1) Goods and evils depend ultimately on conscious awareness. (Premise 1)
This falls out of the analysis of goods and evils cashing out ultimately as intrinsic goods and evils. But the only possible kind of intrinsic good or intrinsic evil is the kind the goodness / badness of which is directly accessible, which requires conscious access.
2) If goods and evils depend ultimately on conscious awareness, then unbearable conscious suffering (‘unbearable suffering’) is the greatest possible evil for an individual. (Premise 2)
If evils ultimately cash out their evil-ness in conscious terms, then evils in general are ultimately conscious. By categorical logic, if something general holds then so does something more specific. If all cats are cute, then my cat is cute. Likewise, if all evils are ultimately conscious, then the worst evils are ultimately conscious.
3) Therefore, unbearable suffering is the greatest possible evil for an individual. (From 1,2; modus ponens)
4) Every evil corresponds to an equivalent good of being saved from that evil. (Premise 3)
A puzzle in philosophy is to prove the badness of death for the one who dies. Common sensically, death is one of the worst things that can happen to the individual. But if the individual experiences no suffering in death, then what grounds the badness of death? This is where depriving evils come in. Depriving evils deprive one of intrinsic goods that the individual would otherwise have enjoyed. The conscious difference between enjoying those goods and not grants the conscious grounds for the badness of depriving evils. We view death as tragic, especially for those who die young. We say that murderers "robbed the victim" of their life. This account of depriving evils explains our common sense attitudes toward death and murder.
Depriving evils suggest the equivalent good: saving goods, like a helmet saving someone from injury or medicine saving someone from an illness (or: proper forestry saving a city from a raging wildfire). The greater the evil, the greater the good that saves one from the evil.
5) Therefore, being saved from unbearable suffering is the greatest possible good for the individual experiencing unbearable suffering. (From 3,4; categorical syllogism)
6) The phenomenon of suicide demonstrates that some people experience unbearable suffering. (Premise 4)
Unbearable suffering is something like "maxed out conscious constant pain." Ironically, if someone is in the middle of experiencing maxed out conscious pain, they wouldn't be capable of suicide, as the pain would be incapacitating. However, if someone is in that kind of pain, they likely are willing themselves to die even if they are not capable of doing so. So if someone wills themselves to die and is capable of acting accordingly, then that suggests someone can believe that being alive is not worth it despite not being in maxed out pain. If unbearable suffering is defined instead as "a level of suffering that renders life not worth living", then unbearable suffering is not maxed out conscious suffering; someone can will themselves to die before reaching maxed out conscious suffering.
So really we have two separate evils here: unbearable suffering (suffering so great that the individual would prefer death, but not so great that they would be incapacitated to the point of not being able to end their own life) and maxed out suffering (suffering so great that it's utterly incapacitating). While suicide demonstrates the reality of the first kind, it doesn't demonstrate the reality of the second kind. But the second kind certainly exists; third-degree burns, breaking one's femur, passing kidney stones, severe back injuries, various torture methods, and giving birth have been described as incapacitating pains. Though, many people have experienced those pains without willing themselves to die, or without preferring death to them. So ironically, incapacitating conscious pain may not count as unbearable suffering for the person built such that they prefer it to death. Or, maybe for those persons, those pains didn't count as incapacitating given their pain tolerance.
For the purposes of the argument, what matters is the kind of suffering that makes life not worth living for that person, as that enables the equivalent greatest possible good for that person. We could then imagine the nightmare God giving customized forms of tortue to each individual on the basis of what that individual considers to be not worth it.
Though you might suppose that there's not a single person in history who could prefer living to death when in the middle of a full debridement from complete (but not so complete so as to kill you) third-degree burns. Whether the unbearable suffering is physical or psychological, it's conscious either way.
7) If some people experience unbearable suffering and the greatest possible good for the individual experiencing unbearable suffering is to be spared from unbearable suffering, then it is not the case that for all we know all evils produce greater goods that justify them. (Premise 5)
The idea here is that for an evil to be justified there must be a good that depends on that evil and is greater than the evil. (I unpack the idea of 'gratuitous evil' more fully in my previous series on evil. See: https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2024/09/dementia-and-problem-of-evil-part-66.html) But if the greatest possible good for someone is to be saved from the greatest possible evil, then the fact that the person is experiencing that evil proves that that person has missed out on the greatest possible good that depends on that evil. Whatever God's mystery good is supposed to be, it cannot reach the level of goodness of the maximal good of saving the person from unbearable suffering. And because only a maximal good can offset a maximal evil, and because the mystery good cannot be as good as the maximal good, God's mystery good cannot offset the maximal evil. Thus, if we see someone experiencing unbearable suffering, we see someone experiencing a gratuitous evil.
You might imagine a scenario where one person's unbearable suffering causes another person to be saved from unbearable suffering. In that case, the first person's unbearable suffering does result in a maximal good, balancing out the evil. But that doesn't work. We are talking about the greatest possible good with respect to an individual. With respect to the first sufferer in this scenario, there is no good for them that compensates for their suffering. When we are talking about a God who loves the individual, of course we are talking about goods and evils with respect to the individual.
8) Therefore, it is not the case that for all we know all evils produce greater goods that justify them. (From 5,6,7; modus ponens)
9) If skeptical theism is true, then for all we know all evils produce greater goods that justify them. (Premise 6)
Some theists have argued that God need not ensure that all evils produce greater goods. Here is where I might rely on the analysis of gratuitous evil I give in my previous series. But the gist is the same as mentioned above: if God is a God who loves each person individually, then it's unloving of God to use someone's suffering in some satisficing kind of way, or in a way that benefits a story or a whole that has little to do with the individual, as that treats the individual as a means to an end.
And if the theists have in mind ultimate goods that come around and do benefit the individual sufferer, then by the argument I have given there is no way that these goods will be good enough, for an even greater good, and thus an even greater expression of love for the individual, would be to save the individual from unbearable suffering.
There are alternative ways of putting skeptical theism. I've listed out two below.
10) Therefore, skeptical theism is not true. (From 8,9; modus tollens)
Alternative version 1:
If skeptical theism is true, then it's not the case that we can see when evils cannot be justified. But we can see when evils cannot be justified.
. . .
7) If some people experience unbearable suffering and the greatest possible good for the individual experiencing unbearable suffering is to be spared from unbearable suffering, then there are some evils for which we can see that there cannot be greater goods that justify them. (Premise 5)
8) Therefore, there are some evils for which we can see that there cannot be greater goods that justify them. (From 5,6,7; modus ponens)
9) If skeptical theism is true, then there are no evils for which we can see that there cannot be greater goods that justify them. (Premise 6)
10) Therefore, skeptical theism is not true. (From 8,9; modus tollens)
Alternative version 2:
. . .
7) If some people experience unbearable suffering and the greatest possible good for the individual experiencing unbearable suffering is to be spared from unbearable suffering, then our perceived weight of the reasons for forbidding or allowing some evils is necessarily the actual weight of the reasons for forbidding or allowing some evils. (Premise 5)
8) Therefore, our perceived weight of the reasons for forbidding or allowing some evils is necessarily the actual weight of the reasons for forbidding or allowing some evils. (From 5,6,7; modus ponens)
9) If skeptical theism is true, then our perceived weight of the reasons for forbidding or allowing any evils is not necessarily the actual weight of the reasons for forbidding or allowing any evils. (Premise 6)
10) Therefore, skeptical theism is not true. (From 8,9; modus tollens)
This alternative version uses the language of 'perceived weight of the reasons...', following Perry Hendricks. This was written to neatly keep the parallelism to show the modus ponens, but strictly speaking Premise 5 could use some adjustments:
"...then our perceived weight of the reasons for forbidding unbearable suffering is necessarily the actual weight of the reasons for forbidding unbearable suffering. (Premise 5)"
But even this isn't quite right. It's more like: our perceived greater weight of the reasons for forbidding unbearable suffering over allowing unbearable suffering is necessarily accurate enough. We needn't perfectly perceive the difference in the weights of reasons. As long as we're necessarily close enough, that's enough to show that we see that the allowing of unbearable suffering is necessarily unjustified.
Extending to an argument against the existence of God
". . . it is not the case that for all we know all evils produce greater goods that justify them." ⟶ We know of some evils for which it is impossible for there to be greater goods that justify them. ⟶ We know there are some gratuitous evils.
Our perceived greater weight of the reasons for forbidding unbearable suffering over the reasons for allowing suffering is roughly the actual weight of the reasons for forbidding unbearable suffering over the reasons for allowing suffering. ⟶ We know of some evils for which it is impossible for there to be greater goods that justify them. ⟶ We know there are some gratuitous evils.
Given the classic formulation of the evidential problem of evil, if we can see that some evils are gratuitous, then we can see that a perfect God does not exist.
One might switch from focusing on a loving God to a perfect God. The reason to do so is because you might think you could have a perfectly loving God who lacks the knowledge or power to act according to his perfect love, and thus to prevent gratuitous evils. Though that doesn't apply if you think of love itself as being a function to some degree of one's knowledge and power (i.e. you cannot love someone perfectly unless you are sufficiently wise and powerful). Either way, a perfect God is the target of the argument.
I think rhetorically it's more effective to focus on a loving God. 'Love' is more specific, intuitive, and personal than 'perfection'. And Christians, in the end, claim that God loves you, and it's easy for one to test that proposition introspectively. "Do I feel like there's an all-knowing, all-powerful being who loves me, given the details of my life?" – that's a more powerful and direct kind of question than, "Do I feel like this world was created by a perfect being?", though the latter is also a great question.
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