Many philosophers seem to suppose that the argument of Plantinga (1974)(1) - or a suitably elaborated variant thereof - utterly demolishes the kinds of 2,3 "logical" arguments from evil developed in Mackie (1955). 1 am not at all convinced that this is a correct assessment of the current state of play. First, I think that Plantinga's free will defence involves a hitherto undetected inconsistency. Second, I think that even if Plantinga's free will defence is consistent, it relies upon some indefensible metaphysical assumptions. Third, I think that even if the metaphysical assumptions upon which Plantinga's free will defence relies are defensible, there are serious questions to be raised about the moral assumptions which are made in that defence. Finally, I think that, even if Plantinga's free will defence is acceptable, there are arguments closely related to those developed in Mackie (1955) that are not vulnerable to any variant of Plantinga's free will defence, and yet that are clearly deserving of further examination. The structure of the paper is as follows. In section 1, I present a standard "logical" argument from moral evil, and give Plantinga's reply to it. In section 2, I provide my argument in support of the claim that there is an inconsistency in Plantinga's free will defence. In section 3, I assess those parts of Plantinga (1974) that might be taken to bear on my claim that there is an inconsistency in Plantinga's free will defence. In sections 4 and 5, I identify some of the controversial metaphysical assumptions that are required for Plantinga's reply, and I suggest that at least one of these assumptions is really not acceptable. In section 6, I consider some assumptions about values that are also required for Plantinga's reply, and argue that here Plantinga is probably on safer ground. In section 7, I consider an alternative formulation of the free will defence that avoids both the inconsistency and the unacceptable metaphysical assumptions, but that is subject to the other kinds of worries that can be. raised in connection with Plantinga's reply. In section 8, I turn to consider some probabilistic arguments from moral evil that are natural developments from the standard "logical" argument from moral evil. In the final section of the paper, I consider replies that might be made to these probabilistic arguments. Throughout, the aim of my discussion is to show that the assumption that there is nothing further to be said on behalf of arguments from moral evil and, in particular, on behalf of the kind of argument which is developed in Mackie (1955) - is premature. I don't claim to be able to show that there are successful arguments from moral evil; however, I do think that philosophers ought not to be too readily inclined to dismiss these arguments out of hand.(4) In particular - as I shall also go on to argue - I think that it is plausible to claim that arguments from moral evil generate serious constraints on positive arguments that can be mounted for the existence of a perfect being.
