Sometimes atheists will compare what they call a mountain of empirical evidence against the existence of God based on evil in the world with all the arguments, or at least, those arguments that are supposed to demonstrate the goodness of God, and ask something like the following question: "What are you more sure of; that there is a mountain of empirical evidence against the existence of God because of all the evil we observe in the world, or are you more sure that the moral argument is a successful argument for a good God?"
RESPONSE: No doubt that such a question works well on our intuition pumps, but notice that the question begs the question. We need to distinguish between two questions:
1) How certain are you that some events in the world can be called objectively evil?
2) How certain are you that we have no good reason to doubt that if there is a morally sufficient reason for God to permit some instance of evil we observe, that we would quite likely see what that morally sufficient reason is?
I submit to you that the atheist conflates these two questions unjustifiably since it is only for the first question that we have a 'mountain of empirical evidence,' namely, that evil occurs in the world. The second question is based on the nature of induction, and states a commmonly accepted principle of skeptical theism based. Skeptical theism basically say that unless the atheist can show that we have a mountain of evidence that allows us to answer yes to question 2 (not question 1), then the original question begs the question since it just assumes that we have no reason to doubt that our not seeing a morally sufficient reason that God must have in permitting some evil is good evidence that God doesn't have one (For justification, see my other posts in this section under The Evil God Challenge & Doesn't Skeptical Theism undermine all inductive reasoning).
When it comes down to it, I am more confident in the evidential force of a cumulative case for Christian theism than I am that we have no good reason to doubt that our not seeing a morally sufficient reason that God must have in permitting some evil is good evidence that God doesn't have one.
RESPONSE: No doubt that such a question works well on our intuition pumps, but notice that the question begs the question. We need to distinguish between two questions:
1) How certain are you that some events in the world can be called objectively evil?
2) How certain are you that we have no good reason to doubt that if there is a morally sufficient reason for God to permit some instance of evil we observe, that we would quite likely see what that morally sufficient reason is?
I submit to you that the atheist conflates these two questions unjustifiably since it is only for the first question that we have a 'mountain of empirical evidence,' namely, that evil occurs in the world. The second question is based on the nature of induction, and states a commmonly accepted principle of skeptical theism based. Skeptical theism basically say that unless the atheist can show that we have a mountain of evidence that allows us to answer yes to question 2 (not question 1), then the original question begs the question since it just assumes that we have no reason to doubt that our not seeing a morally sufficient reason that God must have in permitting some evil is good evidence that God doesn't have one (For justification, see my other posts in this section under The Evil God Challenge & Doesn't Skeptical Theism undermine all inductive reasoning).
When it comes down to it, I am more confident in the evidential force of a cumulative case for Christian theism than I am that we have no good reason to doubt that our not seeing a morally sufficient reason that God must have in permitting some evil is good evidence that God doesn't have one.
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