Does the Analogy of an Ideal State Disprove God’s Existence? James Sterba’s Argument and a Thomistic Response

Abstract

This paper provides an analysis of James Sterba’s argument from evil in the world and the author’s Thomistic counterargument. Many authors of contemporary analytic philosophy of religion discuss the concept of “horrendous evils”, which is a representative name for pointless evil and suffering in the world. Sterba claims that the existence of such evil is not logically compatible with the existence of the all-good theistic God. If such a God existed, according to Sterba, he would have intervened in time and prevented and not permitted horrendous evil consequences; in other words, he would have acted as an ideal state. The author of this paper argues that the analogy of an ideal state does not disprove the existence of God of theism. Furthermore, people would prefer if God was not like an ideal state. Applying the characteristics of an ideal state to a theistic God is not reasonable because it relies on anthropomorphism. Such anthropomorphism is incoherent with some basic theistic beliefs. The author of this paper applies Thomistic concepts to the problem of horrendous evils.

Keywords

• divine goodness
• horrendous evil
• ideal state
• James Sterba
• problem of evil
• theodicy