Perplexing Evil

This monograph advances a sophisticated defense of theism against evidential arguments from evil through what has become known as skeptical theism. Wykstra directly challenges William Rowe's influential evidential argument, which claims that seemingly gratuitous evils provide strong evidence against God's existence. The work's central innovation lies in articulating epistemic principles that undermine our ability to make confident judgments about whether observed evils truly lack justifying reasons.

Wykstra introduces the now-famous CORNEA principle (Condition of Reasonable Epistemic Access), arguing that we can justifiably claim "it appears that p" only when, if p were false, we would likely detect this. Applied to evil, this means we cannot reasonably claim that evils appear gratuitous unless we would likely discern God's reasons if they existed. Given the vast cognitive distance between finite human minds and an omniscient deity, Wykstra contends we should expect many divine purposes to remain inscrutable to us. This "parent-child analogy" suggests that just as young children cannot grasp their parents' reasons for certain permissions and prohibitions, humans may be similarly limited regarding divine purposes.

The work engages critically with both Rowe's specific examples of apparently pointless suffering and the broader evidential strategy employed by atheistic philosophers. Wykstra argues that the inference from "we see no God-justifying reason for evil x" to "there is no God-justifying reason for evil x" commits a problematic "noseeum" fallacy. This mirrors moves in other philosophical domains where absence of evidence does not constitute evidence of absence, particularly when dealing with matters beyond ordinary epistemic access.

Wykstra's approach has generated extensive philosophical discussion, effectively shifting debate from first-order questions about evil to second-order questions about our epistemic position regarding divine purposes. Critics worry that skeptical theism leads to excessive skepticism about moral knowledge and divine goodness. Defenders appreciate how it blocks hasty inferences from human epistemic limitations. The work's lasting contribution lies not merely in defending theism but in highlighting often-overlooked epistemic dimensions of religious belief. By carefully analyzing what we can and cannot reasonably expect to know about divine purposes, Wykstra opens new avenues for understanding the relationship between human cognitive limitations and rational religious belief, making this a seminal text in contemporary philosophy of religion's engagement with the problem of evil.