Yujin Nagasawa's "The Problem of Evil for Atheists"

Yujin Nagasawa is Professor of Philosophy and Kingfisher College Chair of the Philosophy of Religion and Ethics at the University of Oklahoma. Before joining Oklahoma, he held the H. G. Wood Professorship of the Philosophy of Religion and served as the Co-Director of the Birmingham Centre for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Birmingham, UK. Currently, he serves as Editor-in-Chief of Religious Studies, published by Cambridge University Press, and as the book series editor for Cambridge Elements in Global Philosophy of Religion. Nagasawa also served as the president of the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion from 2017 to 2019. He was the principal investigator for the Global Philosophy of Religion Project, a $2.42 million research initiative funded by the John Templeton Foundation and the Dynamic Investment Fund at the University of Birmingham, from 2020 to 2023.

Nagasawa applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, The Problem of Evil for Atheists, and reported the following:

Page 99 falls within Chapter 4, where I develop a version of the problem of evil for axiarchism—a novel alternative to traditional theism that posits the world exists not because God created it, but because an abstract "creatively effective ethical requirement" necessitated its existence. On that page, I explore whether axiarchists can escape the problem of evil by appealing to modal realism, which maintains that all possible worlds exist to the same extent as the actual world, with each being ontologically on a par. However, the Page 99 Test does not capture the full scope of my book, as that discussion only represents a small part of my broader argument—that the problem of evil poses a challenge for almost everyone, including theists, pantheists, axiarchists, and even atheists.

Throughout the book, I argue that traditional theists, who typically embrace supernaturalism, are better positioned to address the problem of evil than naturalist atheists, as the most viable solution requires a supernaturalist framework. Conversely, if atheists manage to develop a successful naturalist response to the problem, traditional theists could adopt it, as theists’ supernaturalist ontology encompasses naturalist ontologies. If my argument holds, the problem of evil should no longer be viewed as a challenge exclusive to traditional theists; it may, in fact, present an even greater challenge for atheists.

Visit Yujin Nagasawa's website.

--Marshal Zeringue