11 Quick Objections to Skeptical Theism

Skeptical Theism has Major Problems.

Skeptical theism says that there might be a morally sufficient reason for evil even if we don’t know what it is.

Skeptical theism has 11 problems that I’ll point out here.  

1 As Stephen Law has argued, this opens up a pandora’s box of possible horrors.  If we can’t trust God to avoid making malaria, earthquakes that crush babies under rocks and fallen buildings, and people want to rape children, then we can’t be confident in any other moral claim of God.  How do we know that God won’t lie.  How do we know God won’t torture us for a billion years before entering heaven, if we can’t know nothing about what a good God would do. 

2 If we took this seriously, we’d be skeptical about morality as a whole.  If we can’t rule out there being a morally sufficient reason for making people want to rape children, then we should be very hesitant about making any moral claims given that all plausible moral systems hold that there are some gratuitous unnecessary evils. This is especially true because every plausible moral system rules out a perfect God and because of the wide range of hard to explain evils which sweeping theodicies can’t explain.

3 As Stephen Law has argued, if we can’t rule out a good God based on evil then we can’t rule out an evil God based on good.  If this is true, then God is just as likely to be evil as he is to be good.  All of the theodicies can be used to explain how an evil God would create good.

4 As Oppy and Almeida argue skeptical theists shouldn’t think that God’s commands give us reasons, because God might have good reason to command us to do bad things. 

5 This could justify any evil.  Putin could use this to justify his invasion of Ukraine, a serial killer could justify their murders with similar theodicies and claiming they have a morally sufficient reason. This is because it is not a specific defense of a particular type of evil that exists but a general explanation for all evils.

6 The explanations of evil only work after the fact.  If we hadn’t examined the world but were making predictions about what the world would be like if God existed, we wouldn’t predict all of the evil—we wouldn’t predict malaria, parasites, and other such horrors

7 Imagine I made the claim that all ravens are purple.  You reply that you’ve seen lots of black ravens.  I reply that they only appear black, but they’re really purple.  We carefully investigate lots of ravens and see no evidence that they’re purple.  It would be foolish to hold on to my claim.  However, if God has a morally sufficient reason for evil, much like with the purple raven, one would expect us to be able to discover some morally sufficient reasons for some evils upon careful investigation.  Yet I would bet that if we analyzed any evil in depth, we wouldn’t find any justification for it, which inductively undercuts the skeptical theist argument. This explains why theodicies have failed so catastrophically. Thus, if skeptical theism were true, we’d be able ot understand the reasons for lots of evils, yet we plainly can’t.

8 If you think we can’t know God’s aims then this single handedly razes every argument for theism—they all rely on predictions about what the world would be like if God existed

9 This cannot explain the problem of hell.  IN hell we are eternally separated from everyone else and from God, so why must we be tormented. 

10 This also gives theism the task of explaining why God wouldn’t let us understand his moral reasons

11 This could explain any world with evil. Imagine the world was just pure torture. If you think we can’t predict God’s aims, then this wouldn’t be incompatible with perfect goodness. Yet it seems like it would be incompatible with perfect goodness.

So theists, you can no longer treat skeptical theism as a get out of jail free card—you cannot say that it gets you out of the problem. Skeptical theism opens up its own can of worms. If one cannot respond to these objections, their view is demolished by the arguments against it. They can no longer use it to wish away the problem. For wishing away the problem and saying there might be some solution, has enormous problems of its own.