The Problem of Pain-for naturalists.

Steven Carr wrote: I really don't think Victor understands the argument from evil.

Evil and suffering occur pretty much randomly.

There is no god organising the world, just as there is no god organising quantum events.

VR: No, I think I do understand it. The claim is that if theism is true, then we should expect the world to be one in which pleasure and pain are distributed strongly in favor of pleasure, while pain or suffering will occur, if it occurs at all, only when it is necessary to some greater good. 

On the other hand, if naturalistic atheism is true, then we should expect to find pleasure and pain distributed evenly and randomly. Since that is what we do in fact find, the pain and suffering in the world gives us a reason to believe that naturalistic atheism is preferable to theism. 

But, here's my problem. I wouldn't expect there to be any pain and suffering given naturalism. Pain behavior maybe, but not real pain and suffering. Unless someone has a solution to the hard problem of consciousness, pain may be a problem for theists, but it's a devastating problem for naturalism. Why is the theist's problem of pain worse than the naturalists? 

Who are you, O man? The eliminativist response to the problem of evil

The idea that we have no duties to that which we create seems counterintuitive to me. That is why I'm not an eliminativist with respect to the problem of evil.
Yet, I sometimes I wonder how to argue with someone who is. And there is a Bible verse to support their view:

Romans 9:20 But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?'"

Does it follow from this that if A is the creator of B, then B cannot make any moral judgments concerning A's treatment of B?

Sceptical non-theism

Apparently, it's hard to know what worlds are possible even without theism. See here, by Alexander Pruss.

HT: Crude

Some revisions in Talbott's response to Beversluis, and a lesson from Lewis on Ad Hominem arguments

Those who are familiar with what I write are aware that I have strict standards for avoiding ad hominem arguments. In my view, we are poorly situated to understand the motives and character of other people, and so we should stick to the issues and avoid casting aspersions on the character of those whose views we oppose. Some people think this is a matter of niceness, but I see it rather as a way of keeping discussion productive.

I think one example where a lot of people with whom I sympathize made a mistake in this direction was the various responses made by critics of the original edition of John Beversluis's C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion, published in 1985. As a Lewis defender, I was sympathetic to the content of their criticisms. At the same time Richard Purtill, for example, implied that Beversluis was being deliberately dishonest in his treatment, for example, of Lewis's A Grief Observed. Now, having written a book that was harshly critical of a highly regarded Christian thinker such as Lewis, he could expect harsh criticism in return. But I do think that moving from a critique of the contents of his treatment of Lewis to a discussion of his motives and character was misguided.

Now, of course, Beversluis wrote his 2007 revision of the book, this time with Prometheus Press as opposed to Eerdmans, and he there responded to various critics of his work. Just recently, Thomas Talbott has written a reply to Beversluis's revised edition, claiming that Beversluis badly misinterpreted his defense of Lewis's treatment of the problem of evil. I linked to it a few posts back. However, Talbott's essay, as it appeared when I linked to it, did contain some aspersions against Dr. Beversluis's character, and Beversluis e-mailed me to point out that Talbott's rejoinded did not meet what he knew to be my standards of ad hominem avoidance.

I sympathize with Talbott, and am inclined to agree that Beversluis committed some serious errors in interpreting his essay. (Interestingly enough James Petrik, who independently wrote an essay which made a number of points that are similar to those of Talbott, also complained about how his essay was interpreted by Beversluis, and I heard from him before I heard from Talbott). However, Talbott said that Beversluis "had no concern for accuracy" and even that he "had deliberately removed a modal operator" from one of Talbott's statements, and that steps over the line.

One important piece of evidence that makes me very reluctant to charge Beversluis with dishonesty is the fact that, in spite of the fact that it would advance the overall thesis of Beversluis's book that Lewis's apologetics fails miserably, in a review of A. N. Wilson's biography, and later in the revised book, he argued that Lewis did not abandon apologetics after his exchange with Elizabeth Anscombe. No one trying to tear Lewis down dishonestly would have given up on what I have called the Anscombe Legend. That legend is just too juicy for Lewis's opponents to throw away, and the only reason someone like Beversluis would abandon it was because it doesn't fit the facts.

It is very irritating, surely to be misinterpreted by a critic. However, we cannot do better than follow the example of Lewis himself, in his Rejoinder to Dr. Pittenger.

How many times does a man have to say something before he is safe from the accusation of having said exactly the opposite? (I am not for a moment imputing dishonesty to Dr. Pittenger; we all know too well how difficult it is to grasp or retain the substance of a book one finds antipathetic.)"

In any event, Talbott has made some revisions in his essay to meet my criticisms. Those who want to determine how right, or wrong, Talbott is in his criticisms of Beversluis's interpretations should read Talbott's original article, read Beversluis's criticisms, and read Talbott's response. I realize that the relevant portions of Beversluis aren't available online.

Calvinism as an eliminativist solution to the problem of evil

The purpose of this post is not to criticize Calvinism, but to provide an exposition of why I think Calvinist theology dissolves, rather than solves the problem of evil. It looks to me as if the logical conclusion of Calvinism is that the idea of gratuitous suffering, the centerpiece of the argument from evil, is a misguided notion, given the fact that we all deserve not only to suffer, but to suffer eternally.

I think you can just get rid of the problem of evil if you make the kind of move that Calvinists make here, namely that alongside an obligation to alleviate suffering there is an obligation not to let sin go unpunished. Therefore, since we are all sinners (if for no other reason than being descended from our federal head, Adam), God has, for any instance of suffering, no undefeated reason not to permit it or even to inflict it.


The concept of goodness, according to Calvinists, is rooted in God's nature, but rightness is rooted in God's commands. This isn't strictly speaking voluntarism, since God's nature determines his commands; he can't just command anything. However, goodness is defined, as I understand it, on God's glory, which involves the expression of all of his attributes. He exercises the attribute of mercy in sending his son to die for the sins of the elect, and in giving irresistible grace to the elect so that they can repent and believe. He also exercises his attribute of justice by inflicting just punishment on those who oppose his will. Both of these are good outcomes from God's perspective, even though they are bad outcomes for the damned.

What I think this does is actually eliminate the problem of evil. If you can make the step of believing that the the just punishment of sin is an intrinsic and not a remedial good, then not only can you accept the idea that God is justified in predestining people for hell, but you can also justify the claim that whatever humans suffer while on earth, they had it coming and shouldn't complain to God.

We are not commanded to mirror God's nature in every respect; so we have obligations to alleviate suffering that God lacks, though a Calvinist would say that we have obligations to inflict retribution is some cases ourselves. But the limitation on our obligation to punish is not shared by God.

It seems to me that this is a dissolution rather than a solution to the problem of evil. One doesn't try to find explanations why a God who loves everyone permits so much pain even though he has everyone's best interest as heart. God doesn't have everyone's best interests at heart, God has his own glory at heart, which coincides with our interests only if we are among the elect.

I have trouble seeing the punishment of sin as an intrisic good; I see it as a sort of plan B; a remedial good in response to that which God removes from his control by providing us with libertarian free will.

But the purpose of this is not engage the Calvinist debate, it is rather intended to exposit what I take the Calvinist position to be.

I hope this doesn't start the charges and countercharges of sock puppeting again. I suspect this hope is vain, however.

How to eliminate the problem of evil

I am redating a post from 2005 which took place, if course, before my exchanges with Calvinists. I am aware of the fact that some Calvinists, notably Sudduth, dissasociate not only themselves from what I am calling Ockhamism here, but also dissassociate Calvin from Ockhamism.

The following is a presentation of an argument from evil:

(1) Gratuitous evils probably exist.
(2) Gratuitous evils are incompatible with the God of theism (omnipotent, omniscient, all-good).
(3) Therefore, the God of theism probably does not exist.

This argument has a presupposition that some Christians have questioned. It presupposes that "good" is somehow independent of the will of God, and that it has some objective meaning independent of the will of God. That presupposition, which John Beversluis calls Platonism is that "the term good cannot mean some thing radically different from what is means when applied to men." The opposing view is that he calls the Ockhamist view, set forth by William of Ockham. This is Beversluis's exposition:

"According to this view, when we talk about God's goodness, we must be prepared to give up our ordinary moral standards. The term good when applied to God does mean som ething radically different from what it means when applied to human beings. To suppose that God must be conform to some standard other than his own sovereign will is to deny his ultimacy. His is not under any moral constraint to command certain actions and to forbid others. He does not, for example, forbid murder because it is wrong; it is wrong because he forbids it. If God would command us to murder, then that would be our duty, just as it was the duty of Abraham to sacridice Isaac, or Elijah to slay the prophets of Baal, or Joshua to slaughter the Canaanites right down to the alst woman and child. Some Ockhamist Christians have even gone so far as to say that God could have reversed the entire moral law and made virtues not only of murder but of adultery, theft, coveting and bearing false witness. As Ockhamist John Calvin puts it, "The will of God is the highest rule of justice; so that what he wills must be considered just...for this very reason, because he wills it." (Calvin's Institutes, book 3, chapter 3, section 2)And one contemporary Calvinist, Gordon H. Clark, surpasses even Ockham and Calvin on this point. "God .... cannot be responsible for the plain reason that there is no power superior to him; no greater being can hold him accountable; no one can punish ... there are no laws which he could disobey."1

1 Gordon Clark, Reason, Religion and Revelation (Jefferson, MD: The Trinity Foundation, 1986), p. 241, John Beversluis, C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion(Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1985) pp. 102-103.

Now if "good" means "in accordance with God's will, then there is simply no possibility that God actions can possibly be wrong. If we are prepared to set aside the concept of goodness that we are inclined to apply to human beings and admit that "good" means be definition "whatever God wills," there simply can be no problem of evil.


You've heard of Ockham's Razor, this is Ockham's Solvent. Any version of the problem of evil that you could possibly advance can be answered by one sentence, "Who are you, O man, to answer back to God?" Or, as your mother used to say, "Because I said so!"

Earlier I put together a couple of posts on why Calvinists can't solve the problem of evil. That is true. But they can dissolve it. This is, I think the only possible option the Calvinist has in responding to the objection from evil. The fact is that for the Calvinist, for all eternity, the world could have been better than it was, is, and always will be, at least by any understading of goodness that humans can make any sense of.

So if you really want to get rid of the problem of evil, this is the way to do it. Unfortunately, it gets rid of a lot of other things as well. See the link to the first chapter of my book.

C. S. Lewis on Hotly Criticizing Divine Justice

This is a redated post, because apparently the dialogue is still going on.

How eager ought we to be to set our standard of justice aside so that we can accept the ways of God. What Lewis is presupposing here is that our moral sense is rational, and that in a theistic universe, it should be thought to derive from God.

There is, to be sure, one glaringly obvious ground for denying that any moral purpose at all is operative in the universe: namely, the actual course of events in all its wasteful cruelty and apparent indifference, or hostility, to life. But then, as I maintain, that is precisely the ground which we cannot use. Unless we judge this waste and cruelty to be real evils we cannot of course condemn the universe for exhibiting them. Unless we take our own standard of goodness to be valid in principle (however fallible our particular applications of it) we cannot mean anything by calling waste and cruelty evils. And unless we take our own standard to be something more than ours, to be in fact an objective principle to which we are responding, we cannot regard that standard as valid. In a word, unless we allow ultimate reality to be moral, we cannot morally condemn it. The more seriously we take our own charge of futility the more we are committed to the implication that reality in the last resort is not futile at all. The defiance of the good atheist hurled at an apparently ruthless and idiotic cosmos is really an unconscious homage to something in or behind that cosmos which he recognizes as infinitely valuable and authoritative: for if mercy and justice were really only private whims of his own with no objective and impersonal roots, and if he realized this, he could not go on being indignant. The fact that he arraigns heaven itself for disregarding them means that at some level of his mind he knows they are enthroned in a higher heaven still. I cannot and never could persuade myself that such defiance is displeasing to the supreme mind. There is something holier about the atheism of a Shelley than about the theism of a Paley. That is the lesson of the Book of Job. No explanation of the problem of unjust suffering is there given: that is not the point of the poem. The point is that the man who accepts our ordinary standard of good and by it hotly criticizes divine justice receives the divine approval: the orthodox, pious people who palter with that standard in the attempt to justify God are condemned. Apparently the way to advance from our imperfect apprehension of justice to the absolute justice is not to throw our imperfect apprehensions aside but boldly to go on applying them. Just as the pupil advances to more perfect arithmetic not by throwing his multiplication table away but by working it for all it is worth.
From "De Futilitate," in Christian Reflections (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967), pp.69-70.

On explaining too much or too little

On the one hand, if we don’t offer much in the way of explanations, and just rebut argument against theism, appealing to mystery to avoid refutation, we nevertheless are left with weak position. The atheist can respond that the suffering in the world makes perfect sense on his own world-view, in that if there is no benevolent being in charge then the random distribution of pleasure and pain that we actually experience is pretty much to be expected.

On the other hand, if the theist explains too much, he runs the risk of hubris, or claiming to know what he is not in a position to know. He could find himself in the position of the comforters of Job.

Christian philosopher Daniel Howard-Snyder writes:

We do others a grievous disservice to hold out to them in private or in the pulpit any expectation to understand why God would permit so much evil or any particular instance, expectations which we have no reason to believe will be fulfilled, expectations which when left unfulfilled can become near irresistible grounds for rejecting the faith. We are in the dark here. We can’t see how any reason we know of, or the whole lot of them combined, would justify God n permitting so much horrible evil or any particular horror. We need to own up to that fact.

Daniel Howard-Snyder, “God Evil and Suffering,” in Michael Murray ed. Reason for the Hope Within (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), p. 101.

Three Redemptive Uses of Suffering according to Lewis

A redated post on Lewis on suffering. This was part of an essay I wrote for a Bruce Edwards' C. S. Lewis encyclopedia.

It is after these preliminaries that Lewis beings to talk about human suffering and why it occurs. He first identifies the proper good of a human creature as the submission of that person’s will to God, the surrender of human self-will to God’s will. He points out that even non-Christian and non-theistic religions require this kind of submission, so this is not a viewpoint peculiar to Christianity. Lewis does not argue that pain is the only method God uses to bring about submission to God, but it is a significant one.
God whispers to us in out pleasure, speaks in our conscience, and shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world42.
Lewis delineates three contexts in which pain can be serves the redemptive purpose of driving us toward submission to God. The first is simply an expression of the common belief that bad people ought to suffer. Although Lewis notes that some people object to the idea of retributive punishment, retribution is the only thing that makes sure that punishment is just. According to Lewis, pain “plants the flag of truth within the fortress of the rebel soul.”43
However, if the pain of bad people shatters the illusion that all is well, pain in the lives of other people shatters the illusion that what we have is enough. Even good Christians find it difficult to turn toward God when they feel as if they have all they need. He writes:
Let me implore the reader to try to believe, if only for the moment that God, who made these deserving people, may really be right when he thinks that their modest prosperity and the happiness of their children is not enough to make them blessed; that all this must fall from them in the end, and if they have not learned to know Him they will be wretched. And therefore he troubles them, warning them in advance of an insufficiency that one day they will have to discover.44
In one letter Lewis asked for prayer from a Christian friend because he was going through “A Plain Called Ease.”45 If the kind of good that will make for permanent happiness requires a relationship to God, and if ordinary prosperity takes that away from us.
The third role of suffering is based on the idea that God expects us to submit our wills to him, and that cannot possibly be willed by fallen creatures unless it is unpleasant. Mere obeying is intrinsically good, but given human self-will, obedience cuts against the self-centered will.
We therefore agree with Aristotle that what is intrinsically right may well be agreeable, and that the better a man is the more he will like it; but we agree with Kant so far as to say that there is one right act—that of self-surrender—which cannot be willed to the height by fallen creatures unless it is unpleasant. And we must add that this one right act includes all other righteousness, and that the supreme canceling of Adam’s fall, the movement “full speed astern” by which we retrace our long journey from Paradise, the untying of the old, hard knot, must be when the creature with no desire to aid it, stripped naked to the bare willing of obedience, embraces what is contrary to its nature, and does that for which only one motive is possible.46
In the Book of Job Satan asks “Does Job serve God for naught?” implying that Job’s righteousness can be explained by the benefit Job receives from his obedience, and he asks the question of whether Job would remain faithful and righteous if his life were wracked with suffering. Thus a faithful person, who is prospering, in one sense, is not asked to make the most profound act of self-surrender. This can only occur if the apparent link between righteousness and reward is broken.
In arguing as he does Lewis explicitly says that he is attempting to make the doctrine of being made perfect by suffering “not incredible.” He does not say that he can make it palatable; in fact, he says that it is not palatable.
Now does this understanding of suffering represent a retreat from Platonism? Is it an abandonment of the idea that the standards we use in evaluating the actions of God are commensurable to the standard we use in evaluating human actions? I think pretty clearly that this is not true. There is an intended good which is a good for the creature, which is supposed to make the suffering worthwhile. Nor is it overly difficult to see how Lewis’s own suffering in grief could be thought of as serving a redemptive purpose.
Since the causes of our suffering are complex, we need not presume, as Beversluis does, that the degree to which a person suffers is indicative of state of one’s relationship with God. He writes:
Yet, if we accept this argument, we must conclude that those who suffer only appear to be close to God but in fact are not—otherwise, why do they suffer? We must also conclude that those who do not suffer only appear to have drifted from God but in fact have not. Furthermore, the more you suffer, the further from God you are; the less you suffer, the further from God you are. Furthermore, the more you suffer, the more God loves you, and the less you suffer, the less he loves you, since it is those we love that we punish and those to whom we are indifferent that we allow to be happy in contemptible and estranging modes.47
However, remember, Lewis has given three different circumstances where God might have a redemptive use for pain, and these three circumstances can occur on different spiritual levels. Remember also that Lewis has made the case that the most spiritually advanced persons are persons who recognize that they are “vile,” that is, they recognize more fully than the rest of us just how far they have to go to be fully surrendered to God. Lewis’s claim concerning the reasons for suffering is not a simplistic “shattering thesis,” for people who are far from God, it is a complex thesis concerning how suffering works redemptively at all levels of spiritual development. The last of these uses of suffering, suffering as an opportunity to continue to serve God without the appearance of reward, involves no shattering whatsoever. As Petrik says:
The bottom line for Lewis, however, is that the business of mending souls is so complex that we can not hope to fully understand the manner in which suffering is distributed among human beings. Nothing the vast discrepancy between the degree to which individuals may suffer, Lewis confesses that he is ignorant of the causes of this distribution. And of course he is right. Any speculation as to the role of suffering or its absence is playing in an individual’s spiritual development will always remain fairly blind speculation…48
In addition, Lewis also mentions a redemptive use of suffering for the benefit of others. He writes:
What is good in any painful experience is, for the sufferer, his submission to the will of God, and, for the spectators, the compassion aroused and the acts of mercy to which it leads.48
So suffering does not merely benefit the character of the sufferer, it can also benefit the character of those who observe the suffering. As Talbott writes, “Nothing, it seems, arouses compassion and melts the heart of the arrogant and the powerful in a way comparable to the suffering of children.” 49
Another objection found in Beversluis is that if we were to inflict suffering on those we love in the way that Lewis is suggesting that God does, we would be acting wrongly. He writes:
On thing is certain in any case: if I were to become as “exacting” with (my children) in Lewis’s awful sense, I am confident that they would not rejoice in their newly acquired discovery that I really loved them. Nor do I believe that such a failure would be a sign of some juvenile deficiency in them.50
However, someone with greater wisdom and knowledge might surely have the right to use means that someone with less wisdom and knowledge would not have the right to use. As Lewis himself says:
To turn this (the redemptive role of suffering) into a general charter for afflicting humanity “because affliction is good for them” (as Marlowe’s Tamberlaine boasted himself as the scourge of God”) is not indeed to break the divine scheme but to volunteer for the post of Satan within that scheme. If you do his work, you must be prepared for his wages.51
So I do not think that Lewis has to violate his “professed Platonism” in order to accept his own account of suffering. Nor was Lewis wrong to see his own suffering during his grief experience as God’s work in getting him to cease his reliance on earthly comforts, even the comfort of a Christian marriage.
Another difficulty, however, pressed by Erik Weilenberg, is that Lewis really does not deal with the suffering of children in his treatment of the problem of pain.52 It is a bit odd, because he is willing to consider the suffering of another class of “special victims,” that is, animals. Children are more like us than animals, and so he cannot make the comment about children’s suffering that he makes about animal suffering, namely, that he really doesn’t know much about the place of animals in God’s plan and that whatever he says about them is going to be speculative. By way of response to this difficulty, I would make three points. One is that no treatment of the problem of evil can be expected to be comprehensive. As Daniel Howard-Snyder points out, if we could explain all of our sufferings we would be contradicting some clear Biblical passages, such as what we find in the Book of Job. He goes on to say:
We do others a grievous disservice to hold out to them in private or in the pulpit any expectation to understand why God would permit so much evil or any particular instance, expectations which we have no reason to believe will be fulfilled, expectations which when left unfulfilled can become near irresistible grounds for rejecting the faith. We are in the dark here. We can’t see how any reason we know of, or the whole lot of them combined, would justify God n permitting so much horrible evil or any particular horror. We need to own up to that fact.53
So we should see Lewis as attempting to give us a substantial understanding of much of the evil we see and experience, but I think he was not foolish enough to think that he had explained it all. But secondly, as is evident from the quote from Talbott, in the case of the suffering of children, here the case is hardest to make that it can benefit the sufferers morally, but it does have the strongest effect of all suffering on those whom Lewis calls “the spectators,” it arouses their compassion in the way that nothing else in the world does. I would have liked Lewis to include more discussion of the suffering of children in The Problem of Pain, and I do consider it a weakness of the book that this was not included. However, that in itself is not, in my judgment, sufficient to make his book an abject failure or a tissue of fallacies.
42 The Problem of Pain p. 93.
43 Ibid. p. 95
44 Ibid. p. 97.
45 Letter to Sister Penelope, 5 June 1951 in Hooper (ed.), Letters of C. S. Lewis, p. 410. Quoted in Purtill, “Did C. S. Lewis Lose his Faith.”
46 Lewis, The Problem of Pain, p. 101.
47 Beversluis, Search, p. 117.
48 Petrik, “In Defense,” p. 54.
49 Lewis, The Problem of Pain, p. 110.
50 Beversluis, Search, p. 114.
51 Lewis, The Problem of Pain, p. 112.
52 Erik Wielenberg, "The Christian, the Skeptic, and the Atheist: C.S. Lewis, David Hume, andBertrand Russell on God", forthcoming.
53 Daniel Howard-Snyder, “God Evil and Suffering,” in Michael Murray ed. Reason for the Hope Within (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), p. 101.

Natural and Moral Evil

• Philosophers typically divide evils into moral evils, which are the direct result of evil actions by human persons, and natural evils, which are not directly produced by human actions.
• The fact that Hurricane Katrina hit the gulf coast with the force that it did would be an instance of natural evil, although the fact that the levees were not adequately maintained and broke, and the fact that Brownie did a “heck of a job” might be regarded as instance of moral evil.

Lowder on Logical Arguments from Evil

Jeffrey Jay Lowder on logical arguments from evil.


According to logical arguments from evil, some known fact about evil is logically incompatible with God's existence. (In contrast, evidential arguments from evil merely claim that some known fact about evil is evidence for God's nonexistence.) Ever since Alvin Plantinga rebutted J. L. Mackie's logical argument from evil, the majority of contemporary philosophers of religion have come to believe that logical arguments from evil are unsuccessful. This opinion is not unanimous, however. Philosophers Richard Gale, Quentin Smith, and Howard Jordan Sobel challenge the conventional view regarding the prospects for logical arguments from evil. Indeed, Smith has formulated a new version of the logical argument from evil to avoid the pitfalls of Mackie's argument. Nevertheless, many philosophers remain highly skeptical regarding logical arguments from evil.

Free Parking and Improving the Universe

A redated post

Why didn't God create us with wings on our backs to fly? This is the question John Loftus asks. I can imagine various reasons why God did not choose to do this; I am not at all sure that making humans more powerful would be at all good for nature as a whole, or even for humans in the final analysis. But be that as it may, let me grant, for the sake of argument, that I can't think of any good reason why God couldn't have given us all wings. Exactly what does that buy the atheist? Why is this any different from the argument that says "There are gaps in the fossil record, I can't see how evolution could have make these transition, therefore there is no naturalistic explanation for these transitions and a creator must exist." If I were to present an argument like that over at Debunking Christianity, what would they say, do you think? They would say that there may be an explanation for this particular gap in the fossil record that we haven't figured out. Yet, when atheists are using the argument from evil, they use a gap in our understanding as to why God would permit such and such as a basis for rejecting theism. Why?

Let's take a humbler example. Many Monopoly players try to make the game more fun by collecting all the payments to the bank from various sources and putting them on Free Parking. Then when someone lands on Free Parking, they get all that money. And there is nothing wrong with changing the rules in that way. However, there is a reason why the game itself doesn't do that, which was explained in The Monopoly Book. Monopoly games tend to be long, but the game ends when all but one player goes bankrupt. Taking money that would otherwise have gone into that bank and putting it back into the hands of players slows down this process and makes the game even longer.

Now, I had never thought of that. What looked like an improvement to the game of Monopoly had a downside I didn't realize until it was pointed out to me. So what about my suggestions for improving the universe. The makers of Monopoly are mere mortals. What about a being of infinite intelligence? Is it not at least possible that from the point of view of Omniscience our proposed improvements for the universe really might not turn out to be improvements after all. Think about that next time your opponent lands on Park Place when you have a monopoly there.

From C. S. Lewis's The Problem of Pain

"If God's moral judgment differs from ours so that our 'black' may be His 'white', we can mean nothing by calling Him good; for to say 'God is good', while asserting that His goodness is wholly other than ours, is really only to say 'God is we know not what'. And an utterly unknown quality in God cannot give us moral grounds for loving or obeying Him. If He is not (in our sense) 'good' we shall obey, if at all, only through fear--and should be equally ready to obey an omnipotent Fiend. The doctrine of Total Depravity--when the consequence is drawn that, since we are totally depraved, our idea of good is worth simply nothing--may thus turn Christianity into a form of devil-worship."

Does the argument from evil presuppose theism

Bill Vallicella thinks it does.

The canon within the canon, ethical relativism, and ther problem of evil

Yes, for me the sacrificial love of Christ is the canon within the canon. If that's cherry picking, so be it!
Ron: It appears to me that debate about moral realism (or objectivism) vs. moral relativism to be fruitless. I think everyone at heart knows that moral values really exist and aren't just subjective constructions. Otherwise, atheists wouldn't point out all the bad events in Christian history. Why would Dawkins point out the moral evils of Christians if he didn't believe that morality was something absolute and not just a cultural or biological product?
VR: Precisely. And if relativism is where naturalism leads, it lets the air out of the argument from evil. I've often wondered why the argument from evil is often thought to be somehow stronger than your average argument. It points to an explanatory gap in the theist's understanding of the world, but there are plenty of arguments that point out explanatory gaps for naturalism.
What I come up with is that, on the face of things, it allows the atheist to hang on to his or her moral purity. It presumably lets you call evil evil, and not have to fit it into some broader pattern in which it is good in some sense. But if this comes from a naturalist, and if Lewis is right that naturalism is going to lead logically to some kind of moral subjectivism, then it seems to me that that advantage disappears. You can't say of the Amalekite massacre that it is really, truly, honest to goodness evil.