Naturalistic Ethics and the Argument from Evil

Abstract

Philosophical naturalism is the world view which tries to describe and explain all aspects of reality in purely natural, i.e., non-supernatural terms. Such a world view is a cluster of views usually including atheism, physicalism, radical empricism or naturalised epistemology, and some sort of moral relativism, subjectivism or nihilism. In this paper the author examines a problem which arises when the naturalist offers the argument from evil for atheism. Since the argument from evil is a moral argument it cannot be effectively employed by anyone who holds the denatured ethical theories which the naturalist typically holds. In the context of these naturalist ethical theories, the argument from evil fails to provide good reasons for either the naturalist or ghe theist to disbelieve in the God of theism. Obviously, this does not prove that naturalism is false, or that the argument from evil is unsound, but rather that certain naturalists' use of the argument has been misguided.