Skeptical Theism within reason

Manuscrito, 2021

According to The Evidentialist problem of Evil, the existence of disproportionate, prima facie gratuitous evil and suffering in the world is enough evidence against the existence of the Omnipotent, Perfectly Loving, Omniscient God of Classical Theism. A contemporary way of dealing with this argument is Skeptical Theism , for which the very fact that there is an huge amount of evil that looks gratuitous to us does not mean that we can reasonably believe whether this evil is indeed gratuitous or not. In this paper, I present and discuss a number of influential criticisms against this view according to which a proponent of Skeptical Theism will be forced to accept a number of unpalatable skeptical conclusions. I argue that this is not the case.

Sophia 52 (3):425-445 (2013)

Skeptical theists argue that no seemingly unjustified evil (SUE) could ever lower the probability of God's existence at all. Why? Because there might be undetectable justifying reasons (JuffREs) for allowing any evil that seems unjustified. However, they are unclear regarding whether or not God's existence is relevant to the existence of JuffREs, and whether or not God's existence is relevant to their detectability. But I will argue that, no matter how the skeptical theist answers these questions, it is undeniable that the skeptical theist is wrong; SUEs lower the probability of God's existence. To establish this I will consider the four scenarios regarding the relevance of God's existence to the existence and detectability of JuffREs, and show that in each—after we establish our initial probabilities, and then update them given the evidence of SUE—the probability of God's existence drops.

Philo, 2005

and Oppy (2003), we set out to discredit sceptical theist responses to evidential arguments from evil. In particular, we argued that, if the considerations deployed by sceptical theists are sufficient to undermine noseeum inferences in evidential arguments from evil, then those considerations are also sufficient to undermine noseeum inferences that play a crucial role in the justification of ordinary moral reasoning. Bergmann and Rea (2005) defend sceptical theism against our argument. They claim, first, that our argument fails to show that 'sceptical theism as such undermines ordinary moral practice', and, second, that our argument fails even to show that 'in the absence of various background beliefs that theists are very likely to possess, [sceptical theism] undermines ordinary moral practice'. Following Bergmann (2001), we shall suppose that the sceptical theist critique of evidential arguments relies upon the following three claims: ST1: We have no good reason for thinking that the possible goods we know of are representative of the possible goods there are. ST2: We have no good reason for thinking that the possible evils we know of are representative of the possible evils there are.

Skeptical theism is a popular response to arguments from evil. Many hold that it undermines a key inference often used by such arguments. However, the case for skeptical theism is often kept at an intuitive level: no one has offered an explicit argument for the truth of skeptical theism. In this article, I aim to remedy this situation: I construct an explicit, rigorous argument for the truth (of one version) of skeptical theism.

Journal of Philosophical Theological Research (JPTR), 2019

Skeptical theism is a type of reply to arguments from evil against God’s existence. The skeptical theist declines to accept a premise of some such argument, professing ignorance, for example, about whether God is justified in permitting certain evils or about the conditional probability that the world contains as much evil as it does, or evils of a particular sort, on the hypothesis that God exists. Skeptical theists are thus not supposed to be skeptical about theism; rather, they are theists who are skeptical about something else. But that raises the question of exactly what else. In particular, does skepticism with respect to some claims about God and evil lead to a more pervasive skepticism? More precisely, is skeptical theism committed to additional skepticism about God? Is skeptical theism committed to global skepticism, including skepticism about ordinary, commonplace beliefs? Or is skeptical theism at the very least committed to a broader skepticism about matters of morality? This paper takes up these questions.

Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2003

In recent times, a number of philosophers have championed ‘sceptical theist’ responses to evidential arguments from evil. [Alston 1991, 1996; Bergmann 2001; Fitzpatrick 1981; Howard-Snyder 1996a, 1996c; van Inwagen 1991; Plantinga 1979, 1988; Wykstra 1984, 1996] The core idea behind these responses to evidential arguments from evil is that considerations of human cognitive limitations are alone sufficient to undermine those arguments. This core idea is developed in different ways. Some ‘sceptical theists’—[Bergmann 2001; Howard-Snyder 1996a, 1996c]—claim that consideration of human cognitive limitations in the realm of value are alone sufficient to undermine evidential arguments from evil. Other ‘sceptical theists’—[Alston 1991, 1996; van Inwagen 1991; Plantinga 1979, 1988; Wykstra 1984, 1996]—claim that consideration of human cognitive limitations in various spheres including the realm of value are alone sufficient to undermine evidential arguments from evil. Our response to these ‘sceptical theists’ is in two parts. First, we argue—against [Bergmann 2001, et al.]—that it isn’t true that considerations of human cognitive limitations in the realm of value are alone sufficient to undermine evidential arguments from evil. Second, we argue against [Alston 1991, 1996, et al.]—that it isn’t true that considerations of human cognitive limitations in various spheres including the realm of values are alone sufficient to undermine evidential arguments from evil.

2015

Among the things that students of the problem of evil think about is whether explanatory versions of the evidential argument from evil are better than others, better than William Rowe’s famous versions of the evidential argument, for example. Some of these students claim that the former are better than the latter in no small part because the former, unlike the latter, avoid the sorts of worries raised by so-called “skeptical theists”. Indeed, Trent Dougherty claims to have constructed an explanatory version that is “fundamentally immune to considerations pertaining to skeptical theism”. I argue that he has done no such thing.

Faith and Philosophy, 2012

Some skeptical theists use Wykstra's CORNEA constraint to undercut Rowe-style inductive arguments from evil. Many critics of skeptical theism accept CORNEA, but argue that Rowe-style arguments meet its constraint. But Justin McBrayer argues that CORNEA is itself mistaken. It is, he claims, akin to "sensitivity" or "truth-tracking" constraints like those of Robert Nozick; but counterexamples show that inductive evidence is often insensitive. We here defend CORNEA against McBrayer's chief counterexample. We first clarify CORNEA, distinguishing it from a deeper underlying principle that we dub 'CORE.' We then give both principles a probabilistic construal, and show how on this construal, the counterexample fails. The new "inductive atheism" argues that certain empirical features of evil are strong inductive (or "probabilistic") evidence against theism. A feature stressed by William Rowe, for example, is the "noseeum" character of much suffering. We can, try as we may, see no God-justifying 1 (good served by much suffering. And our seeing no God-justifying good served by an instance of suffering is, it is argued, strong evidence for there being no God-justifying good served by itand hence also, by a further short step, for there being no God. Against this reasoning, so-called "skeptical theists" press this question: Granted, atheism makes the feature you cite-here, the noseem feature-entirely expectable. But isn't this feature also pretty expectable if it were the case that God exists? If God were to exist, shouldn't we expect-God being God and us being us-to often not see the goods He purposes for many evils? And if that's so, how can this feature be regarded as strong evidence that God doesn't exist? The skeptical theist here employs a "neutralizing tactic"-a tactic for defusing alleged strong evidence-that we can find used in many contexts. 2 While this neutralizing strategy is intuitively appealing, it is not easy to adequately formulate the implicit principle on which it rests. One formulation has been Wykstra's CORNEA-the Condition of ReasoNable Epistemic Access. 3 By a "God-justifying good" served by for an evil, we mean a good that would suffice to justify an all-powerful, allknowing, and entirely good Creator in allowing that evil. The question of whether we see any such good in a given case is independent of whether God exists and of whether that good is the actual reason justifying God in allowing the evil. The New Testament scholar F.F. Bruce thus opens Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982) by citing a correspondent vexed by whether, in contemporary documents outside the New Testament, one finds any "collateral proof of the historical fact of the life of Jesus Christ." Bruce counters by asking (17): in "which contemporary writers during the first fifty years after the death of Christ, would you expect to find the collateral evidence you are looking for?" Bruce then argues that we should not, in the nature of the case, expect to find the sort of collateral evidence the correspondent finds lacking. For earlier discussions of CORNEA, see Stephen Wykstra, "The Humean Obstacle to Evidential Arguments from Suffering: On Avoiding the Evils of 'Appearance,"