Problem of Evil, Skeptical Theism and Where It Goes

The Problem of Evil, originally authored by Greek thinker Epicurus, takes the basic idea of why there is so much suffering (or evil) in the world. It can be formulated in a number of ways, such as:

1. If an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent god exists, then evil does not.
2. There is evil in the world.
3. Therefore, an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God does not exist.

There are two ways of interpreting the Problem of Evil (POE): logically and evidentially. Logically, the problem is fairly easily solved. There could be a greater good that comes about as a result of all the suffering. Indeed, this is what theodicies and defences seek to illustrate. It could be that free will, or the development of the soul, or whatever, are the greater goods that result from, or even themselves cause, suffering.

The evidential problem says that whilst the logical counter above might hold, the existence of such suffering (particularly on a large scale) lowers the probability of such a god existing (an OmniGod).

We could refine the terms a little better, as here:

1. There exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.
2. An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.
3. (Therefore) There does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being

Essentially, I am going to take the idea of the logical POE and run with it. This is what skeptical theism does. It says that there could be (perhaps must be) a reason in God's mind for allowing such suffering, but we simply cannot know God's mind. We are so insignificantly inferior in mental capacities to this infinite God that God really does, to us, move in mysterious ways, ways that we will never fathom.

I don't buy this. I don't buy that we could not grasp at least some decent reasons as to why babies get cancer. I think it is a poor get-out-of-jail-free card. In The Little Book of Unholy Questions, I used this question to analogise:

282. If my child was to walk on the flowers in my garden, trampling them, it would be immoral to punish him without telling him what he had done wrong. This would communicate to my child his misdemeanour so that he would not do it again. What have we done wrong to deserve cancer, malaria, the tsunami, the Holocaust, disability, cholera etc., and is it right that you have not communicated to us why we have had these ‘punishments’?

Just appealing to a mystery to answer a mystery is simply not good enough when the stakes are so high, and when the pain and suffering is so palpable for so many.

Where this also goes is as follows.

If you were a fervent believer, and God decided to kill all of your family after decades of incessant torture - heck, all of humanity bar you - and you were left, tortured yourself for fifty years, alone in the lifeless world, then you would still have to admit that it could all be for a greater good. There is no limit to the amount of evil or suffering that could be inflicted on humanity that could be reasoned away in this skeptical theistic context.

If we park the notion that the whole enterprise is consequentialist in its moral philosophy anyway (where the moral value in designing and allowing the suffering is derived from the consequences it obtains: the greater good), and thus the problem that God is not needed for morality, then we still have this ridiculous reductio ad absurdum that there is no limit to the evidence of pain and suffering that could disprove God. Like the Sorites Paradox, there is technically no cut-off point where you could go "Well enough is enough, this point of suffering is the cut-off that now disproves that an all-loving god exists!"

That lonely fervent believer, left all alone and tortured in a bleak and lifeless world, must still rejoice that it is all for the greater good. Whoop whoop!

Of course, the theist will claim that "God would simply never do that, though!", like he would never countenance rape (he has) and genocide (he has) or killed all the world's population bar eight (he has) and almost all the animals (he has that, too) and so on.

If William Lane Craig wants his intuitions to hold (everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence) then I'll have my intuition, too, thank you very much:

Skeptical Theism is bullshit.