The argument from evil is successful

Above, I offered an argument from evil that should lead us to lower our credence in God existing. Modi opens a sceptical theist front: to use a sceptical defeater to undercut the evidential premise. Here, I shall exegete Modi's particular approach and show it to be unsuccessful. I will also remark on problems afflicting the entire sceptical theist approach, and why they are insurmountable. Modi’s Magnificent Manoeuvre Modi develops his sceptical attack in an interesting way (it seems a theoretical novelty, if you'll forgive another chess analogy). This is his defeater: (m1) We know of “lots” of instances where evil is justified. (m2) Given such epistemic limitations as (VEG) and (NPC) it is unlikely that we will find justification for each and every evil that has occurred. (m3) Given (1) and (2) it is at least as likely that a given evil has justification as that it does not. (m4) Therefore, we are under no epistemic obligation to raise our credence concerning the non-existence of God. Note that his sceptical claim (m2) is very mild. In a bog-standard sceptical theistic response it would be far too weak: that our inscrutability sensor is not perfectly specific does not defeat the sum of inscrutable evil. MMM is not a bog-standard sceptical attack: Modi hopes to lower the sceptical bar by deploying information about our knowledge of justified evil, so that he very mild (and highly plausible) sceptical claim can do the job. As it stands, (m3) simply does not follow from (m1) and (m2). Here's the reductio: (r1) We know of "lots" of instances where a swan is black. (r2) Given such epistemic limitations as (visual defects) and (lack of omnipresence), it is unlikely we will observe black swans for each and every occurrence of a black swan. (r3) Given (1) and (2) it is at least as likely that a given swan is black as that it is not. (r4) Therefore, we are under no obligation to raise our credence concerning the existence of non-black swans [when faced with apparently non-black swans] The problems are that "lots" can still be a minority of the relevant cases (as with black swans) and that the sceptical claim is being amplified from "plausibly, we will sometimes H1 is false when H1 is true" to "we should not change our credence when we see outcomes that conflict with H1." But there is a way to get MMM to follow with impeccable probabilistic credentials. What we want is this: (m1') Most instances of evil appear justified. If (m1') was true, then (m3) would follow. In a world where we have some epistemic limitations, a small 'tail' of inscrutable evils would be entirely unsurprising in a world where there was no gratuitous evil: our imperfect faculties would (correctly) see in most cases that evil was justified, but occasionally miss a justification here and there. And so (m4) would follow: our appearances are no more surprising in the case there are no gratuitous evil then the case there is some, and so these appearances give no confirmation of Atheism. Sadly, Modi does not have a good case for (m1') and we can see it is false: We aren't interested in cases of evil's being justified: rather, we are interested in cases of evils having God-justifying reasons. All sorts of unpleasant medical procedures (for example) are justified through casual limitation: there is no other way of getting the goods in question. God does not labour under these limits, and permission of horrors like Alzheimer's, cancer and HIV are inscrutable evils. Worse, I see no reason to believe even much more minor evils (coughs, ice cream melting) are justified God-justified: there are lots of ways God could arrange the world, and although I would be unsurprised if these minor evils are justified, I do not know there is a justification. So most evils do not appear God-justified (indeed, there aren't even "lots" evils that are God justified): at best, instances of evil do not appear gratuitous but no justification is known; at worst, they are inscrutable. So we should reject (m1'), which is the only way I can see to reconstruct MMM into a valid argument. Therefore MMM is unsuccessful.[1] But maybe Modi sold his sceptical concerns short, and he can actually support a stronger sceptical claim than (m2) - one strong enough to undercut the argument from evil. Spanking strong skepticism Just how strong does the sceptical claim need to be in 'vanilla' sceptical theism, so that inscrutable evils are no evidence whatsoever against the existence of God? It wouldn't be enough to say that are faculties are occasionally fallible, or even that our faculties are poor. Our epistemic limitations would need to be so bad appearances of gratuity and gratuity would be entirely uncorrelated, that we would identify gratuitous evil no better than chance. Only then would P(I|G)/P(I|¬G) be either unity or unknown, and so observation of inscrutable evil gives no disconfirmation whatsoever to theism (see argument 2 in my R1 above). Consequently, Modi's cited sceptical limitations do not get us that far. It is true we lack good insight into the far future consequences of actions (VEG), or that evils and justifying goods can be linked up in ways we cannot always foresee (NPC). So there will be cases (perhaps many cases) where we observe inscrutable evils that are in fact non-gratuitous. Yet this not enough to say that our observation of inscrutable evils is no evidence for gratuitous evil. Of course, Modi intended (VEG) and (NPC) as examples of our epistemic limits, to support his mild sceptical claim for MMM. If one wanted to support the far stronger one necessary in vanilla sceptical theism, one could offer more lots more limitations to gnaw away to nothing the evidence inscrutable evil gives (cf. Howard Snyder, 2009). We can show that this program is failure, simply because the conclusion (our appearances of unjustified evil bear no relation to actual unjustified evil) entails a violation of all our moral intuitions. Consider giving money to Oxfam. It appears that doing so will lead to recognisable goods (less death, less suffering), without any apparent harms. Yet, if sceptical theism is true, for all we know giving to Oxfam may deny great goods beyond our ken, and that not giving to Oxfam may realize great goods beyond our ken. Worse, our moral appearances are uncorrelated to moral actuality: however things appear, it is unknown whether giving money or not will really be the better option. There is no answer to whether we should give to Oxfam (or any other moral decision). This is moral paralysis, which seems crazy: if sceptical theism entails this, we should reject sceptical theism. Sceptical theism needs to be selectively toxic to inscrutable evil, and not all moral appearances. This is difficult (see Sehon, 2008). Worse, the more elaborate skeptical theisms, which introduce resources to do just this become increasingly ad hoc and 'top heavy' (Rowe, 1984, see also Russell and Wykstra, 1988). Much like adding "all people who see white swans are crazy", to defend "all swans are black" these extensions of the Theistic hypothesis protect one from the evidence at the expense of making that hypothesis implausible. I aver that sceptical theism itself is implausible, and the forms elaborate enough to avoid general moral scepticism are really implausible. Conclusion Modi has developed a novel sceptical approach. Sadly, MMM is invalid, and can only be made valid with premises that are false. Modi has not provided enough to support a more standard sceptical attack, especially in light of criticisms I raise. The argument from evil remains cogent. Thrasymachus [1] If Modi could demonstrate (m1'), for example by a broadly successful theodicy, then he could use MMM to dismiss the remainder. Thus, if Modi ventures into theodicy, he can defeat the argument from evil by merely showing that the bulk of evils appear justified, rather than every evil appears justified.