A Reply to Paul Draper’s Argument from Evil

If God is so great, then why is this world full of evil, pain, and suffering? Throughout the ages, philosophers, theologians, and everyday people from all walks of life have tried to make sense of the apparent injustice, suffering, and arbitrariness of life. The conclusions that people have drawn are as various as the different methods they have employed to formulate the problem of evil. My thesis responds to a particular formulation of this problem: Paul Draper’s evidential argument from evil. I begin my outlining the historical development of the problem of evil and then refute Draper. Chapters two through four are each a rebuttal to the three premises of Draper’s argument. I aim to show that we have good reason not to accept Draper’s premises and hence, not to accept Draper’s conclusion, that theism is quite probably false.