Freedom and the problem of evil › Natural evil requires another step

Human wrongdoing does not by itself account for earthquakes or disease. In the usual distinction, moral evil concerns wrongdoing attributable to agents; natural evil concerns harms whose apparent causes are natural processes. A defense covering moral evil therefore needs an additional proposal if it is to address evil in the broader sense.

Plantinga considers the possibility that nonhuman free agents are responsible for what appears to us as natural evil. The proposal draws on the religious idea of fallen spiritual agents. Within the defense, its role is to provide a possible extension of the agency account. It should not be presented as a scientific explanation of disease or as evidence that a particular disaster was caused by such beings.

The same standard of coherence applies here as elsewhere. A critic need not accept the possibility merely because the defender can describe it. Questions remain about the proposed agents' powers, God's permission, and whether the account supplies a morally sufficient reason. A defense must answer the logical objection with a coherent scenario, not with an unexplained label.

This step also shows how far the defense remains from a general explanation of suffering. Even if a possible account blocks a contradiction, it gives no basis for diagnosing the cause of a particular person's illness. Moving from a hypothetical logical role to such a diagnosis would add an unsupported claim.