Evil

Swinburne gave an example of a father delegating responsibilities to an elder son to look after the younger one. The father will be watching every move of the elder son to ensure that he fulfilling his responsibility to look after the younger brother and would intervene the moment the elder son makes a wrong move. The elder son might justly retort that, while he would be happy to share his father's work, he could really do so only if he were left to make his own judgments as to what to do within a significant range of the options available to the father. A good God, like a good father, will delegate responsibilities. He will allow agents to learn and improve on the choices they make through experiencing pains and frustrations. It is in his best interest to give human being the kind of free and responsible choice he has. The possibility of humans bringing about significant evil is the consequence of their having this free and responsible choice. Not even God could give us this choice without the possibility of resulting evil.

Second, it holds that it is more important that free moral agents do exist than it is that moral evil does not exist. God did well in creating such agents even though he knew that they might choose to abuse their freedom. A second counter to the argument from moral evil makes use of some of the principles of the moral argument for God's existence. If God does not exist then there would be no moral standards; everything would be permitted. There could be no moral evil therefore there would be no moral laws that could be violated. The fact that moral evil exists doesn't disprove the existence of God. It actually proves it.