Does Divine Mystery Lead to Moral Paralysis? The Agency of the Spirit and the Skeptical Theist Response to the Problem of Evil (Part 2)

The recent and hotly debated versions of skeptical theism have been formed in response to William Rowe’s evidential argument from evil. The argument that Rowe put forward claims:

(1)           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.

(2)           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.

(3)           There does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being.[1]

Rowe concedes that we cannot establish the truth of (2), for we would have to be omniscient ourselves in order to demonstrated such a claim. Nevertheless, we are rationally justified, says Rowe, in holding (2) to be true in the absence of reasons which would justify God for allowing instances of intense suffering. And as we are justified in believing (2) to be true, this amounts to good evidence for thinking that God does not exist.

The skeptical theist responds to Rowe’s argument by extending Rowe’s concession – that we are not in a position to judge the truth of (2) because of our non-omniscience – to cover the evidential force of the argument as well. In other words, skeptical theists reject the so-called “noseeum” inference: the claim that because we can’t see the reasons that would justify God to allow evil, they probably aren’t there (if we no see ‘um, they ain’t there!). The skeptical theist instead claims that given our cognitive limitations in relation to God’s omniscience and omnipotence, it is unlikely that we would spot the God-justifying reasons for allowing various instances of evil. Thus, our inability to spot God’s reasons for allowing evil is not evidence that there are no such reasons.

The most discussed form of the skeptical theist argument has been put forward by Michael Bergmann, who defends the following three skeptical theses:

            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.

            ST3:  We have no good reason for thinking that the entailment relations we know of between possible goods and the permission of possible evils are representative of the entailment relations there are between possible goods and the permission of possible evils.[2]

            These theses are meant to explicate the nature of our cognitive limitations and demonstrate why it is that our inability to spot God’s reasons for allowing particular instances of evil is not evidence that no such reasons exist. The key premise here for Bergmann’s position states that our access to knowledge in the realm of values is quite limited, to the extent that there could be goods beyond our knowledge which justify God in permitting evil. Thus, the probability of the existence of God is not significantly lowered through Rowe’s evidential arguments. Another payoff for the skeptical theist is that instead of needing to give a philosophical explanation for God’s reasons for action, she can simply point to the epistemic gap between human and divine cognition. Further, the skeptical theist is in no danger of onto-theologizing or disrespecting divine transcendence, for she allows divine mystery to take the place of human pretensions to knowledge.

            But a problem with the skeptical theist’s position thus far articulated lurks in the background and has been exposed by numerous recent commentators. The issue is that the skeptical theist’s skepticism about our knowledge of the realm of value when considering the problem of evil spills over into a skepticism of our knowledge of the realm of value when it comes to our moral obligations. If it is the case that for all we know, there could be justifying goods (which we haven’t discovered) that allow God to permit some evil (E), then it follows that for all we know, there could be justifying goods that allow us to permit (E). For example, Charles, a football player, sees a child being abducted from a store by a malevolent-looking but rather small thug. It is easily within Charles’ power to prevent the thug from forcing the child into his van.[3] If Charles is a skeptical theist in the manner outlined above, however, he reasons that he just doesn’t know enough about goods, evils, and the interconnections between them to be able to make a judgment as to the ultimate good or evil that will result from the situation that he is watching. For all he knows, there could be some greater good that results from the child being abducted than if the child had not been abducted at all. Thus, Charles, given his acceptance of ST 1-3, is morally paralyzed, for he just is not in a position to be able to determine what his moral obligations are.

            This places the skeptical theist in the awkward position of trying to explain our moral obligations when our access to knowledge in the realm of value has been severed. If we can have knowledge of moral obligations, then we should be able, at least in principle, to have knowledge of a morally justifying reason for God’s permitting evil; if it is unlikely that we could have knowledge of a reason for God’s permitting evil, then it is unlikely that we can know what to make of moral obligations.

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[1] William Rowe, “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism,” American Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1979): 335-341.

            [2] Michael Bergmann, “Sceptical Theism and Rowe’s New Evidential Argument from Evil,” Noûs 35 (2001) 279.

[3] This story is (roughly) borrowed from Michael Bergmann and Michael Rea, “In Defense of Skeptical Theism: A Reply to Almeida and Oppy,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 83 (2005): 241-251.