There are Lots of Arguments Against Theism That Don't Reduce to the Problem of Evil

Rough draft:

Forget the god of classical theism for a moment. Consider instead the hypothesis that there is a being who is omnipotent and omniscient, yet morally indifferent, and who is reliable at achieving their goals. Call this view blahtheism. Suppose further that we add to blahtheism the hypothesis that such a god is interested in creating a hospitable environment for humans (suppose they have a goal  to be reliable in creating and conserving communities of humans in the way the some build and maintain ant farms). What would you then expect Earth to be like? The answer is simple: one that is hospitable to human life. Therefore, the datum that the Earth is inhospitable to humans is surprising on blatheism. By contrast, a human-inhospitable environment is not surprising on naturalism, since on that hypothesis, life on Earth is shaped solely by evolutionary factors, shaping the world into a hostile place, due to the competition for scarce resources. Therefore, the datum that the Earth is a human-inhospitable environment provides at least some confirming evidence for naturalism vis-a-vis blahtheism.

The point of this exercise isn't just to call attention to a piece of disconfirming evidence against blatheism; it is rather to point out that at least some data that supports naturalism vis-a-vis supernaturalistic hypotheses does not reduce to the problem of evil. Evil doesn't play a role one way or the other in the argument above; rather, (i) facts about rational omniscience and omnipotence, plus (ii) facts about the god's interests/aims, and (iii) facts suggesting the aims were not achieved, sufficed to generate the problem. This was highlighted by the fact that the blatheistic hypothesis excludes moral properties from the divine nature, and yet we could make reasonable predictions about what such a being would do, given certain intentions. The salient facts here were facts suggesting an aim/outcome mismatch between God's intentions and the world. 

I will go further. I'm betting that other lines of evidence for naturalism (see, e.g., many arguments on this list) seem to have the same feature, viz., their evidential force turns on aim/outcome mismatches of various sorts that don't essentially appeal to God's love or moral perfection (although of course I don't mean to imply that all other arguments against theism besides evil rely on aim/outcome mismatches).

The moral is that the widely held assumption that most arguments against theism reduce to the problem of evil is false.

Robert M. Adams (1937-2024)

 Robert M. Adams, a seminal figure in philosophy of religion, has passed. Details here . Adams was a good man. I recall fondly when he and h...