Skeptical theism

Skeptical theism is the dominant contemporary response to the evidential problem of evil. The atheist argues: look at the sheer scale and apparent pointlessness of suffering — child cancer, animal predation, natural disasters — and the most reasonable conclusion is that no all-powerful and perfectly good God exists. The skeptical theist replies: you are assuming that if there were a good reason for this suffering, you would be in a position to see it. But why should you expect that? God's cognitive capacities exceed ours the way ours exceed a toddler's, and a toddler's failure to see the point of a necessary vaccination does not show that there is no point.

Philosophers associated with skeptical theism include William Alston, Michael Bergmann, and Stephen Wykstra (whose 1984 paper on the "condition of reasonable epistemic access" is the classic source). The argument is more modest than a full theodicy: it does not claim to know why God permits suffering, only that our inability to see the reason is not strong evidence that no reason exists.

Critics argue that skeptical theism is a double-edged sword. If our moral judgments about specific cases of suffering are unreliable because we can't see God's reasons, then our moral judgments in general are unreliable for the same reason. That would undercut moral motivation: if you can't tell whether preventing a child's suffering is really on balance good (maybe God had a reason to permit it that you're missing), it is hard to explain why you should intervene. This is sometimes called the "moral paralysis" objection.

Skeptical theism is worth understanding because it is the argument most likely to come up when a thoughtful Christian is pressed on the problem of evil. It is also one of the rare apologetic moves that an atheist can take seriously without feeling that the interlocutor is changing the subject.