Sceptical Theism and the ‘Too-Much-Scepticism’ Objection

The most prominent objection against sceptical theism is that the sceptical theses typically adduced in support of it have ramifications that range far more widely than sceptical theists hope or should tolerate: they lead to scepticism about various aspects of commonsense morality, about divine honesty and goodness, about the evidential value of religious experience, and much else besides. This chapter responds to various different defences of this objection presented by Stephen Maitzen, David O’Connor, and Ian Wilks.

In Defence of Sceptical Theism

Some evidential arguments from evil rely on an inference of the following sort: ‘If, after thinking hard, we can’t think of any God-justifying reason for permitting some horrific evil then it is likely that there is no such reason.’ Sceptical theists, ourselves included, say that this inference is not a good one and that evidential arguments from evil that depend on it are, as a result, unsound. Michael Almeida and Graham Oppy have argued that Michael Bergmann’s way of developing the sceptical theist response to such arguments fails because it commits those who endorse it to a sort of scepticism that undermines ordinary moral practice. This chapter defends Bergmann’s sceptical theist response against this charge.

Sceptical theism

Sceptical theists are theists who are sceptical of our abilities to discern whether the evils in our world constitute good evidence against the existence of God. According to sceptical theists, the human mind is limited in such a way that it would not at all be surprising that God would have reasons that are beyond our understanding for allowing the evils of our world. For that reason, we are not licensed to conclude that what look like pointless evils to us are really pointless evils. For all we know, the evils in our world are necessary to secure some greater good or prevent an evil equally bad or worse. The sceptical element of sceptical theism can be used to undermine various arguments for atheism including both the argument from evil and the argument from divine hiddenness. Many trace the seeds of this view to the book of Job in the Hebrew scriptures, and it was developed by various modern thinkers, starting with Descartes and Hume. Contemporary philosophers have further refined sceptical theism into a family of related views, each with a different defence. These defences include appeals to analogies (for example the parent/child relationship), appeals to the limitations of our grasp of the moral realm and appeals to epistemic requirements (for example sensitivity requirements or contextual requirements). Sceptical theism has been criticized in a variety of ways including charges that sceptical theism falsely implies a consequentialist view of ethics, that consistent sceptical theism results in moral paralysis, that sceptical theism implies a more pervasive (or even global) form of scepticism and that sceptical theism reduces to absurdity.

Radically insensitive theists

Sceptical theists attempt to meet the challenge to theism posed by evidential arguments from evil by appealing to the limitations of human cognition. Drawing on an exchange between William Rowe and Michael Bergmann, I argue that consistent sceptical theists must be radically insensitive to certain kinds of evidence about prima facie evils – that is, that they must endorse the claim that not even evidence of extreme and pervasive suffering could justify disbelief in theism. I show that Bergmann's attempt to respond to this problem does not succeed and argue that no alternative response is forthcoming, concluding that the threat of radical insensitivity constitutes a serious and underappreciated difficulty for sceptical theism.

The evil-god challenge: extended and defended

Stephen Law developed a challenge to theism, known as the evil-god challenge (Law (2010) ). The evil-god challenge to theism is to explain why the theist's responses to the problem of evil are any better than the diabolist's – who believes in a supremely evil god – rejoinders to the problem of good, when all the theist's ploys (theodicy, sceptical theism, etc.) can be parodied by the diabolist.In the first part of this article, I extend the evil-god challenge by showing that additional theist replies to the problem of evil (more theodicies, the privation view of evil, and others) also may be appropriated, with just as much plausibility, in support of the diabolist position. In the second part of the article, I defend the evil-god challenge against several objections.

Sceptical theism and the evil-god challenge

This article is a response to Stephen Law's article ‘The evil-god challenge’. In his article, Law argues that if belief in evil-god is unreasonable, then belief in good-god is unreasonable; that the antecedent is true; and hence so is the consequent. In this article, I show that Law's affirmation of the antecedent is predicated on the problem of good (i.e. the problem of whether an all-evil, all-powerful, and all-knowing God would allow there to be as much good in the world as there is), and argue that the problem of good fails. Thus, the antecedent is unmotivated, which renders the consequent unmotivated. Law's challenge for good-god theists is to show that good-god theism is not rendered unreasonable by the problem of evil in the same way that evil-god theism is rendered unreasonable by the problem of good. Insofar as the problem of good does not render belief in evil-god unreasonable, Law's challenge has been answered: since it is not unreasonable to believe in evil-god (at least for the reasons that Law gives) it is not unreasonable to believe in good-god. Finally, I show that – my criticism aside – the evil-god challenge turns out to be more complicated and controversial than it initially appears, for it relies on the (previously unacknowledged) contentious assumption that sceptical theism is false.

The Problem of Evil & Sceptical Theism

The problem of evil is the problem of reconciling the existence of a perfect God with the existence of horrible things in the world. Many take this problem as a convincing reason to be an atheist. But others think that the problem can be solved. One prominent solution is called ‘sceptical theism’. A sceptical theist is someone who believes in God but thinks that the problem of evil is not a real problem since humans are unable to see whether the horrible things in our world are truly pointless or else serve some greater purpose.

Sceptical Theism, the Butterfly Effect and Bracketing the Unknown

Sceptical theism claims that we have vast ignorance about the realm of value and the connections, causal and modal, between goods and bads. This ignorance makes it reasonable for a theist to say that God has reasons beyond our ken for allowing the horrendous evils we observe. But if so, then does this not lead to moral paralysis when we need to prevent evils ourselves? For, for aught that we know, there are reasons beyond our ken for us to allow the evils, and so we should not prevent them. This paralysis argument, however, shall be argued to rest on a confusion between probabilities and expected utilities. A connection between this paralysis argument and Lenman's1 discussion of the butterfly effect and chaos will be drawn, and the solution offered will apply in both cases.

Sceptical theism and a lying God: Wielenberg's argument defended and developed

Sceptical theists attempt to block the evidential argument from evil by arguing that a key premise of that argument – that gratuitous evil exists – cannot reasonably be maintained. They argue that, for all we know, our knowledge of reasons God may have to permit such evil is radically incomplete. Thus the fact that we cannot identify reasons for God to permit the evil we observe does not allow us reasonably to conclude that no such reasons exist. In response, Erik Wielenberg has pointed out what appears to be, for many sceptical theists, an unfortunate further consequence of their position. According to Wielenberg, if sceptical theism is correct, then, similarly, the fact that we cannot identify reasons why God would lie to us does not allow us reasonably to conclude no such reasons exist. But then, for all we know, God's word constitutes not a divine revelation but a divine lie. This article examines sceptical theist responses to Wielenberg's argument to date (from Segal, and McBrayer and Swenson) and develops two new Wielenberg-style arguments for the same conclusion.