Posted: Jan 30, 2017 12:55 am
archibald wrote:Tracer Tong wrote:archibald wrote:Tracer Tong wrote: I quite enjoyed Plantinga's God, Freedom and Evil
The problem of evil is just, I think, a subset of the problem of all suffering, in which an infant in Africa contracts River Blindness (humans are the only known host for the roundworm responsible) or another infant gets leukemia, or thousands die after a tsunami. As such, I confess I think trying to address the problem of evil is essentially dodging the point.
What you're calling the "problem of all suffering" is what philosophers refer to as the problem of evil, albeit a specific version of it. As for Plantinga, whether you agree with what he has to say or not, he certainly doesn't dodge any issue.
What does Plantinga say about the sorts of things I mentioned?
I think he makes some passing remarks. He's more focused (at least in the part of the book that deals with the problem of evil) on Mackie's logical problem of evil. His refutation was generally seen as successful, including by Mackie himself.