ABSTRACT
William Alston is in the forefront of prominent philosophers who support and defend the rationality of belief in the God of traditional theism: an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good being who is the creator of the world. In 1991, Alston published a major essay in defense of theism against the charge that the facts about evil in our world constitute a strong prima facie case for atheism. Alston notes the growing body of literature devoted to answering the inductive argument from evil. A major part of Alston’s project is to consider familiar Christian theodicies and to explore their possible application to Bambi and Sue. Alston emphasizes that he is considering Christian theodicies only as live possibilities for divine reasons for permitting evil. One might overlook this particular deviation from Alston’s avowed intention to present only live possibilities for divine reasons to permit Bambi and Sue if it were the only such lapse in his essay.
