Final answer:
The justification of belief in a divine being amid suffering, as formulated in the subjectivism perspective by Derek Parfit, faces the problem of evil. David Hume's critique challenges the traditional attributes of God, while Irenaeus' theodicy and John Hick's soul-making defense attempt to reconcile suffering with divine purpose, though such justifications are ethically disputed.
Step-by-step explanation:
The question addresses the justification of belief in an omnibenevolent divine being in the face of suffering, as per Derek Parfit's Agony Argument within the framework of subjectivism. Philosophers like William Rowe and David Hume present the problem of evil as a philosophical challenge to the existence of a perfectly good God. Hume's argument specifies that if God does not prevent suffering, then this challenges the divine qualities of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence.
Furthermore, the evidential problem of evil, and different theodicies, such as the one proposed by Irenaeus and developed by John Hick and Richard Swinburne, suggest that suffering can be a means to achieve greater goods, like soul-making. However, this justification is often contended on moral grounds, suggesting the difficulty in aligning the existence of an all-good deity with the existence of evil and suffering.
G. E. Moore's open-question argument, while primarily about ethical naturalism, indirectly informs this debate by stressing that moral properties like "good" cannot be directly derived from natural properties, thereby maintaining the distinctiveness of moral inquiry.