Naeimeh poormohammadi; AhmadReza Hashemi
Volume 9, Issue 2 , January 2020, , Pages 143-167
Abstract
We are more or less familiar with William's evidential problem of evil. He denies the existence of God or (in his later articles) the possibility of the existence of God by not finding God's justifing reasons for permiting evil. Theists, on the other hand, have tried to expose God's justifiing reasons ...
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We are more or less familiar with William's evidential problem of evil. He denies the existence of God or (in his later articles) the possibility of the existence of God by not finding God's justifing reasons for permiting evil. Theists, on the other hand, have tried to expose God's justifiing reasons for permiting evil and to offer justifications called Theodicy. In the meantime, Skeptical Theism in response to the problem of evil has chosen another way. The claim is that we human beings may not be able to fundamentally grasp God's justifiing reasons for permiting evil, and since not finding reason is not a strong reason for not having a reason, the evil argument falls. In this article, we first explain the skeptical theological approach of William Alston and Michael Bergman, and then, based on the challenges posed by other philosophers of religion and theologians, conclude that the skeptical theological approach has not yet been plausible. In this article we have considered only moral challenges.We have extracted, formulated and analyzed eleven challenges from various texts of philosophers of religion, and carefully followed the problems and re-answers from both sides of the conflict, and finally came to the conclusion that skeptical theism answer is not still sufficient and convincing. It seems that the evil argument must still be resisted on the apologentic side of Theodicy.
