Skeptical Theism: A Response to Bergmann

Abstract

Bergmann suggests that STI is reasonable-or at least not unreasonableowing to our of our cognitive limitations and the vastness and complexity of reality. And he notes that I seem to have some sympathy with STI. He then considers my new evidential argument from and argues that it depends on rejection of this skeptical thesis and, therefore, suffers from the same problem that afflicts his [Rowe's] original argument. In what follows, after a preliminary comment, I will respond to Bergmann's discussion of my 1996 argument from evil. The constant theme in my discussions of the problem of evil is our awareness that no good within our ken can reasonably be thought to justify an allpowerful, all-knowing, perfectly good being in permitting any particular instance of the vast number of instances of horrific suffering (both animal and human) that occurs daily in our world. Skeptical theists like Bergmann do not directly dispute this point, although they think my claim exceeds what we are fully justified in asserting.3 Rather, they contend that given the disparity between our knowledge of goods and the conditions of their realization and the knowledge of these matters possessed by God, if he exists, we simply aren't epistemically qualified to make any reasonable judgments whatever about the amount of seemingly pointless, horrific evil such a being would need to allow in the world. For all we know, they say, the world could contain a great deal more seemingly point-