Skeptical theism is a philosophical position that responds to evidential arguments from evil by challenging the epistemic assumption that humans can reliably assess whether God would have morally sufficient reasons for permitting observed evils. The position maintains that given the vast cognitive and moral distance between finite human minds and an infinite divine mind, we should expect significant limitations in our ability to discern the connections between permitted evils and greater goods or the prevention of greater evils. Rather than offering a theodicy that explains why God permits evil, skeptical theists argue that our inability to see God's reasons for permitting evil does not constitute evidence that no such reasons exist. This approach shifts the debate from constructing explanations for evil to examining the epistemic conditions required for drawing inferences from inscrutable evils to God's non-existence.
The position emerged prominently in the late twentieth century through the work of Stephen Wykstra, who developed the "CORNEA" (Condition of Reasonable Epistemic Access) principle in response to William Rowe's evidential argument from evil. Wykstra argued in "The Humean Obstacle to Evidential Arguments from Suffering" (1984) that we should expect many of God's reasons to be beyond our ken, just as a one-month-old infant cannot grasp its parent's reasons for permitting painful medical procedures. The view was further developed by William Alston in "The Inductive Argument from Evil and the Human Cognitive Condition" (1991), Michael Bergmann in "Skeptical Theism and Rowe's New Evidential Argument from Evil" (2001), and Daniel Howard-Snyder in "The Argument from Inscrutable Evil" (1996). These philosophers have articulated various skeptical theses about our knowledge of possible goods, evils, and their interconnections.
Critics argue that skeptical theism leads to excessive moral skepticism that undermines ordinary moral reasoning. If we cannot trust our judgments about whether evils serve greater goods in the case of divine permission, how can we make moral decisions in daily life? Michael Tooley and Richard Swinburne contend that skeptical theism implies we cannot know whether preventing suffering is good, potentially paralyzing moral action. Defenders respond that skeptical theism's limitations are context-specific: our skepticism about God's reasons need not extend to human moral contexts where we have relevant access to consequences and moral principles. Bergmann distinguishes between skepticism about all-things-considered judgments regarding an omniscient being's permissions and confidence in our prima facie duties to prevent suffering.
Skeptical theism differs from other responses to evil in its epistemic focus. Unlike the free will defense, it does not attempt to explain why God permits evil through specific goods like libertarian freedom. Unlike soul-making theodicy, it does not claim that suffering serves character development. Unlike responses to the logical problem of evil, it concedes that pointless evils appear to exist but denies we can reliably identify them as genuinely pointless. Unlike arguments addressing natural evil specifically, skeptical theism applies equally to all types of evil by focusing on our epistemic limitations rather than evil's sources.