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Mackie refers to this implied argument as a "quasi-logical rule."
The truth of this assumption, however, is not self-evident.
The other premise open to debate is also the weakest point of the overall argument: the premise that the suffering of animals is evil. It is tempting to categorize suffering as evil because it is unpleasant. This is essentially the argument that William Rowe makes in his essay "The Problem of Evil." Rowe claims that intense suffering is inherently evil regardless of the moral justifiability of its outcome.
But if an evil can exist as "evil" and still be morally justifiable (i.e. not violating a principle of moral goodness), then it is the presence or absence of moral justifiability that would prove or disprove the existence of God, not the presence or absence of evil.
If we follow Rowe's argument, we would have to change Sub-Conclusion 1 to: If God exists, he does not allow morally unjustifiable evil to exist. In order to keep the argument valid, then,...
Rowe counters this by claiming that the idea of ALL suffering being morally justifiable is "an extraordinary absurd idea,"
unsupportable by any human conviction. In our present argument, however, we are not using the premise of ALL suffering -- only the premise of the suffering of the reptiles in the fire. The central weakness of our argument, therefore, is that the specific instance of the reptiles suffering in the fire, while "evil" according to Rowe's definition, may in fact be morally justifiable in light of God's omniscience and our ignorance.
References
Rowe, W. 1979 'The Problem of Evil' in Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction, Wadsworth Publishers, Belmont, CA, pp.
Mackie, J.L. 1955 'Evil and Omnipotence' in Reading Philosophy of Religion, eds. Graham Oppy and Michael Scott, John Wiley and Sons, New York, pp. 139-146.
Mackie, J.L., 1955, p. 139
Ibid.
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