McCloskey suggests that, "To get the proof going, genuine indisputable examples of design or purpose are needed. There are no such examples, so the proof does not get going at all" (McCloskey, 1968, p
When one examines this traditional approach, one sees that proofs are a series of logical steps leading to a conclusion and are not composed of a series of irrefutable statements, as McCloskey appears to suggest. Mark Ryan suggests that a proof consists of the following steps: creating the statement of the theorem; stating the given; creating a drawing that represents the given; state what must be proven; and providing the proof itself (Ryan, 2012)
It is only with the existence of a greater power that the idea of evil becomes something that is more than an individual's subjective judgment, and, therefore, incapable of definition. "McCloskey can recognize the existence of evil only because he has an inherent understanding of objective moral good -- and atheism cannot account for that" (Woodham, 2011)