I was going to wait to respond to the conditional Problem of Evil (CPoE) with the rest of the my critique of the link Daniel Morgan gave on the critique of Presuppositionalism, but since Daniel mentioned he’d passed it around the DC site I went over there (against my better judgment) and saw that many of the posers…I mean posters over there really liked the CPoE idea.

The CPoE is stated as follows by Witmer:

Presuppositionalist theists tend to say that this can’t be a good argument, since the existence of evil itself requires God to exist, since there are no moral facts without God. I’ve just argued that this is false. But suppose that they are actually right about this. Suppose, that is, that if God doesn’t exist there are no facts about what is morally right or wrong to do. One can still use the problem of evil argument. The argument can be formulated conditionally, like so:

1. Either there are moral facts, or there aren’t.
2. If there are moral facts, then evil exists.
3. If evil exists, then God doesn’t exist.
4. Hence, if there are moral facts, then God doesn’t exist.
5. If there aren’t moral facts, then God doesn’t exist.

Hence, either there are moral facts, in which case God doesn’t exist; or there aren’t moral facts, in which case God doesn’t exist. Either way, God doesn’t exist. I hasten to add that premise 3 above abbreviates the usual argument from the problem of evil, which argument needs much more careful handling than I can give it here. But my point is that you don’t even have to accept that there really are moral facts to run the argument. I do think there are moral facts, but even if you don’t, you could give this sort of argument for atheism.

There are many problems with the CPoE argument.  The most glaring problem is that Witmer completely ignores the theistic response to the original PoE and simply asserts the entire original PoE in its abbreviated form as premise 3.  I’m also interested in seeing argumentation for his assertion that if there are no moral facts God doesn’t exist.  How does this follow from his standpoint?

But the fact of the matter is that Witmer is doing nothing more than stealing concepts from the Christian worldview, mixing them with his atheistic concepts, and pretending that the Christian worldview is contradictory when, in reality, it only demonstrates that Christianity and atheism are contradictory (something that’s never been in doubt).

So we start with the idea that:

1) Either there are moral facts, or there aren’t.

But Witmer doesn’t define what these moral facts are.  This is vitally important because of premise 2:

2) If there are moral facts, then evil exists.

But evil is a violation of the undefined moral facts in 1.  What are these moral facts?  How do we know what evil we are speaking of if we don’t know what moral acts are being violated?  This is shown because of premise 3:

3. If evil exists, then God doesn’t exist.

In other words, all this means is that if there are violations of certain undefined moral facts, God must not exist.  But why does that follow?

Witmer admits that 3 is an abbreviation of the regular PoE argument and that he’s not going to go into it all here; but none of the above has yet solved anything for him!  To show why, let us define the typical PoE too:

1. God is all good and all powerful.

2. Evil exists.

3. Therefore, God either wants evil or He is powerless to stop evil.

4. If God wants evil, He is not good.

5. If God is powerless to stop evil, He is not all powerful.

6. Therefore, God does not exist.

Now while it is true that the atheist cannot account for 2, it is part of the Christian worldview and instead of arguing a CPoE the atheist only needs to say, “I’m arguing with the presupposition that the Christian worldview is true in order to demonstrate that it must be false.”  This will then lead us to the part in the above argument that I disagree with, which is premise 4: If God wants evil, He is not good.  The only way premise 4 can be valid is if it is actually not good for God to want evil.

But how do we determine that?  By knowing what moral facts are!  Yes, those same moral fact that Witmer leaves undefined (and thus forces us to assume them; including the assumption that it must be evil for God to want evil to exist).

Since Witmer hasn’t defined moral facts his argument is supplying no new information to the original PoE though.  Therefore, his argument is really saying nothing.

But let me define some moral facts then and show some logic here;

1: It is good for God to display mercy to sinners.

2: It is good for God to display justice to sinners.

3: Both 1 & 2 require the existence of sinners.

4: Sinners are by definition evil.

5: Therefore, both 1 & 2 require the existence of evil.

6: God is good.

7: 1 & 2 are also good.

8: If God does 1 & 2, God is doing good and therefore is Good.

9: If God does 1 & 2, however, evil people will exist (per 5).

10: Therefore, God is a good God even if evil people exist.

With these above moral facts and logic, it is impossible for the premise “If evil exists, then God doesn’t exist” to be valid.  At the very least, Witmer is going to need to demonstrate how my above logic is wrong.

The bottom line in the PoE is that in order to be a valid argument, the atheist has to let the Christian define evil and show that the Christian definition of evil is inconsistent with Christianity.  As my above logical argument shows, however, it is not.  There will remain no Problem of Evil until the atheist actually let Christians define the term and then demonstrates inconsistency.