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[u/certaintyforawe]

I won't answer the Swinburne question, but regarding Plantinga, it's important to remember that he was arguing against the logical problem of evil popularized by J. L. Mackie. So all he had to show was that it was not logically impossible for God to be omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient and for evil to still exist. And most philosophers of religion (even agnostic/atheist ones) agree that he successfully refuted the logical problem of evil.

Plantinga was not primarily trying to refute the evidential problem of evil, most popularly articulated by William Rowe. Other people have since offered various theodicies and defenses, but Plantinga isn't necessarily the strongest one to look to for that.

To your point about whether Plantinga and Swinburne can be considered serious philosophers, Plantinga in particular is also fairly well-regarded as an epistemologist, especially his concept of warrant. But, importantly, Plantinga and Swinburne were crucial in developing analytic philosophy of religion in the 20th century, and many regard them as at least providing a formidable defense of religious belief, even if it doesn't convince everyone.

[u/Different_Sail5950 → u/certaintyforawe]

To add to this, in the 1980s Plantinga was also very infuentual in metaphysics, especially the metaphysics of modality and of abstract objects. He had a tremendous influence on Peter van Inwagen who by any measure is considered a very serious philosopher, too.

Many people find some of his arguments in philosophy of religion less convincing -- but almost every philosopher has some arguments that they think are great that others find a bit kooky or hard to buy. At any rate, it would be a mistake to judge Plantinga's contributions solely by judging his philosophy of religion, or to think his philosophy of religion wasn't serious just because you think the arguments don't work. (Almost nobody thinks that Lewis's arguments for modal realism work, but nobody thinks he wasn't a serious philosopher, either.)

[u/certaintyforawe → u/Different_Sail5950]

Great point, thanks for mentioning!

[u/Art_is_it → u/certaintyforawe]

Thanks, this helps clarify the target, but I think it also sharpens my confusion.

I understand that Plantinga was responding to Mackie’s logical problem of evil, not Rowe’s evidential problem. And I understand that, on those terms, he only needs to show that God and evil are not strictly inconsistent.

But that is exactly what I find puzzling. If the achievement is only that the logical problem of evil was too strong, why is this treated as such a powerful defense of theism rather than as a fairly limited result? Many implausible views can be protected from strict contradiction by adding auxiliary possibilities. That does not make them epistemically serious.

The natural evil case is where this feels especially strange to me. If human free will does not explain earthquakes, diseases, and animal suffering, and the response is that such evils could possibly be caused by non-human free agents, Satan/fallen angels, etc., then I understand how that may block a logical contradiction. But I do not understand why that move is treated as academically respectable rather than as a sign that the standard of “mere logical possibility” is too permissive.

On Plantinga as an epistemologist: I can see that his work on warrant/proper function is a serious attempt to address post-Gettier problems — roughly, what turns true belief into knowledge rather than lucky true belief. But I still do not see how that broader epistemological importance transfers to the religious application. If Christianity is true, then perhaps Christian belief could be warranted via something like a sensus divinitatis. But that seems conditional on the very thing in question.

So I think my question is less “Did Plantinga answer Mackie on Mackie’s own terms?” and more: why should that limited victory, plus a conditional religious epistemology, count as a serious defense of Christian theism rather than a sophisticated way of protecting a prior Christian framework?

And this still leaves Swinburne mostly untouched: his Bayesian project seems to depend on assigning probabilities to what God would probably do, but those assignments often look underdetermined and Christian-friendly from the start.

[u/certaintyforawe → u/Art_is_it]

Regarding natural evil, I'm not sure I know anyone who thinks that Plantinga's free will defense works to answer that form of the problem of evil. More commonly, I see people use some other kind of theodicy or defense (e.g., Hick's soul-making theodicy, skeptical theism, etc.) to answer those challenges. More generally, it seems unlikely that any single theodicy/defense works to refute the evidential problem of evil in its entirety, but rather people rely on several different, compatible ones.

As for the epistemology point, Plantinga and others (e.g., Alston, Wolterstorff) were crucial in developing Reformed epistemology in the 20th century, where they used Plantinga's work on proper function and warrant to argue for something like the sensus divinitatis, arguing that this is something that all humans have, but it's corrupted by sin (or at least that's the gist -- I don't particularly work on the epistemology of religion, which is why I can't give a detailed answer to the Swinburne portion). And my understanding is that they didn't take this to be a knock-down proof of theism, but rather a way of construing religious belief such that it is plausible or reasonable.

And I think that's the point that many of these 20th century philosophers of religion were making. The arguments were largely meant to show that religious belief is reasonable, plausible, coherent, etc., not that these arguments were definitive proofs of the existence of God.

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