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Has James Sterba Established a Logical Argument from Evil or Just a Very Good Evidential One?

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James Sterba’s new treatise advancing a logical argument from evil against the existence of God fails in one respect and succeeds in another. As with all claimants to having found such a thing before him, Sterba fails in properly achieving a logical argument from evil. But he succeeds in producing one of the most undefeatable evidential arguments from evil yet published. Elegantly dispatching all the common defenses, Sterba shows that there is no way to avoid the force of his argument against the existence of God without adopting extraordinarily improbable hypotheses that theists can’t even intelligibly articulate.

MDPI AG

Richard Carrier

Title: Has James Sterba Established a Logical Argument from Evil or Just a Very Good Evidential One?

Description:

James Sterba’s new treatise advancing a logical argument from evil against the existence of God fails in one respect and succeeds in another.

As with all claimants to having found such a thing before him, Sterba fails in properly achieving a logical argument from evil.

But he succeeds in producing one of the most undefeatable evidential arguments from evil yet published.

Elegantly dispatching all the common defenses, Sterba shows that there is no way to avoid the force of his argument against the existence of God without adopting extraordinarily improbable hypotheses that theists can’t even intelligibly articulate.

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