Reference no: EM133715300
Problem
In response to the problem of evil, the "skeptical theist" admits that we are unable to see the reasons a perfect God would have for permitting evil. However, the "skeptical theist" maintains that we should not expect to see God's reasons - these reasons do not have "reasonable seeability" for us. To make this point, "skeptical theists" often rely on the "parent analogy." Below is Daniel Speak's explanation of the "parent analogy."
"Consider the parent who must submit her four-year-old child to a painful procedure for the child's medical well-being. We do not expect the child to be able to understand the complex goods and evils (of long life, of cancer and chemotherapy, etc.), reflection on which animate the parent. If there are goods that justify the parent in permitting the horror of, say, chemotherapy (and, at least in some cases, there surely are), is it true that a four-year-old would probably know about them? Quite clearly no. All the skeptical theist appears to need in addition to this image, then, is the very compelling thought that our human epistemic situation before God would be sufficiently like the child's epistemic situation before her parent" (Speak, 58).
Is this a good analogy? Below are some questions you might consider when answering.
What is it that would prevent us from understanding, or "seeing," the reasons which God would have for permitting evil? Do those same things prevent a child from understanding why she must undergo a painful medical treatment?
For the analogy to hold, it must be the case that (just as we are completely incapable of understanding the reasons that God has for permitting evil) a child is completely incapable of understanding why a painful medical treatment is necessary. Is that the case? Is explaining this to a child impossible?
Rowe criticizes the "parent analogy" by pointing out that when a child must undergo a painful medical treatment "the parent attends directly to the child throughout its period of suffering." Is God's presence directly known to those who are suffering? If it is claimed that the presence of God is known directly (and unmistakably) to those who are suffering, then why are there atheists who do not believe in God?