Evidence and a cumulative case for God › Evil belongs within the case

A probable explanation must be assessed against unfavorable as well as favorable considerations. Suffering raises questions about what a perfectly good, powerful God would permit. The argument cannot handle this by counting positive considerations and setting the rest aside. Its ambition is an assessment of the overall case.

The Existence of God itself discusses the problem of evil. It would be misleading to direct the reader only to a separate companion book, as though the question were absent here. Swinburne argues that goods such as responsibility and significant choices bear on what God could permit. Whether those considerations adequately address suffering remains part of the dispute.

His author-hosted lecture acknowledges pain and suffering as possible counterevidence for a person evaluating religious belief. The publisher's abstract of the earlier book edition reports his conclusion that evil does not diminish the probability on his assessment. These formulations should not be compressed into the claim that he simply concedes a specific negative numerical update. The adequacy of his treatment requires examining the particular argument.

An account of why some danger could accompany responsibility would not, without further premises, explain every actual harm. A critic can ask about apparently excessive suffering, unequal burdens, and alternatives that preserve valuable agency. Such questions challenge the proposed likelihood of the world given a good God. They engage the cumulative method directly.