Investigating the effectiveness of inferring the best explanation in explaining evil

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Graduated with a PhD in Islamic Philosophy from Baqir-ul-Ulum University, Qom, Iran

10.22080/jre.2023.23954.1160

Abstract

The problem of evil is one of the most important issues in the philosophy of religion, and it has been one of the most important issues of religious philosophers since ancient Greece until today. Since the inference of the best explanation has been presented as a new deductive method, some have discussed the effectiveness of this method in the issues of the philosophy of religion, and one of the issues of the philosophy of religion is the philosophical explanation of evil. In the explanation of evil recently, theists and those who have violated the belief in God have both tried to use the inference of the best explanation to explain evil as they want. For this reason, it is necessary for the philosopher of Muslim religion to enter into this issue and examine the effectiveness of this type of inference in explaining evil from the point of view of Islamic philosophy. Based on this, in this article, after describing the problem of evil, we have tried to examine the structure of the inference of the best explanation, and after presenting the viewpoints of the philosophers of religion on this issue, we have tried to examine and present the correct viewpoint. The result of this investigation is the inefficiency of this conclusion in explaining evil for the benefit or harm of theism.

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