William L. Rowe

William L. Rowe (1931–2015) was an American philosopher of religion who spent most of his career at Purdue University. Trained in the analytic tradition, he became one of the most influential atheist philosophers of religion in the late twentieth century, distinguished from polemical atheism by his sustained, respectful engagement with theistic arguments. His 1979 paper 'The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism' introduced the evidential (or 'inductive') argument from evil, using the example of a fawn dying in a forest fire to argue that apparently pointless suffering provides strong evidence against the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good God. In the same paper he articulated 'friendly atheism', the view that theists can be rationally justified in their belief even if atheism is true. Rowe also published significant work on the cosmological argument (The Cosmological Argument, 1975), defending a version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason debate, and on the ontological argument and divine freedom (Can God Be Free?, 2004). His evidential argument provoked extensive replies from skeptical theists including Stephen Wykstra, William Alston, Michael Bergmann, and Peter van Inwagen, whose 'CORNEA' and noseeum objections frame much current discussion. Rowe edited The Evidential Argument from Evil (with Daniel Howard-Snyder, 1996), which remains a standard reference in the field.