RT Article
T1 Positive skeptical theism and the problem of divine deception
JF International journal for philosophy of religion
VO 82
IS 1
SP 89
OP 99
A1 DePoe, John
LA English
PB Springer Science + Business Media B. V
YR 2017
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1561746932
AB In a recent article, Erik Wielenberg has argued that positive skeptical theism fails to circumvent his new argument from apparent gratuitous evil. Wielenberg's new argument focuses on apparently gratuitous suffering and abandonment, and he argues that negative skeptical theistic responses fail to respond to the challenge posed by these apparent gratuitous evils due to the parent-child analogy often invoked by theists. The greatest challenge to his view, he admits, is positive skeptical theism. To stave off this potential problem with his argument, he maintains that positive skeptical theism entails divine deception, which creates insuperable problems for traditional theism. This essay shows that Wielenberg is mistaken. Although positive skeptical theism claims that we should expect the appearance of gratuitous evil (when there is no actual gratuitous evil) given Christian theism, this does not entail divine deception. I maintain that God is not a deceiver on positive skeptical theism because God does not meet two requirements to be a deceiver: (1) God does not intend to cause people to believe any false propositions and (2) God does not provide evidence for someone to justifiably believe a false proposition. Consequently, Wielenberg's new argument from evil fails and positive skeptical theism remains a viable response to the evidential argument from evil.
K1 Divine deception
K1 Divine Hiddenness
K1 Evidential argument from evil
K1 Parent analogy
K1 Skeptical theism
K1 Wielenberg
DO 10.1007/s11153-017-9615-4