistic arguments of evil1 have enjoyed sustained philosophical

debate since William Rowe’s formal inception of his argument in 1978.2 More recently, Paul

Draper’s indirect inductive version has similarly generated a wealth of discussion, and according

to some “… exemplified [the argument] best”3 and “…is the strongest version… [which] raises

the bar in the debate over the evidential argument.”4

In this paper, I shall survey the notable contours of the argument as raised by Draper and

present what I think are the strongest objections to them.

Draper’s Argument Restated5

Draper argues that pain and pleasure together pose an epistemic challenge for theists, as

they make up pertinent facts about that world that bear a “certain significant negative evidential

relation to theism.”6 He defines theism (T) as the following ontologically committing statement:

“There exists an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect person who created the Universe.”7

Draper complains that previous permutations of evidential arguments proved deficient as they

failed to supply an alternate description that accounted for the pain and pleasure in the world.8

He thus appeals to Hume’s inductive strategy and proposes the alternate Hypothesis of

Indifference (HI), which he defines as follows: “neither the nature nor the condition of sentient

1
As opposed to the logical problem of evil, the evidential version (also called the a posteriori or
inductive version) seeks to demonstrate that the magnitude, variety, distribution, and duration of evil—
though logically consistent with God’s existence—counts as positive evidence against the truth of God’s
existence.
2
William L. Rowe, Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction, first edition. (Encino, CA: Dickenson
Publishing Company and Rowe, 1978) and William L. Rowe, “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of
Atheism,” American Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1979): 335-41.
3
Nick Trakakis, “The Evidential Argument of Evil.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Accessed December 10, 2018. https://www.iep.utm.edu/evil-evi/#H2.
4
Gregory E. Ganssle, "God and Evil," in The Rationality of Theism, ed. Paul Copan and Paul K.
Moser (Routledge, 2003), pp. 259-277.
5
Paul Draper, "Pain and Pleasure: An Evidential Problem for Theists." Nous Vol. 23, No. 3 (June
1989): 331-350.
6
Draper, “Pain and Pleasure,” 328
7
Ibid.
8
Ibid., pp. 328-330.
beings on earth is the result of benevolent or malevolent actions performed by nonhumans

persons.”9

Draper remarks that while holding to both HI and theism is inconsistent, HI and certain

types of supernaturalism or deism are compatible, as HI makes no positive ontological claims,

but holds only that such a ‘neutral’ position is supported by pain and pleasure being entirely

biological. The incompatibility only rises for T because the theist moreover affirms that God

cares for or is responsible in some sense for sentient beings.10 This makes T evidentially heftier

than HI, because it necessitates some more fundamental explanation for the pain and pleasure

within the biological scheme (e.g., there being some moral utility to the pain experienced by

creatures, or the experience of biological pain and pleasure being contingent on God’s

overarching plan of some sort, etc.).11

Draper then turns our attention towards “O,”12 which is “a statement reporting both the

observations one has made of humans and animals experiencing pain or pleasure and the

testimony one has encountered concerning the observations others have made of sentient beings

experiencing pain or pleasure.”13 Draper argues that both HI and T need to account for O, or the

distribution of pain and pleasure in the world we all hold as self-evident. Draper then poses a

9
Draper, “Pain and Pleasure,” 329.
10
Hence, T is burdened with the task of accounting for O (which we take as true) by positing reasons for
why a morally perfect being would allow O, while also maintaining said being’s goodness.
11
Draper hence argues, “The Indifference Hypothesis is clearly an alternative hypothesis to [T]…[T] is a
very specific supernaturalist hypothesis with strong ontological commitments…the Indifference Hypothesis is
consistent with naturalism as well as with many supernaturalist hypothesis and its ontological commitments are
much weaker than T’s.” Ibid. 110.
12
Moreover, Draper elucidates three subtypes of O, namely O1, O2, and O3, that when combined are
exhaustive of all reports of O (viz. take into account all possible biological accounts of pain and pleasure
experiences): “1) Moral agents experiencing pain or pleasure that we know to be biologically useful, 2) Sentient
beings that are not moral agents experiencing pain or pleasure that we know to be biologically useful, and 3)
Sentient beings experiencing pain or pleasure that we do not know to be biologically useful.” But for the sake of
space, I shall forego detailing a critique of O1, O2, and O3 and just focus on O.
13
Draper, “Pain and Pleasure,” 329

1
formidable question: given the reports of O and the reality of the Problem of Evil (POE), which

account—T or HI—is better equipped to explain them? Draper argues for the truth of proposition

C: “HI explains the facts O reports much better than theism does.”14

To demonstrate that this is indeed this case, Draper employs the Bayesian scheme and

focuses on one epistemic concept in particular: on the assumption that either HI or T is true, what

should be expected?15 Draper offers two reasons to favor HI over T. For one, ‘biologically

gratuitous’ pain—or accounts of pain without offsetting moral and biological benefits—are real

features of sentient experience (e.g., the pain from extreme burns that results in one’s dying).

Moreover, given T’s commitment to an omnipotent, morally perfect being, goal-directed organic

systems (including humans) could have been created without biologically useful pain and

pleasure. And given the fact that on T, pain is considered intrinsically bad and pleasure

intrinsically good, one would assume that such a being would maximize the latter, and minimize

the former. But given the magnitude, duration, and distribution of pain (from the reports of O),

on the assumption that T is true, what we observe in the world is surprising or evidentially

unexpected.16 On the other hand, on the assumption that HI is true, since pain and pleasure are

only biologically motivated for survival and reproduction, what we observe is what we should

expect.

14
Draper, “Pain and Pleasure,” 330
15
I owe this point to Peter J. Morgan.
16
Alvin Plantinga utilizes the alternate: “evidentially challenged” in his critique in "On Being
Evidentially Challenged," in The Evidential Argument from Evil, ed. Daniel Howard-Snyder (Indiana
University Press, 1996), pp. 244-261.

2
 Hence, Draper reasons that HI accounts for the reality of pain and pleasure and the POE

far better than on T, and is initially as plausible, and is thus a serious explanatory contender.

This, for Draper, is prima facie epistemic justification to favor HI over T.17

Some Epistemic Concerns

Draper’s assumption of HI’s being logically incompatible with theism is not

obviously true.18 Particularly given the evolutionary scheme to which Draper conforms,

Pain [may possibly be] an indispensable component of the evolutionary process after
organisms have reached a certain stage of complexity. And, for all we know, the
amount of pain that organisms have experienced in the actual world, or some amount
morally equivalent to that amount, is necessary for the natural evolution of conscious
animals.19
Hence, the theist may reasonably conjecture that an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally

perfect being gave rise to a “neutral environment in which evolution could take place in a

chancy way, and who afterwards did not intervene in any way…”20 Indeed, contra Draper,

God might use a mechanism like natural selection as long as the achieved end result is one

along the lines of organisms with sufficient mental capacities to become human.21 So, a

theist can argue that this would prima facie be consistent with the views of some theistic

evolutionists. But if this is the case, both T and HI would be true simultaneously, because

the condition of sentient beings would be contingent on the creative decree of this

nonhuman person who—for reasons inscrutable to us—choose to stay aloof thereafter. So,

at the most, we can infer from Draper’s contention that it is not clear that HI entails ∼T.22

17
Draper, “Pain and Pleasure,” 328
18
Ibid. and Michael Tooley, "The Problem of Evil", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2015
Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL=<https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/evil/>.
19
Peter van Inwagen, "The Problem of Evil, the Problem of Air, and the Problem of Silence,"
in Philosophical Perspectives, 5, Philosophy of Religion, 1991, ed. James E. Tomberlin (Ridgeview Publishing Co.,
1991), 147.
20
Tooley, “The Problem of Evil.”
21
Dennis Jensen, “Pain, Pleasure, and Evolution: An Analysis of Paul Draper’s Critique of Theism.”
Accessed December 10, 2018. https://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1999/PSCF3-99Jensen.html.
22
Tooley, “The Problem of Evil.”

3
 Another epistemic concern, which is central to Draper’s case, is his conceptualization of

O, which is the assemblage of reports that bear a significant negative evidential relation to T.

What is important to note is that O is an epistemic datum. This means that my O, or the facts

about the distribution, magnitude, and variety of pain and pleasure, may be significantly different

from another person’s. My O would also be based on my epistemic exposure to things (e.g., if I

witness a murder of a family member, I may have a profoundly pessimistic O compared to

someone who’s had an overall good life). This makes P(O/HI) person-relative and perhaps

woefully unreliable to function as a datum in an argument as different people have different

epistemic situations.23

Sentience and the Uniformity of Pain

Moreover, Draper’s argument rests on a biological foundation that presupposes sentient

awareness. But sentience may necessarily require the potential to experience pain. This would

mean that higher-level sentient creatures may not be able to exist (much less created) without the

very capacity for pain. And given our epistemic condition, sentience is necessarily intertwined

with organic systems (which Draper acknowledges), which are contingent on a complex nervous

system. These organic systems are, by default, goal-directed, and are responsible for drive-

fulfilling behaviors, like “eating, avoiding being eaten, staying away from danger, and

successfully reproducing.”24

But the directionality of these goal-oriented systems demands that they can also be

unfulfilled or even depleted (e.g., goals are unattained, or are in the process of being

attained, etc.); and it is exactly the awareness of these ‘privations’ that is—at least in

23
Alvin Plantinga, "On Being Evidentially Challenged," in The Evidential Argument from Evil, ed.
Daniel Howard-Snyder (Indiana University Press, 1996), 244.
24
Ganssle, "God and Evil," 269.

4
part—what motivates creatures to engage in goal-directed behaviors. Without a void to

replenish (e.g., a deer is not frustrated after not having eaten for a week), the creature

would have no instincts or desires—no need for provisions, no biological necessities to

satisfy. This strips organisms of all attributes that classify them as biological. It may very

well be the case that the presence of unfulfilled drives may bear “sufficient sentient

discontent,” which may lead to irregularities in organism development and functioning;

pain in this sense may be ineradicable.

So one can argue that, epistemically, a contradiction may entail to hold creatures to

be, on one hand, biological—which accepts their operating on organic systems constituted

of drives—and their being entirely unable to feel pain (or experiencing frustration or

discontent of some sort) as a result of their inability to satisfy said instincts, on the other.

This would be akin to holding to the proposition that creatures that necessarily require

provisions like food, shelter, and sex for survival and propagation should remain in a

perfectly hedonic homeostasis even without said needs.

However, Draper further contends that the pain experienced by creatures is,

nevertheless, profuse and disproportionate; his complaint, in essence, is a gripe against the

uniform phenomenology of pain—not just the distribution and duration—but the

consistent intensity of pain perceived by creatures. For example, Draper bears no qualms

with a cat recoiling its hand upon making contact with a hot stove—this is just part of the

mechanism that motivates its survival. But Draper takes issue that a fawn would die from

extreme pain as a result of severe burn wounds. This, in his eyes, lacks any

counterbalancing benefit or biological utility; Draper takes occurrences like these as

biologically useless and strong evidence for HI and against T.

5
 However, philosophers like Peter van Inwagen think otherwise, and writes that if

we are to take Draper’s remonstration as veridical, our world would be a “massively

irregular world, in which the laws of nature fail in some massive way.”25 Given that the

uniformity of the laws of nature are assumed in many fields in the natural sciences (like

physics and chemistry) as indicative of proper order or even teleology, so too can the theist

argue from the brute uniformity of pain in the sentient schema; and perhaps to endorse its

converse (e.g., the fire that can warm you cannot ever burn you; the water that can

replenish you cannot ever drown you) would lead one to accept that there is an inherently

defective feature in the world, namely, that the regularity and uniformity of the laws of

nature are inapt machinations and that they should, on occasion, be suspended (or not take

effect) for particularized instances of pain one perceives as profuse or disproportionate.

But here lies the central issue: Draper’s protest, again, takes an epistemic mold and

is observer-relative, which entails that the ‘sufficient hurt’ experienced as to warrant a

‘break’ in the regularity of the laws of nature would differ from person-to-person. Not only

would this kind of view be artificial and ad hoc, but as Van Inwagen notes, so massively

irregular that it would constitute a graver defect in the actualized world, which would call

into question the creative competency—if he were to exist—of a designer of such a well-

tempered world.26

Furthermore, a part of Draper’s argument rests on an assumptive epistemology:

that we indeed do know of many human (or even creaturely) states of affairs that motivate

survival and reproduction. But by the same token, we are aware of many other states of

25
Van Inwagen, "The Problem of Evil, Air, and Silence," 145.
26
Ibid., pp. 149-150.

6
affairs where the organic goals of survival and reproduction are hazy, or prima facie not

directly (if at all) contributed in the grand biological scheme of things. Consider some

many human affairs that do not in any obvious way directly contribute to human

flourishing (in the purely biological sense): “Literature, poetry, music, art, mathematics,

logic, philosophy, nuclear physics, evolutionary biology, play, humor, exploration, and

adventure…”27 Indeed, much of these endeavors seem to have little bearing or contribution

in any meaningful way, to Draper’s twin biological aims. Perhaps a more acceptable

epistemological attitude would be Alvin Plantinga’s: “Perhaps we can say, with Draper,

that it isn't known that these don't have a biological explanation; but of course it is also not

known that they do. Furthermore, it is [one’s] epistemic situation that is at [the heart of

the] issue...”28 So, one can object that given one’s epistemic situation, there are many

human projects that do not prima facie appear to contribute in any significant way to

survival and reproduction and elude some clear-cut biological explanation; this strains

Draper’s overall argument quite considerably.

The Simplistic-ness of HI
Draper’s conceptualization of HI is also not bereft of issues. Though Draper proposes HI

as prima facie an epistemic contender and alternate hypothesis to theism, it is in actuality just the

negation of theism that lacks positive explanatory status—a null hypothesis. In other words,

Draper’s proposition that the nature and condition of sentient beings are not due to nonhuman

divine action is merely the converse of its theistic claim, or as Gregory Ganssle writes, “…a

hypothesis about what their explanation are not.”29

Plantinga, “On Being Evidentially Challenged,” 253.

27
28
Ibid. 256.
29
Ganssle, "God and Evil," 269. William Alson also opines: “But neither theism nor HI throws light in the
same way on the fact that O obtains. They merely tell us, in the case of theism, the kind of being that is ultimately

7
 This leads Draper to assume, erroneously, that HI remains unaccountable for other types

of evidence, indeed, evidence that prima facie may be epistemically more probable given T. For

instance, given Robin Collins’ argument from fine-tuning, William Lane Craig’s argument for

the existence of the universe, and J.P. Moreland’s argument from consciousness, theism is far

more likely to be an adequate account of the ‘whole’ world than HI, which even faces difficulties

accounting for the existence of a life-permitting universe inhabited by sentient agents capable of

making significant moral decisions.30 These arguments, moreover, and if successful, would

increase the intrinsic probability of theism, as to make it much more likely than HI, eliminating

intimations of evidential parity—even after taking O into account—comparisons between HI and

T may otherwise suggest.

What Draper must do—for his argument to have force—is to advance a particular

theory (a sub-theory of HI) that, for example, better explains the pain and pleasure

summarized by O, and specifies how exactly the theory calibrates with the scientific,

moral, and aesthetic facts of reality, as “each particular HI has [to have] its own theory of

morality and theory of beauty [among others, to be constituted a legitimate contender for

T].”31 But Van Inwagen explains why this may not be as easy as it appears:

…the Hypothesis of Indifference. This is not a very specific hypothesis: it tells us

only that the nature and condition of sentient beings on earth do not have a certain
(very narrowly delineated) cause. Perhaps it would not count as a proper
‘competitor’ with the quite specific thesis we have called ‘theism.’ Perhaps it would
be a consequence of your solution that only some proposition more specific than HI,

responsible and, in the case of HI, the kind of being that is not ultimately responsible. This would be like
the growth of plants that it is due to the sun, without saying what it is about the sun and its activity that
about.” In William Alston, "Some (Temporarily) Final Thoughts on Evidential Arguments From Evil,"
Evidential Argument from Evil, ed. Daniel Howard-Snyder (Indiana University Press, 1996), pp. 311-332.
Section VII, pp. 327-330
30
Ganssle writes, “…since a necessary condition for the existence of evil is that certain kinds of creatures
exist and the existence of these creatures requires that certain kind of universe exist, theism, prima facie, provides a
better explanation for the possibility of evil.” Ibid. 273
31
Ganssle, "God and Evil," 271.

8
 would properly be in competition with theism. And this proposition might face
difficulties of its own, difficulties not faced by HI.32

Nevertheless, and since Draper does not conjecture a more ‘global’ hypothesis that accounts for

these other pertinent data, even if HI were true and accounts for O better than T does, its

negligence of a large body of evidence leaves the posterior results of Draper’s probabilistic

equation much to be desired. And given the limited breadth of Draper’s hypothesis, proving HI

would at most only demonstrate that theism is false, not that HI is true. It may very well be the

case that the probability of a particular type of theism may far outstrip any particular HI upon

inspection of additional strands of confirmatory evidence given the appropriate background

information.33

Last, Draper’s understanding of HI’s being ontologically deflationary (viz. lacking

ontological commitment)—and hence antecedently more probable—is simply faulty.

Though Draper aptly notes that theism entails the commitment to the existence of an

ontologically supreme being, HI similarly “involves a completely universal generalization

about the absence of any action upon the earth by any nonhuman persons, of either a

benevolent or malevolent sort…”34 One approach to avoid this objection would be to

propose a specific version of HI, namely, “The Indifferent Deity Hypothesis,” where

Draper himself explains: “There exists an omnipotent and omniscient person who created

the Universe and who has no intrinsic concern about the pain or pleasure of other

beings.”35 But since Draper foregoes venturing this route, why the antecedent probability

32
Van Inwagen, "The Problem of Evil, Air, and Silence," 160.
33
Ganssle, "God and Evil," 273.
34
Tooley, “The Problem of Evil.”
35
Draper, “Pain and Pleasure,” 347.

9
of an HI simpliciter would be greater, let alone, significantly greater than T’s, remains to

be seen.

The Genericity of Draper’s T

Further, one could also argue that Draper’s argument is targeted at a strawman. Draper’s

usage of theism is theism with only its bare bones intact. Ganssle rightly calls this “minimalistic

theism,”36 which is a minimum commitment to a worldview wherein an omnipotent, omniscient,

morally perfect is responsible for the actualization of the creative order. Theism—cast in this

limelight—is a generic type of belief system uncharacteristic of any particular faith; it, therefore,

is unable to accommodate for any additional dogmas and doctrinal beliefs. Richard Otte reports

why this approach is problematic:

The main problem with Draper’s argument is that even if principle C were true, it would
have no consequences for the rationality of most theist’s religious beliefs. Most theists are
not mere theists, but instead are Christians, Muslims, or Jews. So unless principle C gives
one [the additional] reason to not be a Christian, Muslim, or a Jew, it will not be a
successful argument.37

What Draper must do to augment his case is to argue against a “particularistic theism,” or a

particular religion or faith like Christianity, Islam, or Judaism, which draws from a distinct set of

resources to combat the variegated challenges from evil. For example, “Christian

theism…requires the existence of pervasive moral and natural evil if it is to be true….If there

were no evil at all or only a small amount of evil, Christian theism would be known to be

false.”38 With these expanded beliefs included in the background knowledge, the odds for T

being true given O may potentially be cast in a more sanguine light. But Draper anticipates such

an objection and rejoins by proposing that Christian theism (CT) or any subset of theism suffers

from a lower initial (antecedent) probability compared to T; if T is low, CT is relatively lower;

36
Ganssle, "God and Evil," 270.
37
Otte, "Evidential Arguments From Evil," 2.
38
Ganssle, "God and Evil," 271.

10
one might summarize Draper’s position this way: “Thus, one might argue that if we have a

reason to not be a theist, we also have a reason to not be a Christian, Muslim, or Jew.”39

But Draper’s proposal remains unpersuasive for two reasons. First, Draper’s non-

neutral hypothesis of HI (which, as indicated above, is just the negation of theism) is

punctured with the same lacunas he consigns to the particular theisms. One of the

aforesaid conceptual problems with HI is its inability to account for alternate facts already

established about the world; to avoid this problem, Draper would need to provide a

particularistic HI, where he accounts for both the indifference of the universe and how his

theory sufficiently calibrates with the scientific, moral, and aesthetic facts of reality. But

this likewise entails that for any “particular HI,” it would have less intrinsic probability (or

have less initial probability to obtain) than an HI simpliciter. Ganssle explains:

…the plurality of HI turns out to be more severe than the plurality of theisms for two
basic reasons. First (and less important), there is actually less convergence than is
advertised in scientific theories. We have evolutionists who hold to gradual
transitions, and those who hold to punctuated equilibrium. Many think that the
universe is uncaused while some think it was caused by a timeless point. The second,
more important, problem is that a particular HI must explain not only what we might
call scientific facts; it must also explain other sorts of facts such as moral facts and
aesthetic facts. Each particular HI has its own theory of morality and a theory of
beauty.”40

Second, the issue Draper observes within theism is not that it is logically inconsistent.

Rather, he finds theism problematic because, the hypothesis of indifference, which is allegedly

antecedently superior—which is external to theism—is inconsistent with it.41 Draper’s reasoning

39
Otte, "Evidential Arguments From Evil," 2.
40
Ganssle, "God and Evil," 271.
41
Otte, "Evidential Arguments From Evil," 2.

11
is as follows: we have a reason to reject Christianity because the hypothesis of indifference is a

better alternative to theism.42 But Otte provides a counter:

To conclude from this that we have a reason to reject Christianity, Islam, and Judaism,
Draper would need to rely on some principle such as the following: If hypothesis H
[Christianity] implies hypothesis K [theism], and we have a reason to reject K because
there is a better alternative hypothesis AH [the hypothesis of indifference] that is
inconsistent with K, then we have a reason to reject H because of this alternative
hypothesis that is inconsistent with H.43

Here, the problems with Draper’s ratiocination become evident. Though one may argue that the

alternative hypothesis (HI) may evidentially outweigh hypothesis K (T), that does not logically

entail that HI will outweigh some hypothesis H (CT) that implies K (T).44 In order for this

statement to demand entailment, a particular HI would need to be set against a particular theism

(not mere theism), with respect to their respective background knowledge and confirmatory

evidence.

Moreover, though theism itself may not make specific statements regarding evil, one

would not hesitate to point out that Christianity, Islam, and Judaism imply the existence and

reality of evil in the actualized world. So though Draper’s C may be plausible when pit against

mere theism, the specific explanations or responses (or ‘theological expansions’) from

Christianity, Islam, and Judaism need to be factored into the equation before one can “prima

facie” give an adequate account of whether HI is “on better footing” epistemically than

Christianity, Islam, or Judaism.45 For instance, and taking into consideration Christian theism,

certain reports detailed in O are implied by the faith;46 for example, specific types of pain and

42
Otte, "Evidential Arguments From Evil," 3.
43
Ibid.
44
Ibid.
45
Ibid., 4.
46
Consider the wise words of Dennis Jensen: “With the Fall, we find pain and pleasure more
clearly present and tied to survival purposes. Perhaps humans had to return to something more of their
prehuman nature. No longer would they have the direct communication and presence of God to protect
them. They would need the motivation of natural pleasure and pain to keep them alive and reproducing. Yet

12
pleasure, both specific and general, are told to occur in the world under Christianity. Therefore,

from the outset, P(O/CH) is greater than P(O/T).

So, it becomes apparent that while Draper’s argument is worthy of consideration for a

theist, it remains irrelevant to those who are not mere theists. So, to the extent that Draper’s

argument is applicable (to a small subset of religious beliefs called theism), “the hypothesis of

indifference is the better alternative. But when the hypothesis of indifference is compared with

his or her complete religious beliefs, the complete religious beliefs [may perhaps be] the better

alternative.”47 But since people are seldom only theists (viz. believe only that an omniscient,

omnipotent, morally perfect being exists), the Christian, Muslim, or Jew is not at all

epistemically obligated to HI and thereby need not relinquish his or her religious beliefs. On the

contrary, the total assemblage of a Christian’s religious beliefs may be —in the fuller panorama

of the evidence—the better alternative.

Last, a particular theist can marshal the same critique against Draper. Since HI targets a

specific subset of beliefs (theism, for example), a theist can similarly criticize the person who

holds to HI. Since HI comprise only a small set of beliefs held by the HI proponent, and this

person may likely hold many other beliefs (e.g., “most people, including those who accept HI,

are not logically omniscient and believe something that is necessarily false”48), the probability of

with their fully human mental capacities, and possibly as part of God's punishment or curse, their pain would not be
would not be mitigated as it is with the other higher animals. Although other theodicies apply as well, certainly the
certainly the Jobian theodicy applies to such apparently random pain. Everyone must suffer pain in order to answer
answer Job's question: "Will I remain true to the God who deserves my commitment though I'm drawn emotionally
emotionally (not rationally) to reject God for allowing this?" It is also important that we notice that even if the first
the first sin had no effect on human nature, a random distribution of pain and pleasure will be inevitable to the
the degree that people are free to inflict or bestow them on others.” Jensen, “Pain, Pleasure, and Evolution.”
47
Otte, "Evidential Arguments From Evil," 4.
48
Ibid., 6.

13
pain and evil in the actualized world set relative to those insular beliefs, may be lower (or

significantly lower) than when it is conditional on mere theism.49

So, a central issue with Draper’s argument is that it examines only a narrow subset of

theistic belief, namely, what just follows from the very definition of theism. So even if Draper’s

argument were true, the majority of the particular theist’s beliefs are left unaffected. At the very

least, “[Christians, Muslims, and Jews] can easily admit that O is unlikely on T, that their

religious beliefs logically imply T, and yet they can also consistently hold that O is very likely,

even certain, on their religious beliefs.”50

Conclusion
We have sampled a multitude of objections to Draper’s evidential argument against

theism from pain and pleasure. Most notably, Draper’s approach is problematic because it zeroes

in on mere theism, instead of rebutting a particular belief system. Furthermore, Draper’s HI—

which is conceptually unadorned—requires repair for it to be considered a serious explanatory

contender with respect to its epistemic targets. Draper also remains too fixated on the presence of

evil (i.e., biological pain) in the world and thereby ignores other pertinent pieces of data that may

drastically alter his epistemic weighings. Hence, and in my estimation, the inferences Draper

adduces, including his most cardinal “we have prima facie good reason to reject theism given

HI,” are unfounded and evidentially insignificant for the particular theist. And since Draper’s

argument sets out to disconfirm the claims of particular theists (by arguing, by proxy, against

theists), I conclude that he misses his mark with this present argument.

49
Ibid., pp. 4-5
50
Otte, "Evidential Arguments From Evil," 5.

14
 Works Cited
Alvin Plantinga, "On Being Evidentially Challenged," in The Evidential Argument from Evil, ed.
Daniel Howard-Snyder (Indiana University Press, 1996), pp. 244-261.

Dennis Jensen, “Pain, Pleasure, and Evolution: An Analysis of Paul Draper’s Critique of
Theism.” Accessed December 10, 2018. https://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1999/PSCF3-
99Jensen.html.

Gregory E. Gannssle, "God and Evil," in The Rationality of Theism, ed. Paul Copan and Paul K.
Moser (Routledge, 2003), pp. 259-277. See "Draper's Evidential Argument," pp. 265-
274.

Michael Tooley, "The Problem of Evil", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2015
Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.),
URL=<https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/evil/>.

Nick Trakakis, “The Evidential Argument of Evil.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Accessed
December 10, 2018.

Paul Draper, "Pain and Pleasure: An Evidential Problem for Theists." Nous Vol. 23, No. 3 (June
1989): 331-350.

Peter van Inwagen, "The Problem of Evil, the Problem of Air, and the Problem of Silence,"
in Philosophical Perspectives, 5, Philosophy of Religion, 1991, ed. James E. Tomberlin
(Ridgeview Publishing Co., 1991).

Richard Otte, "Evidential Arguments From Evil," International Journal for Philosophy of
Religion 48 (2000), 1-10.

William Alston, "Some (Temporarily) Final Thoughts on Evidential Arguments From Evil,"
in The Evidential Argument from Evil, ed. Daniel Howard-Snyder (Indiana University
Press, 1996), pp. 311-332. See Section VII, pp. 327-330

15

View publication stats