An Assessment of Plantinga's Response to the Logical Problem of Evil as an Argument against God's Existence

The problem of evil has been a prominent challenge to religious beliefs for ever. One of the most important accounts of the problem of evil is the logical problem of evil as an argument against God's existence. Philosophers and theologians have offered different rejoinders to the problem up to now. Amongst the responses, Plantinga's response, so-called free will defense has a great significant. The purpose of this paper is to assess the logical problem of evil and Plantinga's response to it and to explore its criticisms. In this paper, it will be shown that the logical problem of evil and the allegation of contradiction or inconsistency between belief in God and the existence of evil and the criticisms of Plantinga's response are not strong enough. Although Plantinga's free will defense succeeded to show the deficiency of the logical problem of evil, but of course it is not a certain solution to justify God's reasons to permit evil. To know God's reasons to create evil we need a theodicy that is out of the purpose of Plantinga's free will defense.