Plantinga, Presumption, Possibility, and the Problem of Evil

Abstract

My topic is Alvin Plantinga’s ’solution’ to one of the many forms that the problem of evil takes: the modal abstract form. This form of the problem is abstract in that it does not deal with the amounts or kinds of evil which exist, but only with the fact that there is some evil or other. And it is modal in that it concerns the compossibility of the following propositions, not any evidential relation between them:(1) God is omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly goodand(2) There is evil in the world.