That's fine. I'm going to celebrate if I can just persuade you to concede that the position is coherent. I dont really care if you believe it or not. (Since, I can consistently claim you're mistaken. )

Thanks for the clarification. That’s my exact conception of a conditional, but perhaps I’m using language in which that wasn’t made clear. From when you first presented your argument (#50) my initial response (#55) along with several other replies either to you or Subfallen:

If there were such a thing as what?

a) If there were such a thing as gratuitous evil, then there would be gratuitous evil.
b) If there were such a thing as objective morality, then there would be gratuitous evil.

If all you’re saying is (a) then the nihilist can just as well enter:

(p) If there is God, then there is not gratuitous evil.

Do you see what I’m getting at? I’m saying to accept (4) she needs to argue as in (b) and then provide a reason why she thinks the consequent would be true if the antecedent were true. For example, with the second premise from my parallel argument:

(2’) If there is gratuitous evil, then there is objective morality.

So, even though the theist doesn’t believe the antecedent is true, he can say that if it were true the consequent would be true and support that position arguing something to the effect of, “there’s no crime if there’s no law,” giving him grounds for accepting the premise as true. And since it's the truth of the logical sequence that provides the contradiction in your argument’s conclusion any merit whatsoever, that sequence must be established. Otherwise all one is doing is saying “there are gratuitous evils" and you don’t need the argument at all.

That’s what I mean by arguing in good faith (not to be taken as any sort of ad hominem). That is, as to the truth or falsity of a conditional, if the consequent really follows the antecedent, whether logically or casually, and irrespective of whether or not either by itself is true, then the conditional is true. If, on the other hand, the consequent does not follow from the antecedent, even if both are obviously true, the conditional is false. In other words, a proposition like, “if X, then I am dead,” if no definition of X is provided then the proposition is false at face value. Sure I can say that 'if I were dead, then I'd be dead', but I hardly see how that is any sort of advancement in knowledge.

Now if you or the logic you employ doesn’t mandate your adhering to the above, that’s fine, but I’m simply not interested in engaging in such arguments, because I simply don’t consider doing so as arguing, but simply asserting.

This tangent was started because of your claim that a nihilist cannot advance the argument from evil consistently. You said,

Your argument here, as I understand it, is that a nihilist cannot assert the existence of gratuitous evil because a nihilist does not believe that there is such a thing as evil.

The reply to this argument is that a nihilist can nevertheless consistently advance the argument from evil because the nihilist is not asserting, "gratuitous evil exists." Instead, the nihilist is asserting, "if objective morality exists, then gratuitous evil exists."

No one has made any attempt to argue for the truth of this claim. Whether this claim is true or not is an entirely separate issue from that of its consistency with nihilism.

In your last several posts you have been accusing us of not providing you with reasons to believe, "if objective morality exists, then gratuitous evil exists." That's fine. We have not been trying to argue for the truth of this claim. We have only been arguing for its consistency with nihilism.

How might a nihilist argue for such a claim? To see how, imagine that instead of arguing with a nihilist, you are arguing with a moral realist who does not believe in God. The moral realist asserts, "gratuitous evil exists," and then gives some standard reasons for this view. The theist then denies these reasons.

What the nihilist is doing is looking at the theist's replies to the moral realist atheist and saying, these replies are unconvincing; the theist's defense is weak. He is saying, "I am not a moral realist. But if I was a moral realist, I would not accept your defense against the argument from evil."

Given duffe's last post, I think this explains why he disagrees with me; he feels that self-respecting arguments should have a persuasive power which acts more or less identically on everyone who reads in good faith. (True, duffe?) For my part, I think that's far too much to ask of our "arguments" outside of math---I only expect logical consistency.

But I still can't make out what precisely you two disagree on.

First, I'm ignoring your discussion of conditionals for now. I'll leave it at saying that I think you are wrong, but I also don't think it is relevant. I think you are raising a potential problem with the problem of evil, but one that needn't require us to reject the standard interpretation of conditional statements.

You are basically saying that if the only reason the nihilist has for thinking that (4) is true is that she rejects the antecedent, then she is probably begging the question (assuming that she accepts (2)). However, I don't think that the only reason that the nihilist has for accepting (4) is that she rejects the antecedent. I explained this back in #72 when I said that,

So I could replace (4) with something like:

(4*) If nihilism is false, then the suffering of infants is gratuitous evil.

Here the nihilist is not saying that if nihilism is false, that the falseness of nihilism somehow causes the suffering of infants to be gratuitous evil. Rather, she is saying something like, if I am wrong about nihilism being true, then the suffering of infants would qualify as gratuitous evil.

It doesn't have to have an identical impact, but I think you should strive to use premises that your interlocutor can also accept, or at least should want to accept. For instance, this is why the Christian is wrong to use Bible verses as authoritative in arguments with atheists.

Definitionally unpacked:
4) IF there are set rules for behavior that cannot be changed THEN there are instances of evil God should have prevented.

I’m just not seeing the connection. The only way I can make it plausibly work is to say something like, “if there are laws then there are crimes,” which seems like we’re putting the cart before the horse, but maybe there’s someway it would work. I mean, I’m basically arguing q to your p, so the concepts are entailed some how.

(p) If there is objective morality, then there is gratuitous evil.
(q) If there is gratuitous evil, then there is objective morality.

1. If you freely consent to live in a country, then you have made an agreement to obey its laws.
2. If you have made an agreement to obey a country’s laws, then it is wrong for you to disobey its laws.
3. If it is wrong for you to disobey a country’s laws, then you should accept any punishments imposed by those laws.
4. Therefore, if you freely consent to live in a country, then you should accept any punishments imposed by its laws.

I’m just looking for something like that, with a chain of reasonable inferences in the argument from each antecedent to its consequent and if that chain of inference is broken, the argument fails. My problem is that in all my encounters with theodicies, Original Position’s argument is the first I’ve seen that proposes an inference from objective morality to gratuitous evil.

Sure, if we're dealing with a well-known interlocutor, I'd agree to a higher standard for what constitutes a "reasonable argument."

Maybe I'm completely lost, but hasn't he just said that (4) doesn't amount to such an inference?! You can even look at his initial presentation:

(Emphasis mine.)

If the earth is 6,000 years old, then evolution is false.
¬(p&¬q)It is false that “the earth is 6,000 years old and evolution is true.”
Q: Why is it false that “the earth is 6,000 years old and evolution is true”?
A: Because ToE requires more that 6,000 years.

If there is objective morality, then there is gratuitous evil.
¬(p&¬q)It is false that “there is objective morality and there is not gratuitous evil.”
Q: Why is it false that “there is objective morality and there is not gratuitous evil”?
A: ?

So what is the empirical claim that answers the question? You can't simply answer the second question with "because g-evils exist" any more than one could answer the first with "because evolution is true." Suppose someone unfamilar with ToE responded, "So?" You would then go on to explain "ToE requires more than 6,000 years... hence the earth can't be 6,000 years old."

I wonder if you'd be more comfortable with "necessarily implies" rather than if-then?

I sympathise with your rejection of the classical formulation of if-then. I remember helping teach an undergraduate course on formal logic to humanities students and asking them to accept that "If kangaroos were purple the moon would be made of cheese" is true was often a bridge too far.

Here is where I might be diverging from Original Position. (Unsure.) In my view, you basically can answer the second question with "because (if evil exists) gratuitous evils exist"---perhaps linking to Mengele's wiki as an afterthought. This is my view because I feel this argument, like all philosophical arguments, only has persuasive power in special cases. (Basically in the case that someone holds inconsistent beliefs vis-a-vis the existence of evil and an omni3 God.)

If someone believes that the notion "gratuitous evil" is meaningful, and does not believe what happened at Auschwitz was gratuitous evil, I see no point in pretending this argument has any potency for her.

Edit - but I also think she should use different words for whatever she means by "gratuitous evil", because she's speaking a different language than a huge majority of the world.

I'm late in the thread, my apologies... but I have a question.

What is the meaning of "gratuitous" here (I am not an English-speaking native)... is this a sort of "altruism debate", but only in reverse?

By "gratuitous" I mean something like "unnecessary or pointless." Some theists claim that some evils can be justified because they are a cause a greater good or are a byproduct of other goods existing (such as free will). By "gratuitous evil" I mean to pick out the evils that are not justified for these reasons.

I am not that interested in trying to persuade duffe here, but in formulating a clear version of the argument from evil. Thus, I want an argument that would be useable against any traditional theist. Since I am using the evidential problem of evil, this means that I want an argument which makes it implausible or improbable that God exists (or at least more improbable). What this means is that I want all of the premises to be at least probably true, so that if accepting God's existence requires you to deny those premises, then the argument lowers the probability of God existing.

You say that you are not seeing the connection. I've tried to explain the connection to you in two ways, but you haven't really discussed them. If you look at them more closely instead of definitionally unpacking what I say, perhaps you'll see the connection.

1. My examples of the man beating the dog and the beauty of the possible crossdressser. The point here was to illustrate how the consequent of a conditional statement might not be causally dependent on the antecedent, but rather just dependent on the truth-value of the antecedent.

2. My explanation that the nihilist generally recognizes that non-nihilists classify certain actions (such as torturing infants) as evil, and so presumably if those non-nihilists are correct about nihilism then those actions are evil.

Your example about laws and crime is no good. Crime is causally dependent on laws existing. A man beating his wife is not causally dependent on whether or not nihilism is true. Our classification of such an act as "evil" is also not causally dependent on whether nihilism is true. However, the truth of such an act being evil does require that nihilism is false.

Here's another example. "If we are not in the Matrix and other skeptical hypotheses are incorrect, then I am physically located in a Starbucks right now." I am not saying that it logically follows from the falseness of the skeptical hypotheses that I have to be physically located in a Starbucks right now (I could be walking down 5th Ave instead). Rather, I am saying something like, if we assume that some particular reasons for thinking that the consequent is false are themselves false, then we should think that the consequent is true. Similarly, in (4) I mean to be saying something like, "If nihilism is false, then some actions are gratuitously evil."

I wouldn't be.

No, but I wonder if that's a way to encapsulate what duffe is assuming is meant by "If X then Y".

It seems to me he is reading it as "If X is true then Y is true and this is because of X's truth". I wonder whether a logically equivalent way to express that (given his fondness for explicit argument) might be "In every possible world in which X is true, Y is true." This would capture those instances where X causes Y and also where they are co-dependant or both contingent on the same underlying cause. It also would make no comment on Y's truth in those worlds in which X is false (which seems to be a sticking point for him).

Yeah, I think one of Boole’s predecessors used an example like, “If swans are black, then the moon is made of cheese,” is true.

I can immediately demonstrate this false, of course (being an Australian).

I highly doubt a nihilist will accept that along with accepting 6, because if you recall 6 can be transposed to 6’.

4’. If nihilism is false, then gratuitous evils exist.
6’. If gratuitous evils exist, then God doesn’t exist.
Therefore, if nihilism is false, then God doesn’t exist.
Therefore, if nihilism is true, then God exists.

How does this follow?

"If there is no pasta in the house, then I wont have spaghetti bolognese." doesnt commit me to bolognese on the off chance there is pasta.

From the conclusion you derived one can conclude that "If God exists then nihilism is true", which they won't have any problem with.

Premise (6) is the conditional derived from the exclusive disjunctive, “either God exists or gratuitous evils exist,” which is the centerpiece of the argument from evil. The point is that the nihilist actually believes* ‘gratuitous evils don’t exist’, hence if she accepts (6) as true, she’s denying the disjunct ‘gratuitous evils exist’ and consequently affirming ‘God exists’.

I'm not convinced your argument is valid (most logic rules are based on using the inclusive or, as far as I remember). Can you make this derivation explicit?