William Rowe Atheism Analysis

Rowe’s Argument for Atheism

William Rowe presents an evidential argument that supports the idea that God, an omniscient and supreme being, cannot exist because gratuitous evil, meaningless evil that does not correlate to a greater good, exists. Rowe organizes his argument into two premises which support that God does not exist. The first premise acknowledges that gratuitous evils exists in abundance in the world, creating a common experience, or natural theology. Then, Rowe argues, in his second premise, the incompatibility of gratuitous evil and God. Once the two premises have been established and proven true, Rowe concludes that God does not exist.

To determine whether or not the conclusion is valid, both premises must be proven true. Rowe’s example of a fawn in the forest helps investigate the validity of the first premise. In this example, a fawn runs through a forest as a fire spreads. The fire then causes a tree to plummet on the fawn, causing immense pain and

By utilizing theist arguments, we can analyze an objection: Pain is a necessary factor in life. This objection explains how pain is needed because pain protects us and alerts us when our body requires attention. For example, when a runner damages his ankle, the pain serves as an alerting system that causes the runner to stop running and rest, which prevents the ankle from any further damage. Additionally, although pain is discomforting and in some cases damaging, it is necessary because if we felt pleasure every time we hurt ourselves, then there is a high possibility that we would continue to injure ourselves. For example, if the fawn was to hurt his ankle while running, but did not receive an alert from pain that he needed to stop running, then he would continue to run, leading to a greater injury. This is the strongest objection because it effectively rejects that gratuitous evil