I’m working on a new version of the problem of evil. I don’t know if the argument works, but I’ll summarize it here in the hope of getting feedback.

The basic idea is the fragility of value, viz., how (relatively) easy it is to destroy things  compared to how (relatively) difficult it is to create things, especially things of great value. Assuming that statement (or something like it) is true, the argument would be evidential. It would argue that the fragility of value is antecedently more likely on the assumption that metaphysical naturalism (conjoined with background information) is true than it is on the assumption that theism (conjoined with background information) is true.

When I came up with the idea for this argument, I thought to myself, “I’ve never seen anyone make this point in the literature, but surely someone has written about this before.” If you know of anyone who has has written about the fragility of value in the context of the problem of evil, I’d be grateful for a citation or even just a name.

I floated this argument with Dr. Paul Draper. He had an interesting observation: the fragility of value is also relevant to the free will theodicy. Because of the fragility of value, morally significant choices are usually choices between preventing great harm and not preventing it. We rarely get to choose between producing great positive value and not producing it. In other words, we spend much more of our time trying to prevent disaster instead of creating things of great value. So even if (for the sake of argument) the free will theodicy were successful in explaining the so-called ‘problem of moral evil,’ it would do so only at the expense of mystifying another fact about evil (the fragility of value).

Your thoughts?