The distinction between logical and evidential arguments is not a mere academic quibble; it is the difference between asserting that God and evil cancel each other out and saying that they make each other deeply uncomfortable. The first is a knife, the second a slow grind. 5 min read.
When Epicurus first asked whether God is willing but not able, or able but not willing, he planted a seed that grew into two distinct trees. The first tree, the logical problem, flourished in the mid-twentieth century with philosophers like J.L. Mackie and H.J. McCloskey. It claimed that theistic belief is irrational because it contains a formal contradiction: if God is omnipotent, he can prevent evil; if omniscient, he knows about it; if perfectly good, he wants to prevent it. Yet evil exists. Therefore, no such God can exist.
Alvin Plantinga's free will defense argued that this contradiction is not actually a contradiction. It is logically possible that God created a world containing evil because that was the only way to secure the great good of creaturely free will. Plantinga's point was not to show that this story is likely true, but only that it is possible. In logic, a single possible scenario that includes both God and evil suffices to defeat the claim of outright inconsistency. Most philosophers now agree that the logical problem is dead.
The evidential problem, however, survived the funeral. William Rowe and Paul Draper shifted the battlefield from logic to evidence. They did not argue that God and evil are formally contradictory; they argued that the concrete facts of suffering diminish the probability that God exists. A fawn dying in a forest fire, a child with leukemia, a village swallowed by a tsunami—these are not merely abstract placeholders for "evil." They are actual events with built-in negative features. If God existed and had the traditional attributes, we would expect such pointless suffering to be absent. It is not absent. Hence, God's existence is less probable than it would be otherwise.
The distinction matters because it changes what counts as a successful response. For the logical problem, you only need a plausible counterexample; for the evidential problem, you need to argue that the appearance of pointlessness is misleading, perhaps by appealing to inscrutable divine purposes (skeptical theism) or by constructing a full-blown theodicy that accounts for each type of suffering.
The shift from logical to evidential mirrors a broader movement in philosophy away from armchair deduction and toward messy empiricism. It is also a movement of humility: we no longer claim to have proven God impossible, only that the evidence weighs heavily. Both sides now argue with probabilities, which is perhaps the most honest posture available to finite minds.
| Dimension | Logical Problem | Evidential Problem |
|---|---|---|
| Core Claim | God and evil cannot coexist; belief is contradictory. | God and evil may coexist, but observed suffering makes God's existence unlikely. |
| Epistemic Status | A priori, deductive | A posteriori, inductive |
| Key Proponents | Epicurus, J.L. Mackie, H.J. McCloskey | William Rowe, Paul Draper, John Schellenberg |
| Standard Response | Free will defense (possible explanation) | Skeptical theism, soul-making theodicy, defense |
| Current Status | Widely considered unsuccessful | Active and unresolved |
One of the most striking differences is how each version treats the concept of "pointless evil." In the logical argument, any evil at all triggers the contradiction. In the evidential argument, the focus shifts to gratuitous evil—suffering that appears to serve no greater good. Rowe's famous fawn example is designed to show that such gratuitous evil exists. If theists can prove that all evil is theologically necessary, the evidential argument loses its force. But that proof has proven elusive.
For those who study the debate, the comparison is not just historical. It reveals how philosophy matures: from the arrogant certainty of contradictions to the cautious calculus of probabilities. The logical problem asked for a knockdown blow; the evidential problem asks for a fair trial. The first is a murder mystery with a missing corpse; the second is a courtroom drama with a mountain of circumstantial evidence.
Referenced Works & Texts
- J.L. Mackie, Evil and Omnipotence, Mind (1955).
- Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (1974).
- William L. Rowe, The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism (1979).
- Paul Draper, Pain and Pleasure: An Evidential Problem for Theists (1989).
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