Classical Theism

I agree, but I think it's still important to have at least some tentative theodicies in case someone finds the evidential problem of evil compelling. We could always go with skeptical theism and hold that the positive case for God still makes God's existence more likely than not even if we consider PoE. But having (at least tentative) theodicies can be very helpful, especially for people who aren't as convinced of the natural theological arguments as we are.

With that in mind, I do think Pruss's blink of an eye response is the best (http://alexanderpruss.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-blink-of-eye-response-to-problem-of.html?m=1) combined with soul building, free will, etc.

Robin Collins also has an interesting idea (the "connection building theodicy") that is worth exploring. And there is the idea (Adams's) that those who suffer horrendous evils paradoxically gain the privilege of uniting themselves more deeply with the suffering Christ, a dignity that lasts forever (especially in blissful Heaven).

I think the problem of animal suffering might actually be more complicated than that of human pain. This is because, even though human suffering is a lot more serious, shocking and relevant than that of animals, it is much easier to come up with theodicies for humans: free will and soul building can make good sense for human beings, but not for irrational animals.
For animal pain, I think the best bet is also to believe they go to heaven (thus invoking Pruss's blink of an eye response), which (contrary to Feser) is an idea that makes quite a lot of sense to me, and seems in line with the principle of plenitude (having animals in heaven surely seems a good thing to me, something that gives glory and diversity to God's creation). I find Dougherty's idea of animal theosis (animals becoming rational, Narnia-esque creatures who can then make sense of their own past sufferings) to be a bit too radical; it certainly would raise the complexity of theism; but I am open to it as a possibility. If the Narnia view is true, then animal suffering can be given something similar to soul building theodicies, which helps a lot and would solve the problem, I think.
Without the "Narnia" solution, maybe we can make use of an ingenious "Great Story" theodicy. The idea that suffering, pain and evil actually contribute to creation being good in a similar way that they make a movie or story good, exciting, or beautiful. Evil being conquered is a beautiful thing. So long as there's heaven in the end and the victims are "compensated for" (and infinite heaven can more than make up for any finite time of pain), I find some plausibility in that idea. I often wonder that maybe the joy of heaven could even be increased with past knowledge of suffering (think of the goodness of a feeling of "relief", or forgiveness, or redemption, or survival). Animal suffering could contribute to the Great Story just like human suffering does. I really do wonder. It's not obvious to me that a possible world in which no suffering or sin EVER happens and heaven is real from the very start, would be better than a world in which suffering and sin are present in the beginning, forming a great epic which ultimately ends with eternal heaven of joy and bliss.

Yes, I do think we need an explanation that gives us a moral reason for why God would allow such a thing. I am 100% in agreement with Swinburne and the "personalists" on this (and classical theists, of course). I think Davies' and Hart's responses are wholly inadequate, and I've tried to explain why I think this is the case.

I have yet to watch that video, but I have heard Koons speak briefly on the subject before, and it was something to the effect that God's creation of the world ex nihilo was so removed from our experience etc. that we could not judge it properly, etc. I agree only to the extent that the question invites a healthy skepticism, but I still side with Pruss and other theodicists.

This is the main thing for me. I think the First Stage of cosmological arguments is pretty much undeniable; Second Stage is where debate is more interesting.

My favorite arguments are the following:

1- by the PPC (and those who accept PSR tend to accept PPC), the First Cause must have the perfections of all possible contingent things. That includes the perfections of Intelligence, Consciousness, Personhood, etc. So the First Cause is personal;

2- combine the cosmological argument with a broad range of teleological arguments. Basically, the cosmological argument tells us that there is a Foundational Cause of all reality. What is striking in this first stage is "that it is, not how it is" (the universe) as Wittgenstein would put it. But surely the "how it is" and "what it is" of contingent reality is also relevant. The First Cause has produced, and maintains in existence, an orderly universe, with regular natural laws, life, intelligent and conscious beings, beauty, a moral landscape, religious experiences, etc. Inductively or abductively it seems very plausible that the First Cause is personal;

3- Josh Rasmussen's argument from perfection and modal continuity. Look up Josh and Chris Weaver's "why is there anything" article. The basic idea is that it would be arbitrary and absurd for the Necessary Foundation to have any limitation in greatness or power (incl. Knowledge etc). We have defeasible reason to believe the First Cause is the greatest possible being.

Those are my 3 favorite arguments.

Yes, Rasmussen is one of my favorite philosophers at the moment. He's relatively easy to reach and talk to, as well.

Dominik, I still can't make sense of that "theism" you're suggesting wouldn't have problems with the PoE. It seems to me that, in the attempt to dissociate God from criteria human moral goodness, we end up dissociating him from all goodness, or at the very least from any notion of "moral goodness" which makes sense to us. If the later, that is also problematic because I would argue that (here in agreement with Hart) to be beyond good and evil (even our understanding of it) just is to be evil. A God who, for instance, doesn't need any morally sufficient reasons to permit a child to suffer horribly is evil or deficient. 

I do think that evil is a privation of goodness, but that does nothing to weaken my position. Moral evil is a violation of moral laws, and we know (or I believe we know) facts/evils which ought to be repugnant and antagonic to any ideal rational observer. Since God is an ideal rational observer, he must oppose evils, and that leads to the problem of evil.

If a being is intelligent and rational - in any way - then he ought to know facts like "an innocent person should not gratuitously suffer horribly", "people are not to be tortured for fun", and so on. These are facts based on the intrinsic natures of the beings involved, in the natural law which ultimately is founded on the eternal law. God cannot possibly will for people to be tortured for fun; he cannot be indifferent to it, either. He cannot be indifferent, and, having the means to stop, must do so. Unless that God were quite literally stupid or irrational, incapable of grasping simple truths and acting accordingly, which is absurd.

Do you think God could possibly create a world that consisted of nothing but children being horribly tortured forever? And if so, do you think such a God could still be considered "good" in gratuitously providing Being to such a world? That seems clearly absurd to me. If the horrendous world is impossible, we are already placing God in a moral context that is analogous to our understanding of morality. I think that's inevitable.

To me, every rational agent (possessing Intellect and Will) is a moral agent by its own nature. And we know enough about morality to know that any rational agent should recognize that "torturing people for fun is wrong" and is to be avoided and shunned. God is a rational agent. So God is a moral agent and should also recognize moral truths and act accordingly. In fact, as the ground of all being, rationality, and natural law, God cannot fail to recognize and act accordingly to moral truth. To suggest God could possibly allow an innocent child to be tortured for no reason whatsoever is as insane as saying that God could desire to create square circles or feel frustration over not being able to create married bachelors, etc.

So it is quite simple to me. Consider any example of a horrendous evil. If God can tolerate such an occurrence without any morally sufficient reason (MSR as traditionally understood in standard theodicies), then either 1) God is irrational or non-rational, or 2) that horrendous evil really is not some kind of universal evil after all (i.e. our moral knowledge is completely wrong). I think 2 is unacceptable. You can accept 1, however, and maintain that the Necessary Cause is not rational, but I wouldn't call that theism anymore.

I see no way around this. To adopt Davies's line, either we have to become radically revisionistic about our moral knowledge and hold that a horrendous evil is NOT something universally repugnant that any *ideally rational being* would/should seek to oppose; OR we have to turn God into some effectively irrational being which is indifferent towards that which any ideal rationality would oppose.

I don't see the point in responding to every single argument there, especially since a lot of them are very weak and many are variations of the same ideas. But here's my assessment:

1- I think the problem of evil is by far the strongest argument the atheist has to offer. And most arguments in the list are really just variations of it. I differ from most people here in thinking that Brian Davies's and Hart's responses (as I understand them; I haven't read their books, but people have presented their ideas to me, I have read excerpts, did some research, etc., and don't think my opinion would change) are almost entirely useless. I think the defenses and theodicies we find among contemporary analytic philosophers, including "theistic personalists", are 1000x better and even necessary. God is not wholly unlike a virtuous person; if there is to be at least an analogy between God's goodness and ours, we need to assume God has intelligible morally sufficient reasons for allowing so much evil and suffering. And with that in mind:

A) It is always important to approach theism on the basis of the totality of evidence. In other words, we can grant that the problem of evil is really bad and in fact lowers the probability of theism. But that's not the whole story, for we also have positive arguments for theism. And I think the positive case for God's existence is a lot stronger, so as to be compelling and even withstand the attack of PoE and still swamp it out. Evil lowers the probability of theism, but still, the existence of contingent things, order, consciousness, goodness, etc. gives us a much stronger overall case for theism;

B) We can, in any case, weaken the problem of evil. In my opinion, the best response is Alexander Pruss's "blink of an eye" response (google it) combined with a host of theodicies. For all we know, an infinite afterlife can more than make up for, sublimate, etc., any evils we suffer in our finite existence here. And to this we add the Free Will defense; the soul building theodicy; and more;

C) If horrendous evils are still a problem, an explicitly Christian response (like that of Adams in her book on horrendous evils) may be required. The fact that God entered the picture through Jesus Christ, and suffered so much, can be a game changer. Those who suffer horribly in this life can be united in a special way to the suffering Christ God, converting pain into a love and dignity that lasts forever;

D) Animal suffering can still be a specific problem requiring specific responses. We might adopt a few ad hoc ideas (Pruss thinks it plausible that God removes the qualia of pain from animals in some situations), or we can adopt a radical response, such as Trent Dougherty's in his book on animal pain. Dougherty argues that God might transform every animal into a rational, Narnia-esque being in the afterlife and that their sufferings here may therefore be given a value similar to that in soul-building theodicies.

Of course, in any case, there is skeptical theism and we can choose to take a hit and keep moving; while the problem of evil can be a good atheistic argument, we nevertheless have stronger reasons to believe in God. And personally, I find theodicies very plausible - blink of an eye, soul building, free will, the religiously-inspired ones; I even find some plausibility in the radical animal theodicies. I don't think the amount of suffering we see is clearly incompatible with theism, I think it can make a lot of sense that God would choose to create a world like this.

2- Argument from hiddenness I take to be a weaker version of the problem of evil. There can be value in discovery; in being sorta in the dark and even having doubts; in having to dedicate oneself to studying a metaphysical issue such as God's existence; etc;

3- Arguments from materialism I find particularly weak. I'm very convinced that dualism is true and I think it is very strong evidence for theism; there are perfections of immaterial consciousness, intelligence, reason, will, etc., and there must be a source for them. Personhood must come from a foundational Person. And even if materialism were true animal, multiple realizability could allow for intelligence to be material in humans but immaterial in God;

4- Problem of material causation I find quite weak. A theist could be open to biting the bullet with a few caveats, as Rasmussen does in his dialogue with Leon. In any case, I think the idea that matter is a perfection to be very implausible; matter is just a limitation, an act of existence intrinsically limited to spatial location, extension, temporal change, etc., so an immaterial (more perfect) being can create a material (less perfect) being. Moreover the Kalam might refute such an argument;

5- Incoherence arguments I don't take too seriously.  I am not convinced of any particular arguments for omni-God being incoherent, I think there are good responses in the literature for all of that. But if a theist is convinced that even a suitably defined omnipotence/omniscience/etc is incoherent, they can bite the bullet and instead adopt Yujin Nagasawa's Maximal God thesis. God just is the Maximal, metaphysically consistent and possible set of Power, Knowledge and Goodness. If a being can't be omniscient, still there can be a maximally knowledgeable being, and ao on.

The rest of the arguments I just find very weak. I don't think any of that even comes close to the cogency and power of theistic arguments; that we need God to explain Being, Consciousness, Order, Value, etc.

Matter is not a perfection, it is a lesser form of being. One way to understand it is as an act of existence that is so little unified that it becomes extended and limited to space. Aristotelians also consider matter to be pure potentiality, just that which receives different forms in composition and cannot exist by itself.

If matter were a perfection, however, then God would have to have it in some way. This might be compatible with theism in some way. But I don't think matter is a perfection.

Potency is, obviously, just a limitation on being. It is not a perfection, it is less than actual. Something cannot give more than it has, but it can definitely give less than it has. Potential things are just these limited, finite things that are less than perfectly actual and powerful.

It is perfectly possible to have both immanent teleology and intelligent design arguments. Though I'm not particularly a fan of ID (I don't really know much about it, to be honest, just don't have much of an opinion on it), it would just be a matter of probabilities. Immanent teleology doesn't alter, for instance, the fine tuning argument. Neither does it have to alter biological complexity arguments; the matter is just whether the immanent teleology we have alters the probabilities significantly or not (seems like it doesn't).

For a thomistic defense of ID, check out Robert Koons's article, just google robert koons intelligent design, you should find it

One rule of thumb to follow in philosophy is to always check out what Alexander Pruss has written on the subject.
Read Pruss's article on Divine Simplicity, and some of his work on modal collapse in his articles about leibnizian arguments, psr etc

I really wish someone could summarize Barry Miller's arguments for the distinction and his view on it; as well as his argument that existence is a rich property which includes everything about a being and thus that a being of pure existence has all perfections, etc.

Someone *really* needs to summarize it. I just don't have the time to go through his whole work just to find out about that.

Just read essences into laws whenever "laws" shows up. The laws are grounded in the essences of things, so the argument instead becomes "why do we get these things, whose powers are life-permitting, instead of these other things, whose powers and activities would not be life-permitting?". Literally nothing changes. We just have a grounding for the laws now, but what the FT argument is concerned with is with the probability of these laws being the case - if we accept a thomistic view, then probability issue is simply moved to the existence of the particular lawmakers/essences which ground the laws. So, nothing changes, basically.

Except if a weird objection can be made. I think someone could perhaps object that there could be no two essences that were exactly alike in every aspect except for A having a difference X and B having a difference Y. The differences would have to follow from the rest of the essence, so as a result there could perhaps be no different values for constants and so on.
But I think this would actually be a very bad objection, since 1) the difference could also come from an external cause, and not from the essence itself. Human beings for example, I believe, are only rational because God decided to give us rationality; the power of a rational intellect does not follow from the rest of our bodily powers, obviously. Only in a First Cause that is necessary by itself would it be the case that every essential property would have to be intimately connected and not have any external cause; 2) it seems, in any case, that there is no necessary connection between the laws and the constants having the specific values that they do; 3) it also seems that it should be possible for there to be different laws like that, or at least other substances that are very alike but which have some differences, such as a water-like substance that boils at 101 C, etc.

So I think thomism makes no difference whatsoever to the fine tuning argument.

It seems to me pure actuality needs uniqueness in order to be established, so it is not very helpful to use pure act to establish uniqueness. Because someone might consider the first cause to be purely actual w.r.t. existence but not w.r.t. some other property it might have. And if there are multiple first causes, all actualities can be traced back to different first causes without any single one of them having to be absolutely purely actual. Say, having something whose essence is EXISTENCE PLUS INTELLIGENCE, purely actual for both but potential for other things, and another whose essence is EXISTENCE PLUS FIRE (or whatever).
So we might first need Avicenna's argument that there would have to be some explanation for why NECESSARY EXISTENCE is combined with INTELLIGENCE in one case but with FIRE in another.
I am more confident in Avicenna's argument now, in any case. If necessary existence is not necessarily combined with all other essential properties of a thing, it would be unintelligible why this specific combination would exist, and in any case it would appear arbitrary to have N1 have properties1 essentially while N2 would have some further properties2 essentially, etc.

I don't know how to respond to your second argument, but it still doesn't seem entirely right to me - maybe because I am considering ex hypothesi the possibility of an unintelligent immaterial cause with many forms (as powers to create such and such).
But now that I'm thinking about it, maybe the argument can be understood in a manner similar to the fifth way. This is still quite obscure in my mind, but consider: the First Cause has multiple forms in itself, the forms of all possible effects it can cause. But if these forms exist merely as causal tendencies (like with the match and fire), how are they really able to affect anything? With the match and fire example, Aquinas seems to think the final cause of fire must somehow be real before it can direct the match's efficient causal act. The final cause must be doing some work, must somehow be connected with the efficient cause. But if the final cause is simply understood as the result of an efficient cause, then it will be dependent on the efficient cause, but the efficient cause cannot specifically produce the final cause unless the final cause is first real in some sense. In short, there is a vicious circle here: final cause can direct efficient cause if it somehow is real; final cause can be real only if efficient cause somehow produces it; efficient cause can produce it only if it is directed to it. In order to avoid the vicious circularity, Aquinas posits that the final causes must first exist in an intellect, abstractly. The same could be the case with the First Cause - how can it be directed to any specific form, as in a causal tendency, if this form's existence would itself depend on this tendency? The form must therefore exist in a more robust way, but since it cannot do so as an instance, it must do so as a concept.
Another path would be to focus on the universality of abstract forms. The first cause must be the cause of all possible effects and instantiations of all possible forms. So it must have these forms in itself not in any particularized way, but as a universal. But what has a form specifically as a universal just is an intellect.

I just thought of these arguments right now, I don't know how I feel about them. They seem somewhat plausible and attractive to me, but they're very complex and I'd have to think a little more.

Bonus point: just thought I'd mention it, but there is a very simple way to argue for the uniqueness of the First Cause if you reject actual infinities. The argument goes back at least to Brentano.
Basically: either there is only one first cause, or a finite multiplicity of first causes, or an infinite number of first causes. An infinite number is impossible (if actual infinities are rejected). A finite multiplicity would be arbitrary (why exactly 829 first causes instead of one more or less?). So it is only one.