See Parts 1 - 3 here: https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2024/07/dementia-and-problem-of-evil-part-1-2.html
See Part 4 here: https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2024/08/dementia-and-problem-of-evil-2-god-has.html
See Part 5 here: https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2024/08/dementia-and-problem-of-evil-3.html
Part 6: Skeptical Theism Fails to Save Theism
6a - Summarizing the argument so far and where it’s going
- Define God as an all-loving, all-powerful, all-knowing being.
- God has the knowledge and power needed to prevent our suffering.
- God loves us, which means God sees us as valuable. When you see someone as valuable, you would never let them suffer unless the goodness produced by the suffering outweighed the badness it produced.
- So God would never let us suffer unless the goodness produced by the suffering outweighed the badness it produced.
- If there were no consciousness, there would be no evil. So, evil must ultimately cash out in conscious experience.
- Every moment of conscious suffering gives us, and God, reason to prevent that moment in the badness of the moment itself.
- Every moment of conscious flourishing gives us, and God, reason to cause that moment in the goodness of the moment itself.
- Depending on how we define ‘moment’, dementia causes millions upon millions of moments of conscious suffering for the principal sufferer and the sufferer’s friends and family.
- Dementia also ruins what would have been moments of flourishing for the principal sufferer and the sufferer’s friends and family.
- Therefore, God has millions upon millions of reasons to prevent dementia.
- Surveying thirteen theodicies reveals not a single unproblematic reason for allowing dementia.
Condition 1: The goodness of G that an evil E produces must be of greater magnitude than the badness of E.Condition 2: Even if G + E is a net good, God allowing G + E cannot entail treating any person in an unloving way, such as by treating them as a means to an end.Condition 3: Even if G + E is a net good and does not require treating any individuals in an unloving way, the net good of G + E must not be outweighed by the net good of an alternative God could have actualized.
But even if all three conditions are met, an additional problem emerges: The paradox of the permissibility and impermissibility of evils.
1) How can God be anti-evil if evils are net goods?2) How can we be motivated to refrain from doing evil or preventing evil when evils are net goods?3) Why is heaven evil-free if evils are necessary to maximize goodness?
To solve this paradox, locally gratuitous evils were introduced in combination with the Grand Story theodicy.
But whether the Grand Story actually solves conditions 1, 2, and 3 is dubious, plus the existence of locally gratuitous evils gives rise to long distance LGEs and permanent LGEs, both of which carry their own concerns.
Because theodicies fail, at best theodical goods only give a silver lining to our suffering. Because humans are desperate to survive, and thus desperate to believe that our world is worth surviving for, we are biased to latch onto silver linings and blow them out of proportion as if evils are worth the trouble. However, given our readiness to prevent or cure or solve the evils we encounter, often with great urgency, we betray our belief that evils are not worth the trouble.
We can imagine an evil-free world, at least a world free from apparently gratuitous evil. Such a world would contain only minor evils that are dwarfed by life’s pleasures; minor evils always serve to make life more interesting, dynamic, meaningful, and worth living for, and never cause anyone despair (to feel like life is not worth living). Examples of minor evils could include boredom (which motivates us to do things), solvable problems (which leads to the satisfaction of problem solving), and hunger (which leads to the satisfaction of eating a good meal).[*1]
The higher-order goods of the evil-free world are apparently greater than the higher-order goods of the world with the Grand Story. Most importantly, in the evil-free world, there is never any despair; everyone, everywhere, at all times, prefers being alive to being dead; the world is fundamentally good in a way our world is not. When we imagine such a world, we immediately wish we lived there instead. Case in point, Christians speak of the ‘longing of heaven.’ So the Grand Story is not the best possible story; we can imagine a better story, a story without all the apparently gratuitous evils, all the bad stories of Earth, without despair, a world where everyone affirms and celebrates life at all times and there’s never any worry as to the goodness of life on the whole.
Where the argument is going:
-In 6b I give the abductive argument against God from the failure of theodicies;
-In 6c I defend the theory that evils appear gratuitous;
-In 6d I give an abductive argument defending the theory that there are gratuitous evils;
-In 6e I show why the argument from evil does not necessarily depend on a noseeum inference;
-In 6f I show why skeptical theism fails to save theism from agnosticism even if it’s true;
-In 6g I give three arguments for believing skeptical theism is false: Nevin Climenhaga’s argument, William Rowe’s argument, and my argument.
6b - Abductive Argument Against God from the Failure of Theodicies
Skeptical theists often say something like the following:
There is no reason for thinking that God’s reasons would be discernible to us.
There are problems with this.
1) God loves us and wants what’s best for us, which includes believing true beliefs, especially beliefs as important as the existence of God. So God doesn’t want obstacles to belief in God. But without a successful theodicy, the problem of evil becomes such an obstacle.
2) God loves us and wants us to be saved. But salvation requires belief. Or we might say rejecting Christianity precludes salvation. So God doesn’t want us to reject Christianity, but the problem of evil threatens just that.
3) God loves us and wants us to have a relationship with God, which requires us to believe in God, but the failure of theodicies prevents that belief and thus prevents that relationship.
4) When it comes to Christian theism, suffering is at the heart of the Christian story. So surely something like the Grand Story theodicy would work if Christianity were true. The very point of the Gospel is to make sense of evil. (Evil exists because of sin but God sent Jesus to die for our sins.) As long as we don’t understand why there is evil, then we can’t understand the Gospel, which paralyzes Christianity. If God wants us to preach the Gospel with confidence, then God should want us to have ready access to a successful theodicy.
So we do have reasons for thinking a successful theodicy would be apparent to us were God to exist. This means the lack of a readily available compelling theodicy is surprising on the theory that God exists, but is not surprising on the theory that God does not exist. The failure of theodicies therefore is evidence against the existence of God.
6c - Certainly there are apparently gratuitous evils
1 - We would not attempt to prevent or cure evils unless they were apparently gratuitous to us.
2 - We would not be inclined to pray to God to prevent or cure an evil unless it was apparently gratuitous to us.
3 - Because of the failure of theodicies, the reasons to prevent evils apparently outweigh the reasons to allow them. A world without apparently gratuitous evils is apparently better than a world with apparently gratuitous evils.
4 - All evils (can you think of a counterexample?) are locally gratuitous. Long distance LGEs and permanent LGEs apparently violate condition 2 of justified evils by treating people in an unloving way. Additionally, these LGEs apparently rely on failed theodicies for their justification. Many individuals do not experience justifying goods in this life, which means if the evils they experienced are justified, then the justifying goods must be obtained after their death. But that apparently leaves only the butterfly effect, soul-making, heaven, or Grand Story theodicies to justify such evils. But those theodicies apparently fail.
5 - Some people despair of life and choose death. It's apparent to those who choose death that their very existence contains more badness than good. Being alive is an apparently gratuitous evil for those who choose death.
6 - Christians speak of the ‘longing for heaven,’ but we wouldn’t long for an evil-free world unless the evils of Earth were apparently not worth it.
7 - Our moral experience and moral outrage betrays our belief that evils are apparently gratuitous.
6d - The simple theory vs the complex theory
Here we have another abductive argument.
Simple theory: Evils appear gratuitous because they are gratuitous.
Complex theory: Evils appear gratuitous but really are justified.
The theory that evils are gratuitous nicely explains why they appear gratuitous. The theory that evils are justified clashes with the data that evils appear gratuitous to us.
The Grand Story theodicy does predict that evils would appear gratuitous but really are justified. Per the theodicy, the evils we see on Earth are locally gratuitous, but once the goods of the Grand Story are realized, those LGEs become broadly justified. But for all the reasons discussed, the Grand Story theodicy apparently fails. With the failure of theodicies, there’s no reason to think evils really are justified. The complex theory enjoys no support.
Sure, it’s possible that there’s a successful theodicy out there. But how likely is that? Given the abductive argument from the failure of theodicies and the abductive argument from the appearance of gratuitous evil, it seems more likely that evils appear gratuitous because they are gratuitous. What could be a simpler explanation than that?
6e - The argument from evil succeeds
Recall the argument:
1) If God exists, there are no gratuitous evils.
2) There are gratuitous evils.
3) Therefore, there is no God.
I defended Premise 1 in Parts 1 - 4. In Part 5 we saw how theodicies fail despite my best efforts. And now in Part 6 we see how the failure of theodicies leads to the simple theory vs the complex theory, which abductively supports Premise 2.
So we might say,
1) My beliefs commit me to the incompatibility between God and gratuitous evil.
2) My beliefs commit me to gratuitous evils.
3) My beliefs commit me to the non-existence of God.
But my beliefs don’t really commit me to gratuitous evils, only to the appearance of gratuitous evils. So,
1) My beliefs commit me to the incompatibility between God and gratuitous evil.
2) It seems to me there are gratuitous evils.
3) Therefore it seems to me God does not exist.
To say an evil is apparently gratuitous just is to say that the evil seems gratuitous. Following phenomenal conservatism, you are justified to believe that which seems to you to be the case until a defeater comes along and gives you reason to think differently.[*2] So, I’m justified in believing that God is incompatible with gratuitous evils and that most evils are gratuitous until given reason to think otherwise.
As already mentioned, a defeater comes in two different kinds: A rebutting defeater and an undercutting defeater. A rebutting defeater gives reason for reversing your seeming; an undercutting defeater attacks those arguments that gave you the seeming in the first place.[*3]
For example, let’s say someone believes in God. The problem of evil is a rebutting defeater; it gives us reason to believe there is no God. But if someone believes in God because of fine-tuning, then attacks against the fine-tuning argument are undercutting defeaters. If those attacks are successful, then the undercutting defeater is successful.
So the problem of evil gives theists reason to become an atheist while attacks against the fine-tuning argument give theists reason to become agnostic.
Let’s say someone believes God has no access to justifying goods for all evils. You could rebut this by showing God does have access to justifying goods for all evils. That’s what a successful theodicy would show. But because of the failure of theodicies, the theist has no rebutting defeater against the belief that God has no access to justifying goods for all evils (and thus the belief that there are gratuitous evils).
But while the theist does not have a rebutting defeater, what about an undercutting defeater?
Consider,
It does not seem like there are aliens in the universe.
(This is true. We haven’t yet seen any clear, uncontroversial evidence for alien spacecraft or alien life forms.)
It seems like there are no aliens in the universe.
(This is false. To say this we would have to thoroughly explore the universe to the point where if there were aliens we would have more likely than not run into them.)
Compare,
It does not seem like there are justifying goods for all evils.
(This is true. Theodicies have failed to provide justifying goods for all evils.)
It seems like there are no justifying goods for all evils.
(This is more likely true than false. At the very least, this is plausible given the abductive argument from the failure of theodicies and given the superiority of the simple theory over the complex theory.)
But what if someone tried to apply that abductive logic to aliens? The theory that there are no aliens nicely explains why it seems like there are no aliens. Ah, but it doesn’t seem like there are no aliens. But it does seem like there are no justifying goods for all evils. The difference is that we see the millions of reasons God has for preventing evils. We don’t see millions of reasons for thinking aliens don’t exist. We don’t have positive evidence against aliens. But we do have positive evidence against the idea that there are no gratuitous evils.
The existence of aliens is perfectly consistent with our having yet to run into them. We wouldn’t expect to have run into them given how little we have explored the universe. But the existence of justifying goods is not perfectly consistent with us having yet run into them. We would expect to have run into justifying goods if there were any.
When we ask, “If aliens exist, then why can’t we see them?”, we have a ready answer: Because we can’t see the surface of planets that are light years away (or even of those close to us in our solar system). But when we ask, “Why does God allow evil?”, we don’t have a ready answer. We see why God shouldn’t allow evil; there is an active pressure against God. We don’t see why aliens shouldn’t exist; there is no active pressure against the theory that there are aliens.
Skeptical theism is meant to be an undercutting defeater. It says we should not expect to run into justifying goods, because such goods could be beyond our ken. The apparentness of gratuitous evils could be a product of our ignorance. God’s ways are higher than our ways, and God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts. Why would we expect to know the mind of God? Why should we think our perceived weight of God’s reasons for allowing evils is the actual weight of God’s reasons?
In other words, there is no reason for thinking that God’s reasons would be discernible to us. But as discussed under 6b, this is mistaken.
The problem is that skeptical theism is accusing the proponent of the argument from evil of necessarily making a noseeum inference when they are not. It’s true that not seeing is not the same as seeing not. It’s true that it makes for a weak argument to say, “I don’t see God’s justifying goods, therefore they probably aren’t there.” But that’s not what I’m saying.
I’m saying I do see. I do see what it means to be God; I do see what it means to be loving; I do see what it means for evil to be gratuitous; I do see how God is incompatible with gratuitous evils; I do see how reasons map onto suffering; I do see the millions of reasons God has for preventing evils; I do see how the theodicies available to me do not make sense of God allowing evils and do not provide counter reasons; I do see why this is surprising on theism; I do see how the reasons to prevent evils outweighing the reasons to allow them causes evils to seem gratuitous. I do see how the appearance of gratuitous evil is best explained by the existence of gratuitous evil (at least, it’s a plausible explanation).
Until the theist shows how at least one of my preceding ‘sights’ is faulty, there is no successful undercutting defeater. With no rebutting defeater and no undercutting defeater, the seeming that there are gratuitous evils stands undefeated, and the argument from evil stands successful.
6f - The argument from evil succeeds even if skeptical theism succeeds
For the sake of argument, let’s grant skeptical theism entirely and say it’s plausible that there is a spooky, mysterious theodicy out there that justifies all evils. What follows from this? Does it follow that it’s more plausible that there is a successful theodicy out there than not? How could that be given the current failure of theodicies?
But if it’s not more plausible that there is a successful theodicy than not, then it remains plausible that evils appear gratuitous because they are gratuitous. But if it’s no more plausible that evils are secretly justified than that evils appear gratuitous because they are gratuitous, then at best it’s a 50/50 whether there are gratuitous evils. So even if skeptical theism succeeds, it’s plausible that evils appear gratuitous because they are gratuitous. But as long as it’s plausible that there are gratuitous evils, and if God is incompatible with gratuitous evils, then it’s plausible that God does not exist. And as long as it’s plausible that God does not exist, theism is not justified. You should be agnostic at that point.
6g - Three arguments against skeptical theism
If skeptical theism depends on accusing the proponent of the argument from evil of making a noseeum inference, then skeptical theism fails. Even if skeptical theism succeeds, this might block us from concluding that there are gratuitous evils, but until there’s a successful theodicy (and as as long as my assumptions about God, love, reasons, etc., hold), it remains at least plausible that there are gratuitous evils, and thus plausible that God does not exist. But now we turn to a few positive arguments for thinking that skeptical theism cannot be true.
6g1 - Nevin Climenhaga: If the probability of evil on theism is inscrutable, then the probability of theism on evil is inscrutable
I will let Climenhaga’s paper speak for itself.[*4] Basically, if we can't determine whether there are gratuitous evils then we cannot determine whether God exists, leading us to agnosticism.
6g2 - William Rowe: a series of agonizing moments
William Rowe says that if skeptical theism is right, then God could be justified in permitting “any amount of evil whatever”.[*5] Life could be “nothing more than a series of agonizing moments from birth to death” and yet God would still be justified. I will take this one step farther: God could torture everyone in hell for fun from the start and yet we would not be able to conclude that God is evil. But that’s absurd. Surely, in a worst-possible-case scenario we could be certain that there is no loving God. As Rowe says, “Surely there must be some point at which the appalling agony of human and animal existence on earth would render it unlikely that God exists.” Where does the skeptical theist draw that line?
6g3 - Saliency Objection
The following is not meant to be a knock down argument against skeptical theism (not that the arguments above are meant to be so either), but it is meant to be suggestive. I take up where Rowe leaves off. If we can’t say that a loving God would never burn every human and animal in hell forever for fun then I guess we can’t say a single thing in philosophy. This argumentum ad absurdum shows skeptical theism goes wrong somewhere.
So here is the first suggestion:
1) If skeptical theism is true, then we are clueless about our most urgent moral interests.
2) We are not clueless about our most urgent moral interests.
3) So, skeptical theism is not true.
This argument is hinting at something significant about our moral interests. If we have genuine insight into what our true moral interests are, then the justification for evil needs to meet us where we are at. So we get the next suggestion,
1) If God loves us, then God will meet us where we are at.
2) God does not meet us where we are at.
3) So, God does not love us.
This is a consequence of my discussion about the nature of goods and evils. If there is no consciousness, there is no goodness and no badness. Therefore, for goodness and badness to be realized, they must ultimately be cashed out in conscious experience.
This makes perfect sense given what we know about non-human animals. The greatest moral interest for non-human animals is to be basically happy, content, and to be free from horrendous evils like predation, starvation, disease, loneliness, and infertility.
In the face of death and suffering, humans become simple creatures. Our greatest moral interests are to be basically happy, content, and to be free from horrendous suffering, just like other animals.
But this means we have access to our greatest moral interests. So here is the third suggestion,
1) The most important, weighty, salient evils are those that are consciously experienced. In other words, the worst possible evils for us are evils that we experience.
2) Therefore, the worst possible evils are directly accessible.
3) Reasons map onto evils. If the badness of an evil is directly accessible, then the reasons to prevent that evil are directly accessible as well.
4) Therefore, the reasons to prevent the worst possible evils are also directly accessible.
5) God allows our evils to prevent God’s mystery evils.
6) The reasons to prevent God’s mystery evils are not directly accessible.
7) Therefore, God’s mystery evils cannot be the most salient evils.
8) Therefore, God is allowing more salient evils to prevent less salient evils, which is not loving or rational.
I’m not sure that this works. If parents drop their kid off to the dentist, then from the kid’s point of view the most salient evils are the pains he experiences at the dentist. But in reality, the more salient evil is the pain the kid would experience later on if he didn’t go to the dentist.
The counter to this is that we are talking about human moral interests and our capacity for suffering. At the highest level of suffering, our suffering will be conscious and thus directly accessible, and thus the reasons for preventing that suffering will be directly accessible as well. This is why we can know with certainty that the God who sends people to hell for fun cannot be a loving God. If someone is in hell, the greatest possible good for that person is for them to be freed from hell. So whatever evil God is preventing by allowing someone to be tortured forever (such as the evil of injustice, or the evil of a lack of free will, or the evil of a lack of a Grand Story), it’s necessarily the case that that evil is not as bad as someone being tortured forever.
In other words, when our suffering is maxed out it’s impossible for there to be a greater good with respect to us than for us to be relieved of our suffering. So whether a good counts as a justifying good depends on a connection to our experience. If there is an appearance of gratuitous evil, then that gratuitousness is meeting us where we are, and therefore a justifying good must meet us where we are to count as a justifying good. If this works, then the appearance of gratuitous evil implies the existence of gratuitous evil.
Our most salient suffering must be met with salient justifying goods. But just as our most salient suffering is directly accessible, the most salient goods must be directly accessible too. So it’s impossible for God’s mystery goods to be beyond our ken. That’s what it means for us to have access to our own moral interests.
This leads to the fourth suggestion:
1) We experience unbearable suffering. (The phenomenon of despair proves this.)
2) God allows our suffering to prevent mystery suffering.
3) Either God’s mystery suffering is bearable or unbearable.
4) If God’s mystery suffering is bearable, then God is preventing bearable suffering by allowing unbearable suffering, which is not loving or rational.
5) If God’s mystery suffering is unbearable, then God is preventing unbearable suffering by allowing unbearable suffering, which is not loving or rational. (If unbearable suffering is guaranteed, then the loving thing to do is to not create us at all.)
If something like this works in the end, then we do see how God cannot exist.
*1 - Minor evils, despite the name, could involve what we would normally think of as horrendous evils. Imagine a soldier getting shot and bombed on a battlefield. Now imagine that soldier having Wolverine’s healing factor—suddenly the bombs and bullets aren’t so bad. Another example: imagine if getting burned at the stake caused your body to feel pain at first, but once the pain reached a threshold your body would be numbed and all pain removed, and when you died, you came back alive. If you empower the individual in these kinds of ways, then much of the badness of evils is removed. While it’s true that in some scenarios you would rather be dead than alive, that would only apply to your current life, and not to life as a whole.
*2 - See: Michael Huemer, Knowledge, Reality, and Value (2021), pgs 110 - 113.
*3 - See this interview with Greg Welty starting at 41 minutes: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV2gOObcLbI).
*4 - Nevin Climenhaga, “If We Can’t Tell What Theism Predicts, We Can’t Tell Whether God Exists: Skeptical Theism and Bayesian Arguments from Evil” (2022), retrieved: https://philarchive.org/rec/CLIIWC.
*5 - Daniel Howard-Snyder, Michael Bergmann, and William Rowe, “An exchange on the problem of evil” (2001).
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