Skepticism or Imperfection?
1. Skeptical Theism vs. Imperfect Design
The strongest argument for something like theism (Intelligent Design) is the Fine Tuning Argument. I have a post about this, as well as a video:
On the other hand, the strongest argument against theism is the problem of evil:
Briefly: Let’s call any bad thing that isn’t necessary for producing a greater good or preventing something worse a “gratuitous evil.” The argument is
If God existed, there wouldn’t be any gratuitous evils.
There are gratuitous evils.
So God doesn’t exist.
A popular recent response to the problem of evil is Skeptical Theism. This view holds that we don’t know what reasons God might have for allowing any given evil. The world is complex and chaotic, our minds are limited, God is much smarter than us, etc. So when it looks to us as if there is some gratuitous evil, we can’t conclude that God doesn’t really have some great reason for allowing that evil.
I find this unpersuasive. A more likely explanation is that gratuitous evils exist because the creator is imperfect, as in, less than all-powerful, less than all-knowing.
(The creator might also be less than all-good, but this doesn’t get you very far, since it doesn’t require much goodness to want to prevent the Holocaust or Justin Bieber’s music. If a god doesn’t want to prevent things like that, he isn’t even decent, let alone perfect.)
2. The Skeptic’s Analogy
Skeptical theists grant that many things in the world appear to be gratuitous evils for which we cannot see any justification. But they think we should be skeptical of that appearance.
Here is an analogy: you are watching a chess match between players who are much more skilled than you. You see white play a move that you cannot see any good reason for. Should you conclude that it is in fact a bad move? Not without further information. It is more likely that you are mistaken than that the much more skilled player is mistaken. So there are probably good reasons for the move that you just can’t see.
If you buy that, God is like the ultimate, perfect chess player. If you can’t see any reason for God to do something, you shouldn’t conclude that there is no good reason; you should just assume that God knows more than you and He has some very good reason for everything that He does.
Problem: In the example, you already know for sure that the chess player exists and is much more skilled than you.