| Summary: | Does evil constitute any evidence against the existence of God? Stephen Wykstra argues that it does not, claiming that “if we have realized the magnitude of the theistic proposal, cognizance of suffering ... should not in the least reduce our confidence that it is true”. I argue that he is mistaken. I outline a framework for modelling the confidence we lend to propositions and assessing the rational propriety of such confidences both at a given time and over time, and apply this framework to the issue at hand by imagining a scenario in which a subject observes for the first time a terrible evil. I argue that no matter which one of us this subject is, he ought to undergo a reduction in confidence in the existence of God as a result of this observation. The bulk of this thesis is taken up with a defence of two central premises of this argument, the most controversial of which is, roughly speaking, that our subject ought to be more confident of the occurrence of the evil on the supposition that God does not exist than on the supposition that He does. In the course of a defence of this premise I seek to counter the challenge to evidential arguments from evil made by the 'Sceptical Theists' and the challenge, based on the claim that in deciding which evils to permit God may have to draw an arbitrary line, that van Inwagen issues.
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