SKEPTICAL THEISM IS THE FANCY NAME FOR CONTRARIANISM AS IN AN ATTEMPT NOT TO SEE IF A SUFFERER'S SITUATION IS BAD ENOUGH TO JUSTIFY OPPOSING TRUST IN GOD
God has to have a reason to let you suffer. If free will is worth his non-interference then fine. He may turn evil to good but that does not in itself have anything to do with giving it a purpose. It is not right to let terrible things happen just because you intend to fix them. You need a reason to let them happen at all. Suffering having value does not mean that all suffering is the same. Useless and gratuitous suffering would make God unlikely to be a loving or true God. If God wants to keep faith simple for us instead of complicating things with "mysterious purposes", if he wants to look believable even to the most uneducated person then unnecessary and excessive suffering would amount to a disproof. A disproof of something lays it to rest but showing it unlikely means it might still be true. Disproof or improbability? It depends on what you assume about God or what God would want you to assume in the first place.
Skeptical theism is simply the assertion that no evil is ever gratuitous for God has his good reasons for tolerating it. For skeptical theists, no evil you look at or even imagine such as somebody living forever like a zombie in a mutilated sick body in unimaginable agony, has anything to do with showing God's love to be improbable or a lie.
They then say that evil as in the power of an evil to persist perhaps forever does not happen. Yet they say it does as we have seen. They want a God who finally ends suffering and danger eventually for the righteous. They contradict themselves.
The book God and Horrendous Suffering edited by John W Loftus says that God is being said by believers to have a horrible terrible plan that he says is needed and it was better for him not to help those who suffered terribly in it. But he promises to make it up to them in the future. I would focus on asking how if the plan is so ugly in parts why he would guarantee making things up to them? He does not have to. Maybe he cannot. If he does, that is good but its possible there will be no making up. It's not about mistrusting him. It's about admitting that some evil may have everlasting effects.
Letting somebody be degraded cannot be justified by making it up to them later. If they get rewards and an eternal paradise that is an insult. It is calling them doormats. Those who say evil no matter how horrible and inexcusable it is will be turned by God to good eventually are not looking to the good but to how long it takes for God to do something. That is another reason why we should be wary of their theologies. They are not really about the good but about trying to make things fit what they want to think. They want to be an influence on you.
The believers would say that stealing somebody's organs even if it will not kill them to save three lives would be wrong. This shows that they cannot really rule out God doing evil for they cannot really explain what evil is. It is obvious that though we don't like it, the stealing is necessary. We can say we have no choice and it's a necessary evil. If you agree with them harm is caused. If you disagree harm is caused. Evil and good are too intertwined. If you are wrong to take the organs how wrong are you? Does it matter much when you cause suffering either way? What if you hypothetically needed somebody's organs to save the whole world? How does any moral person convince us that they say no for they love us and want to be fair? What if it is really just the power they feel from giving us such a shocking principle? Is it about the rule not you? They are not loving and fair to you if that is all they care about!
They might persist and keep saying it is wrong even if God told you to do it. If you ask them if God is wrong they will say he is not but if you get that message it is not from him. That is rich for if they speak for God they are implying he at least inspires them to do so. So who are they to say that their impulse that they think is from God is valid and yours is not just because they don't like it? If God is master of death then he can delegate his right to take life to anybody he chooses.
Skeptical theism is a refusal to see evil in a situation but instead is about looking at the good that is around it and will rise from it. It is about maintaining the idea of God as good. It is about glorifying God. It is not about encouraging you in the right path for there is no reason to believe that if you are in the middle of evil that you will be the one doing anything for this purpose that will overcome evil. Whether you do evil or not it may have nothing to do with furthering the plan. That might be somebody else’s God-appointed role. It clearly tells us that you may feel a God inspired impulse to kill somebody and you can kill them on the basis that you have no way of knowing if evil and probability have a relationship. You cannot know if any harm you do is probably that bad or matters. That God gives you the impulse and lets you do the harm and even adds to it speaks to those who say that God’s good plan uses and needs evil so the evil is really nothing in the end. It is even good.
The book didn’t point out that whoever says "evil does not really make atheism believable", is implicitly saying that we need God to explain good and we all agree good is real. This is the problem of good where we are told that we need God to account for good being real in the first place and that without that we cannot call anything evil anyway. The point is there in the background though in the book. The book challenges the absurdity of saying good is good but evil is merely a defect in good for that amounts to saying that a person is not murdered but just has their life taken. Skeptical theism only says that no evil refutes God because it cannot fully understand what it means by evil. That is something that only experience can teach and you cannot experience all the evil ever experienced for that belongs to the countless others who have ever lived, who do live and who will live. Nobody who cannot explain what evil is can truly understand what good is either.
Religious approaches to suffering say that you never lose your dignity in suffering for God is with you loving you. This about giving us value but surely if we have dignity we have it whether God is there or not or whether he loves us or not? There is something flippant in a believer telling you you have dignity when it's not the same as God telling you. A real relationship needs things to be said face to face. A relationship with a God who does not do that is undignified. Faith and bravery in spite of terrible innocent suffering is not the same thing as faith because of it. Religion manipulates you to make you think there is a causal link. This is exploitation.
What if God when his plan uses evil anyway, wants us to think that an evil points to his absence or non-existence? If God has extreme reasons for allowing evil it follows that we have to agree he can allow that evil too. It would be evil if we and God should be having a relationship. We cannot tell God to ban evils that don't suit us for they stop us developing faith in him and advocating faith. Yet skeptical theists show that they do have a limit on what kind of evil may happen after all. They don't count terrible suffering for a child or animal enough. No. It has to be about their religious theory.
The hypocrisy of skeptical theism is inherent and shows how it is a morally bankrupt theory. Not only does it go contrarian when you point to an extreme case of unjust suffering, it brings with it a host of evil doctrines with which to make you think you are the problem for seeing it as so terrible when it is in the loving hands of God!
