In a number of journal articles and in his recent monograph,
The God Beyond Belief, Trakakis considers various aspects of the evidential problem of evil, particularly as this has been formulated and developed by William Rowe. Trakakis has also written about such topics in the philosophy of religion as the
omnipotence of God,
determinist models of
divine providence,
Wittgensteinian non-realism, and the doctrine of
karma. In theology and church history, he has published his views on the
ordination of women, the
infallibility of the church, the
iconoclast controversy, and the work of
Gregory Palamas.
The evidential argument from evil The main conclusion reached by Trakakis is that Rowe's evidential argument from evil, or a version thereof, succeeds in showing that the existence of certain kinds of evil provides strong evidence against the existence of God. The possibility, however, is always left open that there may well be other evidence in support of the existence of God which outweighs or defeats the evidence of evil. (He, in fact, used to believe that the evidence in support of the existence of God is a defeater and was a theist, but has since then "severed his ties with Orthodoxy, and Christianity in particular, for reasons such as exclusivism, hierarchism, ritualism, ethnocentrism; the logical problem of the trinity and incarnation, the anachronism of metaphysics with regards to the content of biblical texts, and the problems of dogmatism with the incompatibility of commitment to institutionalized religion with the pursuit of truth and wisdom.) This conclusion is based on, first, the rejection the sceptical theist's appeal to mystery, and second, the inadequacy of standard
theodicies to explain the existence of
natural evil. Trakakis argues that there is no good reason to accept the currently popular 'sceptical theist' response to the evidential problem of evil – that is, the response that we do not know, and we cannot be expected to know, what God's reasons are for permitting evil. Trakakis has, for example, argued that the sceptical theist position of Kirk Durston – a position which maintains that the complexity of history is such that we cannot pass judgement on the overall moral value of any particular historical event – leads to an implausible form of moral scepticism. Trakakis also maintains that some of the major theodicies that have been offered by theists (e.g., the
free will theodicy, the soul-making theodicy) fail to explain why God would permit various types of evil, particularly 'natural evil' or suffering brought about by natural processes (e.g., natural disasters). However, he does believe that the free-will theodicy may succeed in explaining at least some kinds of moral evil. On this issue, Joel Thomas Tierno has argued against Trakakis that human freedom alone can not account for all instances of moral evil, given the scale on which we find it distributed in the world. == Publications ==