Are Bad Arguments the Norm?

I’m quite bothered by bad arguments. One in particular is the so called “Free Will Defense”, I want to critique it but first I want to steel man the argument. I'll put it in argumentation schema format, like those proposed by Douglas Walton, similar to what I've done in prior posts. Then i'll identify the hidden assumptions enabling the argument and a comprehensive set of critical questions (CQ) that undercut or defeat the argument; they will target premise plausibility, the assumptions connecting the premises together, and explicit/implicit definitions/concepts the argument fundamentally relies upon. This "defense" was an argument proposed by philosopher and apologist Alvin Plantinga in response to J.L Mackie's formulation of the logical problem of evil. Mackie, in his 1955 paper "Evil and Omnipotence," argued that the coexistence of an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent God with the existence of evil is logically contradictory. Plantinga, in his 1977 book "God, Freedom, and Evil," presented the Free Will Defense as a logical argument to demonstrate that God's traditional attributes are not logically incompatible with the existence of evil. Many people think Plantinga successfully refuted Mackie. Consequentially, they have ignored the subsequent responses that highlight the issues with Plantingas response. These responses show just how questionable his refutation is. In particular, we will look at Dr. Raymond Bradley, who I think clearly showed that Plantinga did not successfully resolve Mackie's original argument.

Lets call this scheme The Argument from Significant Free Will to the Logical Compatibility of God and Evil. Key definitions (explicit concepts the scheme relies on) include:

Omnipotent: Able to do anything that is logically possible.
Omnibenevolent: Perfectly good; does not do moral wrong.
Significant (libertarian) free will (LFW): Agents sometimes face morally significant choices and could genuinely do otherwise at the moment of choice.
Moral evil: Evil resulting from free creaturely choices.
Natural evil: Suffering not (apparently) caused by human choice (disease, earthquakes, animal pain, etc.).
Strong vs. weak actualization: God strongly actualizes an outcome by causing it; weakly actualizes it by creating conditions under which free creatures bring it about.
Feasible world: A possible world that God can actualize given the true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom (if any).
Transworld depravity (TWD): It’s possible that for each significantly free creature, in every feasible world that includes that creature and offers morally significant choices, the creature freely goes wrong at least once.

The Argument:

P1. Great-good premise: A world containing creatures with significant LFW is a great good, all else equal.
P2. No-guarantee premise: If creatures have LFW, it is not within God’s power to guarantee that they always freely choose the good (guaranteeing would remove LFW).
P3. Feasibility premise (Plantinga move): It is metaphysically possible that all worlds feasible for God that contain significantly free creatures also contain some moral evil (e.g., due to TWD).
P4. Justifying-permission principle: If permitting E is necessary for obtaining a outweighing great good G that cannot be had without permitting E, then a perfectly good being may permissibly permit E.
P5. Target: The “logical problem of evil” claims a strict inconsistency between (i) God’s existence with omni-attributes and (ii) the existence of evil.
C. Therefore, it is logically possible that an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God creates (or permits) a world with evil because doing so is required for the great good of LFW; hence, there is no strict inconsistency between God and evil.

Many advocates of the argument include auxiliary extensions for natural evil, to extend the scope of the argument:

N1. Natural evils could result from the free actions of non-human agents (e.g., fallen angels), or from the stable law-like order required for meaningful agency and soul-making.
N2. If either N1-route is possibly true, then the same compatibility conclusion extends to natural evil.

Here are a couple notable defeaters, which if applicable, completely undermine the argument:

E1: If there is a feasible world with LFW and no evil, and God could actualize it, then (2) or (3) is false.
E2: If LFW is not a great good or not worth the costs observed, (1) or (4) is undermined.
E3: If natural evil lacks any possible free-will-related explanation, the extension to natural evil fails.
E4: If the omni-attributes or the very notion of feasibility/possible worlds are incoherent, the scheme collapses.

Now lets dive into the assumptions. Each and every assumptions is highly questionable from my perspective:

A1. Modal framework: Possible-worlds talk is meaningful and tracks metaphysical possibility in this domain.
A2. Coherence of LFW: Libertarian freedom is coherent and compossible with divine foreknowledge. I think LFW is highly implausible, as demonstrated in previous posts.
A3. No-guarantee bridge: “God cannot guarantee free creatures always do right” is a logical limitation, not a power deficit. This assumption is crucial for the argument because essentially insulates the omnipotence branch of classical theism.
A4. Value thesis: The value of LFW is sufficiently weighty (in God’s perfect reasons) to justify permitting at least some evils. I find this highly dubious, ad-hoc, and question begging. We have no reason apriori to suggest that protecting the freedom and safety of someone experiencing evil is less valuable than protecting the freedom of someone committing the evil.
A5. Feasible-worlds dependence: What worlds God can actualize depends on counterfactuals of creaturely freedom that are not under God’s direct control. This is yet another crucial assumption. It suggests that it's just not possible for God to instantiate a world with free agents and no evil. But this undermines the entire theological agenda of Christianity, because this is a description of heaven, which exists under that world view.
A6. Moral principle: Permitting evil can be morally justified by securing outweighing goods (a constrained consequentialist principle compatible with perfect goodness). This assumption shows the dodginess of apologetics. I will touch on this later, but it implies a conceptually distinct view of evil that's inconsistent with the purpose of this argument.
A7. Natural-evil linkage: Either (i) non-human free agents exist and can affect the natural order, or (ii) a law-governed creation enabling LFW carries unavoidable risks that sometimes realize as natural evils. Again, I think this is question begging, and actually fails to resolve the initial issues.
A8. Scope restriction: The defense only aims to defeat a logical inconsistency claim; it doesn’t purport to explain every instance of suffering (it’s a defense, not a full theodicy). But in practice, it is used as a full theodicy, particularly in evidential arguments from evil and gratuitous evil.
A9. Heaven reply (often tacit): If there is (or will be) a sinless state of the redeemed, its freedom is either not “significant” in the relevant sense, or its sinlessness arises via factors not feasible for initial creation without loss of LFW (e.g., beatific vision). Again, dodgy. "Significance" goes undefined.
A10. Person-regarding constraints: God’s permission of evil does not treat persons merely as means (or, if it does, such use is somehow compatible with perfect goodness).

Now let's look at the Critical Questions:

A. Targeting the definitions/concepts

CQ-D1. Omnipotence scope: Is the restriction “only what’s logically possible” an ad hoc narrowing? Which modal logic governs “logical possibility” here?
CQ-D2. LFW coherence: Is “could have done otherwise” intelligible given divine foreknowledge or creaturely essences? If not, premise (2) and assumption A2 wobble.
CQ-D3. Significance metric: What makes freedom “significant”? Must it include live options to commit horrendous evils, or could “moral significance” be preserved while truncating extreme outcomes?
CQ-D4. Feasible worlds: Are counterfactuals of creaturely freedom well-defined and truth-apt prior to God’s creative decree (Molinism)? If not, the feasibility structure in (3)/(A5) collapses.
CQ-D5. Natural evil mapping: What is the mechanism connecting free agency to earthquakes, pediatric cancers, and animal suffering? If it’s demons, what independent reason is there to take that possibility seriously? If it’s law-like order, why think such horrors are unavoidable for agency?
CQ-D6. Is this distinction relevant? Does "enabling" relinquish responsibility? If someone orchestrates the conditions for a bank robbery, don't we hold them accountable?
CQ-D7. Is this inconsistent with omnipotence? Are we redefining God’s attributes to avoid rebuttal?
CQ-D8. Does TWD beg the question? Does it merely assume the conclusion of the argument? What independent reason do we have to think this is coherent? Is it merely a statement of theological dogma?

B. Targeting premise plausibility

CQ-P1. Value of LFW (Premise 1): Is the value of LFW high enough to justify permitting this magnitude and distribution of evil (e.g., genocides, lifelong child suffering, animal predation)? Show a rationale that scales.
CQ-P2. No-guarantee (Premise 2): Why couldn’t God create persons who are free yet always freely choose the good (as allegedly in heaven)? If that’s possible, (2) is false.
CQ-P3. Feasibility/TWD (Premise 3): What positive reason is there to think TWD (or the weaker “no evil-free feasible world”) is metaphysically possible rather than a mere verbal stipulation? Are there counterexamples (e.g., a single free agent who would always freely choose the good)?
CQ-P4. Justifying-permission (Premise 4): Does perfect goodness permit using some persons’ extreme suffering as a price for others’ goods? If not, (4) is unsound.
CQ-P5. Natural evil extension: Even if FWD covers moral evil, what about evils apparently unconnected to free choices (infant suffering, animal pain before humans existed)? If the extension fails, the overall defense doesn’t address the actual world’s evil set.

C. Targeting the inference bridges (assumptions A1–A10)

CQ-I1. From possibility to consistency: Does merely conceivable consistency (under heavy theoretical assumptions) really defeat the logical problem, or do we need coherent possibility under a worked-out metaphysics?
CQ-I2. Intervention problem: Even if God can’t guarantee universal righteousness, why can’t God often nudge, warn, or softly block the worst outcomes (jam guns, deflect pathogens) without removing freedom? If such interventions are logically possible, why aren’t they far more common?
CQ-I3. Truncation alternative: Why couldn’t God permit LFW but set boundary conditions/laws that truncate only the most horrific consequences (no torturable nervous systems, quick painless deaths, no congenital pain disorders) while leaving choice intact?
CQ-I4. Heaven challenge: If redeemed agents will be free yet never sin, what prevents God from creating agents in that state initially? If “beatific vision” answers this, explain why giving that same vision at creation would destroy LFW.
CQ-I5. Distribution and desert: Why is evil distributed in ways seemingly detached from desert or soul-making opportunity (e.g., infants, non-rational animals)? If distribution is gratuitous, (4) and A10 look implausible.
CQ-I6. Person-regarding constraint: Does permitting horrors instrumentalize victims? If perfect goodness forbids treating persons merely as means, A10 fails.
CQ-I7. Law-like order necessity: Why must meaningful agency require our specific physics with its attendant evils? Are there nearby possible natures with agency-supporting regularities but far less suffering?
CQ-I8. Foreknowledge tension: If God infallibly knows each free act, then when choosing which world to actualize, God knowingly selects a world with particular atrocities. Does that undercut “it wasn’t in God’s control” (A5)?
CQ-I9. Moral luck & responsibility: Many evils hinge on factors outside the agent’s control (upbringing, genetics). Does LFW adequately ground responsibility strong enough to justify permitting those outcomes?
CQ-I10. Escalation puzzle: Even if some evil is necessary for LFW, why the escalation to horrendous evils? Identify the minimal evil threshold required; anything beyond that looks gratuitous.

D. Targeting conceptual/evidential edges

CQ-C1. Coherence of omni-attributes: Are omnipotence and omnibenevolence jointly coherent once we add feasibility constraints? If the attributes are re-interpreted to save the defense, is that a bait-and-switch on classical theism?
CQ-C2. Burden of proof placement: Since the defense claims possibility, who shoulders the burden to show that the key possibilities (LFW coherence, TWD, demon causation, “unavoidable” natural evils) are more than placeholders?
CQ-C3. Comparative worlds: Provide at least one concrete, internally coherent description of a world with LFW but fewer horrendous evils than ours. If such a world is coherent, why wasn’t that world feasible or selected?
CQ-C4. Gratuitous evil: Identify candidate cases of apparently gratuitous evil (seemingly yielding no outweighing good). If even one exists, the justifying-permission principle fails to account for that case.
CQ-C5. Animal suffering: What free-will-related good is served by hundreds of millions of years of pre-human animal pain? If none, the extension to natural evil is weak.

E. Targeting alternative explanations and consistency

CQ-A1. Compatibilist option: If compatibilist freedom suffices for moral responsibility, could God secure moral goods without libertarian risk? If yes, the LFW necessity in (1)–(3) evaporates.
CQ-A2. Soul-making alternative: If soul-making is the real justification, is the FWD doing the work, or is another theodicy needed (shifting the dialectical burden)?
CQ-A3. Hybrid worlds: Why couldn’t God create a mixed world: compatibilist agents for high-stakes contexts (no atrocities), libertarian pockets for low-stakes virtue growth?
CQ-A4. Hiddenness tie-in: If God’s presence were less hidden, would many evils be averted without loss of LFW? If yes, why the level of hiddenness that correlates with persistent large-scale evils?

I think you can easily see why it's a bad argument, and why it's considered plausible for certain theists with certain theological assumptions. Let's move on to Dr. Bradleys response because I think he clearly shows the inconsistency of Plantinga's response, and provides a counter argument that is considerably more plausible. Bradley offers a deductive (“logical”) disproof of the theistic God that’s built around a moral principle of command responsibility. He couples that with the usual omni-attributes and the fact that evil occurs, and he also spends a long section arguing that Plantinga’s Free Will Defense (FWD) is formally flawed and, even if it weren’t, is irrelevant to God’s moral culpability. In essence, this is the argument:

If God exists, God is omniscient, omnipotent, and wholly good.
Evil occurs.
Generalized Principle of Command Responsibility: if an agent knew in advance an evil would occur unless they prevented it, and had unlimited power to prevent it, yet did not prevent it, then that agent is morally culpable for that evil.
By omniscience and omnipotence, God both knew and was able to prevent the evil(s).
God did not prevent them (since evil occurs).
Therefore God is morally culpable for evil and thus not wholly good.
Therefore the omni-omniscient, omnipotent, wholly good God does not exist.

Bradley isn’t making a probabilistic/evidential case; he aims at a strict inconsistency by adding (3)—a moral principle he treats as necessary—to the standard omni-premises plus “evil exists.” Bradley says even if Plantinga is right that God and evil are logically compatible, the FWD does nothing to protect God from moral culpability. On Plantinga’s "God can’t guarantee always-good acts": Bradley insists that if God chose to create the very circumstances, creatures, and counterfactual structures that led to moral evil — knowing this in advance — then the evil was “up to God” in the morally relevant sense. Even if TWD is possible, Bradley argues, God still selected a world where that depravity occurs. That selection makes God morally responsible under GPCR. Now, this is not without its responses. Like any philosophical (quasi-logical) argument, you can reject whatever premise you want. But I think in this case, the responses demonstrate the weaknesses of the FWD. For example:

Questioning premise 3

Scope challenge: GPCR assumes that failing to prevent evil when you could and knew equals moral culpability — but moral philosophers debate cases of “permissible non-prevention” when greater goods or necessary freedoms are at stake. This response presumes a divine consequentialism, which needs to be added to the assumptions and independently argued for.
Freedom caveat: If free will is that kind of outweighing good, GPCR might need exceptions (Plantinga’s move). But this is just an assumption; we have no reason to suspect LFW is coherent or more valuable relative to alternatives, and we have no reason to suspect a God would value this, without constructing an argument from divine psychology; which is normally just a placeholder for a theological agenda that needs to be independently justified.
Necessity of prevention: GPCR presupposes prevention is always the morally preferable option; FWD denies this in cases where prevention would undermine significant freedom. But this goes back to the vagueness around "significant"; completely left undefined and unsubstantiated.

Questioning premise 4

Feasibility constraints: Molinists/FWD defenders argue omnipotence is “power to do all that’s logically possible,” and that not all imaginable worlds are feasible for God. But this places constraints on omnipotence that seem arbitrary and ad-hoc. It also assumes a specific definition of "power"; constraints on power runs contrary to many intuitions of what "all powerful" should mean. If the apologist means "maximally powerful" within a set of constraints, this begs the question of where the constraints came from and how they identified those constraints, which smuggles ad-hoc assumptions into their definition.
Counterfactual control: If counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are not under God’s control, then “could have prevented” may fail in the strong sense GPCR requires. Again, this seems completely counter-intuitive and borders on absurdity. Suppose I am an Atheist who's not converted to Christianity. Someone comes up and shoots me; since I've not converted, then I am going to Hell. Does that mean God does not send people to Hell? Does it mean there was no counterfactual possible world in which I would have accepted Christianity; implying God already knew I was destined for Hell?

Questioning Premise 5

Partial prevention: One could argue God may prevent some evils and allow others in a balance, weakening the force of “did not prevent” as an unqualified premise. This is very counterintuitive given the history of suffering in this world.
Truncation hypothesis: If God prunes evils down to a necessary minimum for LFW, then GPCR’s moral culpability premise may not straightforwardly apply. But we have no reason for suspecting this truncation occurs, without resorting to speculation or skeptical theism, which undermines the FWD entirely (which I'll show later).

Questioning Premises 6 and 7

Compatibilist goodness: Argue that perfect goodness can coexist with permitting some evil for the sake of greater goods or necessary conditions for other virtues. Again, a "greater goods" defense.
Agent-relativity: Perfect goodness may be governed by divine prerogatives or differing moral obligations than human GPCR models assume. But again, this is just skeptical theism.

I think Bradley’s response is successful because it requires significant revision of the FWD, additional ad-hoc speculative assumptions to FWD that ultimately conflict, and because the GPCR is extremely binding; if GPCR fails in a strong sense, that would be incredibly counter-intuitive. Now, let’s look at how Bradley shows the FWD is actually formally invalid. Here’s the way Bradley tries to show the Free Will Defense (FWD) only “works” by leaning on a package of unstated commitments that can’t all be true together:

[A] Omnipotence scope vs. “unobtainable” worlds

HP-A1 (Leibniz-style omnipotence): God’s omnipotence = the power to actualize any logically possible state of affairs/world.
HP-A2 (Plantinga’s fix): There are logically possible worlds God cannot actualize (because of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom, a.k.a. “feasible worlds” only).

You can’t keep the strong, Leibnizian reading of omnipotence and deny that God can actualize some logically possible worlds. Bradley argues Plantinga oscillates: he tacitly helps himself to a robust “can do whatever’s logically possible” notion to preserve “omnipotence,” then withdraws it when he needs “unobtainable” worlds to block the all-good/free world. He treats this as a bait-and-switch on the definition of omnipotence. (See “Plantinga’s Leibnizian Definition of Omnipotence,” “Why Leibniz Didn’t Lapse.”)

[B] Absolute vs. consequential modality (“could” in two senses)

HP-B1 (Absolute ‘could’): Prior to any creative decision, God could have actualized world W (e.g., one with free creatures who never sin).
HP-B2 (Consequential ‘couldn’t’): Given the actual creative choice and true counterfactuals, God couldn’t have produced W (because of transworld depravity, etc.).

Mixing these different ‘could’ modalities in one argument lets FWD say both “God could have” and “God couldn’t have” regarding the same world under different descriptions. Bradley calls this the “modal muddle” and insists the defense illicitly shifts readings mid-stream. (See “The Distinction Between Absolute and Consequential Modalities,” “Plantinga’s Modal Muddle.”)

[C] Scope of Transworld Depravity (TWD) vs. the availability of ‘saints’

HP-C1 (Strong TWD): It’s possible that every significantly free creaturely essence is such that, in every world where it’s free, it does wrong at least once; hence no sinless-but-free feasible world.
HP-C2 (Transworld sanctity/saintliness allowed): It’s also possible that some free essences would always freely do right (or at least there’s no bar to that).

To block God’s weak-actualization of a sinless free world, FWD needs the strong TWD reading (no always-good free agents available). Yet elsewhere it relies on a looser reading (or leaves open saintliness) to avoid overreach. Bradley’s charge is a quantifier-scope equivocation: sliding between “possibly, all are TWD” and “for all, possibly TWD,” which changes what follows about feasible worlds. (See “A Fatal Equivocation Over the Scope of Transworld Depravity.”)

[D] “It was all up to God” vs. “Those counterfactuals aren’t up to God”

HP-D1 (Creative control): God chooses which essences to create and which circumstances obtain, with full foreknowledge/middle knowledge of what each would freely do—so the overall pattern of outcomes is up to God.
HP-D2 (Exculpating no-control claim): The truth of counterfactuals of freedom is not under God’s control, so God isn’t responsible for the evils that result.

FWD leans on D2 to absolve God, but (Bradley argues) once you add God’s selective creative control and foreknowledge, the “not up to God” move collapses; responsibility comes back through selection and staging. Affirming both D1 and D2, he says, is unstable. (See “It Was All ‘Up to God’.”)

[E] Keeping “omnipotent and wholly good” intact while appealing to infeasibility

HP-E1 (Classical omni-goodness): A perfectly good, all-powerful being eliminates evils it can eliminate without loss of a greater good.
HP-E2 (Infeasibility save): God couldn’t feasibly actualize a free, sinless world (so permitting evil is justified).

If (per A–D) the infeasibility story only works by smuggling in the modal and scope equivocations, then the appeal to E2 doesn’t genuinely limit divine options. In that case E1 reactivates: God had better options and so fails the goodness test. Bradley takes the FWD to be inconsistent or irrelevant once the equivocations are cleaned up. (See the overall structure and the moral upshot in his final section headings.)

Bradley’s line is that the FWD’s plausibility depends on shifting between these hidden premises. Hold them all steadily and you get contradictions (A, B, C) or an unstable stance on control/responsibility (D), which then leaves omni-goodness unreconciled with evil (E). So, either the defense collapses into inconsistency or, purged of the equivocations, it no longer absolves God.

Stepping away from this specific argument and thinking more broadly, I think there is a broader issue with these philosophical religious arguments. The free will defense acts as a theodicy in practice, and often implicitly relies upon multiple conflicting theodies to justify its assumptions. There are many theodies, and are often uses as backups for one another when pressed on their fragility. For example, I’ve seen responses to Bradley’s GPCR saying that it’s faulty because either god is not comparable to say, a negligent army commander who is responsible for his actions, or that there can be greater goods for allowing the evil. This would be, respectively, a theodicy that uses the concept that “god is the standard of good” and hence is outside of our moral evaluative category, which means that by definition whatever we think about this apparent evil must just be that, apparent. And the second, is a “soul building “ theodicy, which would ultimately render evil meaningless as well because if something we think is evil is actually enabling a greater good, then it would be wrong to not bring about that evil or let it happen definitionally because you’d be blocking an alleged greater good. Now the reason I’m saying this is because theists tend to have a selection of theodicies they user interchangeably when faced with criticism on a specific theodicy. The free will defense is an example, if that is refuted them someone resorts to another one, and vice versa. It seems less about wanting to understand and more about ideological insulation. This is the case more broadly with the plethora of weak theistic arguments. Next, Ill explore some of the common theodicies and show how they are mutually inconsistent. I'll also show the strategies apologists employ to avoid belief revision:

theodicy	core claim	key hidden assumptions	typical target evils
Free Will Defense (FWD)	moral evil is a byproduct of significant libertarian freedom; God can’t guarantee free goodness	libertarian freedom is coherent and worth the risk; no feasible world with freedom + no evil	moral evil (sometimes stretched to natural evil via demons/laws)
Soul-making (Irenaean)	evils are needed for character growth, virtues, dependence on God	certain goods (courage, compassion) require real suffering; quantities/distribution are proportionate to growth	both moral & natural evil, esp. “developmental” harms
Best Possible World / Greater-good	this world (or one with these evils) is overall best/necessary for outweighing goods	there is a global tradeoff structure that really needs these evils	all evils (holistic justification)
Skeptical Theism	our moral epistemology can’t judge God’s reasons; “there are unknown outweighing goods”	deep evidential skepticism about goods/evils at the cosmic scale	all evils (by dissolving our assessments)
Divine Command / “God is the Standard of Good”	God isn’t assessable by human moral norms; whatever God permits is ipso facto good	moral authority is perfectly God-centered; human analogies (e.g., negligent commander) misfire	all evils (moral evaluation defanged)
Punishment/Fall	evils (esp. suffering) are deserved consequences of sin or the Fall’s corruption	cosmic justice; inherited consequences can be fitting	moral evil, some natural evil
Laws-of-Nature / Regularity	stable laws enabling agency entail collateral damage (earthquakes, disease)	there’s no equally agency-supporting law set with far less suffering	natural evil
Demonic Agency	some natural evils are free actions of non-human agents	existence and causal reach of such agents	natural evil
Afterlife Compensation	evils are outweighed/defeated by eternal goods later	afterlife exists and compensates/defeats harm (in a morally adequate way)	gratuitous, horrendous evils

Lets take a deeper look into each, and point-by-point analuze how the main theodicies cut against eachother. For each clash I’ll spell out: (A) what each view needs, (B) the exact friction (often a modal or moral contradiction), and (C) what a defender would have to give up to reconcile them.

1. Free Will Defense (FWD) vs Soul-making / Best-possible-world

A. Commitments
- FWD: Evil is a contingent risk of libertarian freedom; God can’t guarantee always-good choices without losing significant freedom.
- Soul-making / Best-world: Many evils are needed (or optimally included) to produce higher goods (virtues, compassion, global optimality).
B. Friction:
- Risk vs. Necessity:
  - FWD says: “Evil needn’t have happened; it’s a misuse of freedom.”
  - Soul-making says: “Certain evils had to happen (or their close analogues) to produce non-derivable goods.”
  - Those aren’t just different emphases—one makes evil accidental, the other instrumental/required.
- Normative upshot conflict:
  - If E is required for G (soul-making), then not permitting E blocks G → prima facie obligation to allow (or even stage) E.
  - FWD treats E as something that ought not occur, even if permitted.
C. To reconcile:
- One side must soften: either (i) soul-making becomes “could be helped by some mild evils, but not necessary,” or (ii) FWD concedes some evils are required, undercutting its core “risk, not necessity” claim.

2. FWD (positive rationale) vs Skeptical Theism (ST)

A. Commitments
- FWD: Specific story about God’s reasons (value of libertarian freedom, infeasible sinless worlds, etc.).
- ST: We’re too cognitively limited to assess God’s reasons; refrain from positive claims.
B. Friction: Epistemic self-undermining
- If ST is right, FWD’s confident modal/evaluative claims (about feasibility, value weights, necessity) exceed our ken.
- If FWD is right (we can identify God’s reasons), ST’s “we can’t know” no longer supports retreat.
C. To reconcile:
- Pick a lane. Either run a bare defense (ST + “some unknown reason”) or a worked theodicy (FWD) with standards of justification. Doing both is a motte-and-bailey.

3. Soul-making vs “God is the Standard of Good” (Divine-command / evaluative incommensurability)

A. Commitments
- Soul-making: Justifies permission by appeal to our moral goods (courage, compassion, character development).
- Divine-standard: Human moral evaluation can’t appraise God; whatever God permits is good by definition or beyond our categories.
B. Friction: Currency mismatch
- Soul-making trades in our evaluative currency; Divine-standard disqualifies that currency.
- If our moral concepts don’t apply, the entire “X is needed for virtue Y” rationale loses its force.
C. To reconcile:
- Adopt a restricted domain claim: “Human moral concepts apply enough to license soul-making claims.” That abandons the strong “outside our moral categories” line.

4. Best-possible-world (BPW) vs Laws-of-Nature (LoN) necessity

A. Commitments
- BPW: Among the options God could actualize, this world’s package (evils included) is globally optimal.
- LoN necessity: The kind of stable laws needed for agency unavoidably generate certain natural evils.
B. Friction: Optimal vs Unavoidable
- “Unavoidable due to physics” is a different claim than “chosen because optimal all-things-considered.”
- If the evils are strictly unavoidable, you owe a modal argument that no agency-supporting law-set with significantly less suffering is possible. BPW doesn’t give that; it weighs alternatives and could, in principle, prefer another law-set.
C. To reconcile:
- State one clear thesis: (i) optimization across many feasible law-sets (BPW) or (ii) necessity within a narrow law-space (LoN). You can’t flip between “God chose this as best” and “God had no alternative.”

5. Punishment/Fall vs FWD & Soul-making

A. Commitments
- Punishment/Fall: Sufferings are just/deserved consequences (or fallout of an ancestral Fall).
- FWD: Evils are misuse of freedom, regrettable side-effects—not proportionate retribution.
- Soul-making: Evils function as instruments for growth (often of others, not the wrongdoer).
B. Friction
- Retributive vs Instrumental: If a child’s disease is punishment, it’s about desert; if it’s soul-making, it’s about instrument (often for onlookers). Those are incompatible explanations in the same case.
- Victim mismatch: Desert accounts struggle with infants/animals; soul-making can instrumentalize them—both create tensions with ordinary justice.
C. To reconcile:
- Segregate domains explicitly (e.g., only moral evil as retribution, only some natural evils as soul-making) and accept large unexplained residuals, or give up one rationale.

6. Demonic agency vs Laws-of-Nature

A. Commitments
- Demonic: Natural evils are intentional acts of non-human agents.
- LoN: Natural evils are impersonal byproducts of regularities necessary for agency.
B. Friction: Causal competition
- For the same earthquake: is its explanans a demon’s will or tectonic necessity? If both, which is primary? If demons routinely override physics, LoN’s “unavoidability” wanes. If demons only ever ride along, their agency becomes explanatorily idle.
C. To reconcile:
- Choose hierarchy: either (i) demons are rare overrides (then LoN explains most cases), or (ii) demons are primary in some cases with independent evidence. Avoid using both as blanket explanations.

7. Privation theory of evil vs Instrumental-good talk

A. Commitments
- Privation: Evil is a lack of due good, not a positive entity.
- Instrumental talk: God “uses” certain evils to secure greater goods.
B. Friction
- Using a lack: Tools are positive features; a mere absence is not the kind of thing that can be employed. Saying God “uses evils” clashes with calling them “just lacks.”
- Phenomenology problem: Many evils (excruciating pain) look like robust positive states, not mere absences. Privation re-describes them thinly; instrumental talk treats them thickly.
C. To reconcile:
- Either (i) drop instrumental language in favor of “permissions of deprivations,” which weakens the theodicy’s causal bite, or (ii) admit some evils are positive disvalues, tempering strict privationism.

8. Afterlife compensation vs GPCR-style responsibility norms

A. Commitments
- Afterlife: Horrors are “defeated” or outweighed by eternal goods; victims are compensated.
- GPCR norm: Knowingly allowing preventable atrocities makes one culpable, compensation or not.
B. Friction
- Culpability doesn’t evaporate: In ordinary ethics, making it up to the victim later doesn’t erase the wrong of permitting the preventable harm now.
- Perverse implication: If compensation fully justifies permission, we’d be obliged to allow (or cause) horrors whenever we could later overcompensate—an implausible moral result.
C. To reconcile:
- Downgrade compensation to an existential solace, not a justification; keep a stringent non-permission principle for preventable horrors. That, however, pressures other theodicies that rely on permission for goods.

These are the typical strategies apologists might employ to evade criticism. They are also the places where they slide between different theodicies, and are therefore switching between assumptions or holding conflicting assumptions mid conversation.

1. Motte-and-bailey drift: Slide between a modest, hard-to-attack claim (the motte) and an ambitious, explanatory claim (the bailey).

Motte: “We can’t know God’s reasons.” (Skeptical theism.)
Bailey: “Here are God’s reasons: libertarian freedom, soul-making, best-world…” (Positive theodicies.)

This is persuasive because the motte is practically unassailable: limited human knowledge is undeniable. The bailey feels satisfying because it offers concrete answers. Alternating gives the comfort of answers with the safety of mystery. However, it is not legitimate to both claim positive knowledge of God’s reasons and deny that we can assess those reasons when challenged. You cannot say “we don’t know” to rebut defeaters without also deflating your own positive claims. You could expose it by:

Asking for a mode lock: “For this discussion, are we in skeptical mode (no reasons offered) or explanatory mode (specific reasons offered)? We can’t switch mid-argument.”
Pressing a consistency check: “If we’re too cognitively limited to judge whether horrors are pointless, we’re equally limited to assert they’re necessary for greater goods.”
Using a burden check: “If you retreat to ‘unknown reasons,’ then please withdraw the positive theodicy and state that you’re only running a logical-possibility defense.”

2. Moral-theory switcheroo: Swap between consequentialist and deontological frames to dodge costs.

Conseq phase: “Permitting evil is justified by greater goods.”
Deontic phase: “But God can’t/doesn’t cause evil; that’d be wrong.”

Each frame handles a different objection well. Consequentialism answers “why allow X?” Deontology answers “then why not cause X to get the good?”. But this is inconsistent, God’s moral status can be evaluated with two incompatible yardsticks as needed. Permitting foreseeable horrors is morally different from causation in a way that remains stable under divine foreknowledge and total control of initial conditions. You can expose this a few ways:

Fix the currency: “Are we evaluating by outcomes (overall goods) or by constraints (what may never be done/allowed)?”
Parity test: “If permitting atrocity A is justified by outcome G, would causing a milder A’ for the same G be permissible? If not, why is the harsher permission okay?”
Selection responsibility: “Given foreknowledge and world-selection, where’s the morally relevant line between ‘permit’ and ‘cause’?”

3. Modal gerrymandering: Shuffle among different senses of “could” to keep omnipotence intact and explain evil.

Logical possibility: “A sinless free world is logically possible.”
Feasibility (given counterfactuals): “But God couldn’t feasibly actualize it.”
Bare omnipotence talk: “God can do anything logically possible.”

The vocabulary of “possible/feasible/could” sounds technical and reasonable. It lets one say “God is omnipotent” while also saying “God couldn’t do X.” But it assumes that feasibility limits are substantive (not ad hoc) and not surreptitiously re-defined to fit whatever evil we observe. It also assumes that counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are truth-apt, fixed, and not under divine control, yet God remains fully sovereign over world selection without incurring responsibility. Both of these assumptions fail to resolve the face-value contradiction. The apologist needs to list the worlds that are logically possible but allegedly infeasible and tell me why they’re infeasible in a way that doesn’t collapse omnipotence into a label for “the best of what happened to be available.” You could ask the following questions to expose the inconsistency:

Modal audit: “Which ‘could’ are you using right now—logical, metaphysical, or feasible? Keep that sense fixed throughout.”
Control audit: “If God can choose which essences and circumstances exist, which of these feasibility constraints remain? If they remain, why?”
Counterfactual fixity: “Are creaturely counterfactuals necessary, brute facts? If yes, doesn’t that limit sovereignty? If no, why aren’t better counterfactual profiles available?”

4. Attribute sliding: When classical omni-attributes generate trouble, pivot to a revised theology (open theism, process theism, or ‘beyond our categories’), then slide back when convenient.

It preserves belief by dialing attributes up or down as needed. If omniscience/immutability causes tension with freedom/evil, redefine them; if you need grandeur, talk classically again. This tactic fails to realize that shifting conceptions incurs costs elsewhere (e.g., prophecy, providence, worship-worthiness). You could pose these questions:

Target lock: “Please specify which doctrine set we’re evaluating: classical theism, open theism, process? We’ll stick to that set.”
Cost accounting: “Show how your revised attributes still secure central theistic commitments (sovereignty, worship-worthiness). If they don’t, acknowledge the trade-off.”
No backsliding rule: “If you adopt open/process to solve evil, you can’t later invoke classical omniscience to answer other problems without argument.”

5. Patchwork pluralism

Treat theodicies as modular plug-ins: FWD for moral evil, laws-of-nature for natural evil, punishment for some cases, soul-making for others, demons for the rest—without checking their joint consistency. Obviously, as shown above, this runs into a plethora of issues as stated above:

Risk vs necessity: FWD says evil is a risk; soul-making/best-world says evil is necessary.
Mechanism clashes: Demons vs impersonal laws can’t both be primary causes of the same events without hierarchy.
Moral basis shifts: Retribution (desert) vs instrumentality (greater goods) send contradictory messages about why specific people suffer.
Epistemic stance clash: Positive stories vs skeptical theism’s “we can’t know.”

It is fine to have a pluralistic view of the problem of evil, but the resolution must be jointly consistent (they are often not). You could apply the following criteria:

Type map: “For each evil type (moral, natural, animal, horrendous, pediatric), assign exactly one primary theodicy and justify exclusivity.”
Harmony test: “Show that your chosen set is jointly consistent—no member implies the denial of another’s key premise.”
Scope honesty: “Admit residuals: which evils your package doesn’t explain. Partial theories are fine; contradictory ones aren’t.”

6. Burden-of-proof flipping

Demand the critic prove no possible reason could justify any evil, while offering only extremely thin possibilities that multiply or contradict each other. But “Possibility” is a low bar; it can’t be empirically falsified. It shifts the discussion from plausibility to a game of logical conceivability. This creates an asymmetry in the discussion; the theist may rest on mere logical possibility while the critic must disprove all such possibilities. Multiple incompatible possibilities can be floated without penalty (“maybe freedom, or soul-making, or best-world, or unknown reasons”). This sort of burden reversal happens pretty much when your interlocutor doesn’t admit defeat. You could ask the following:

Standards symmetry: “If I must refute all possibilities, you must settle on one coherent, worked-out model with costs acknowledged.”
Probability threshold: “We’re not in a logic seminar; what’s your best explanation, and is it more plausible than indifference, hiddenness, or nonexistence given the data?”
No kitchen sink: “Present one internally consistent account, not a menu of contradictions. Otherwise you’re not explaining—you’re immunizing.”

7. Survivorship-bias sampling

Showcase stories where suffering yields growth (“look at all the good that came from X”), ignoring the base rate of devastation without growth. Vivid successes stick; failures are silent. But it assumes that positive outcomes are representative, that growth was counterfactually unavailable without the evil and that those who didn’t “grow” don’t weigh against the theodicy; these require significant justification. Anecdotes aren’t evidence. Give overall rates and counterfactual analysis, or concede the sampling bias. You could ask the following:

Base-rate demand: “What proportion of horrors plausibly produce goods unavailable otherwise?”
Counterfactuals: “Show that those goods couldn’t arise via milder trials.”
Silent cases: “Account for catastrophic cases with no growth—what justifies those?”

8. Temporal deferral (afterlife offset)

Shift justification to the afterlife: evils are “defeated” or compensated later, so present permission is fine. It promises ultimate fairness without confronting present data. But it unjustly assumes that compensation fully cancels culpability for permitting preventable harms, that all harms are compensable (including lost lives, relationships, and agency), and that afterlife goods are guaranteed and proportionate. You can target these assumptions by asking:

Culpability gap: “Compensation doesn’t erase responsibility for preventable permission—explain why it would here.”
Non-fungibility: “Identify which goods can replace irreplaceable losses (children, autonomy).”
Proportionality: “What’s the metric connecting horror H to compensation C?”

9. Counterpossible safe harbor

Declare counterfactuals about God’s alternatives nonsensical (“counterpossibles”), so critics can’t say “God could have done otherwise.” It sounds sophisticated: if God’s nature is necessary, many counterfactuals are undefined. But it assumes that all relevant comparisons reduce to counterpossibles and that we can still make positive modal claims for theodicy (feasibility, necessity) while blocking critical counterfactuals. You can address these assumptions by asking:

Symmetry: “If counterpossibles are off-limits, your feasibility/possibility talk is too.”
Restricted domain: “Specify which counterfactuals you allow (creaturely, law-level) and why.”
Pragmatics: “If no alternatives are discussable, you’re not explaining—just immunizing.”

10. Redescription gambit

Re-label horrors as “tests,” “opportunities,” “mysteries,” or “birth pangs,” swapping evaluation for rhetoric. This is very persuasive, language reframes intuitions; names carry emotional weight. But it assumes that changing the label changes the moral status and that the victims’ standpoint can be sidelined by redescribing the event’s “role.” You can expose this tactic by:

Holding the description fixed: “Keep the concrete facts (pain intensity, duration, consent, alternatives) and re-argue with those on the table.”
Victim-first test: “Would this redescription be acceptable to the primary victim?”
Counter-label parity: “If I re-label it ‘gratuitous torment,’ does that settle the debate? No—so labeling doesn’t do the work.”

Okay how should I conclude this? Well, there are bad arguments everywhere. As I embark on the journey of dismantling bad arguments, I wonder if this is even impactful or relevant.