Divine Hiddenness & the Problem of Evil

When presented with the problem of evil – whether natural or moral – the theist can present several responses. One common response is the appeal to Divine Reasons. If atheist A says to believer B, ‘hey, if God is so good, then why is there so much evil in the world?’ B could reply, ‘well, God could have His reasons that us, as mere mortals, cannot fathom.’ This reply dates back to at least the Book of Job when Job reaps his whirlwind and God rebukes Job’s cries for a justification for his profound suffering. In that story God states, ‘Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?’ – thereby contrasting human ignorance and weakness to Divine wisdom and omnipotence.

So, the problem is this: we experience and witness seemingly unjustified evils. A traditional example is a faun being caught in a naturally occurring forest fire, getting horribly burned, suffering agonisingly for days only to die alone the woods (E1), or a 15-year old girl in Pakistan getting shot in the head just because she went to school (E2).

Now, E1 and E2 both seem unjustified if anything is and so either E1 and E2 i) count as evidence against the existence of God, or ii) they do not.

A committed theist wouldn't easily accept (i), and thus (ii) is more likely to be accepted.

If (ii) is accepted, then it's because either because a) they are not unjustified, or b) they are not evil.

Starting with (b) first: that is a fairly unbiteable bullet. There are numerous reasons why we try to prevent such things from occurring precisely because we think them evil. If one states that killing an innocent child is not evil, then one must provide a reason for it, which is precisely what the theist is supposed to do in this case.

For a), it is presumably because God would not allow an unjustified evil and so there must be a justifying reason for it. But what reason could there be for allowing E1, E2 …. En? We have searched and not found. In fact, with regards to natural evils (like earth quakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, and forest fires) we find that they are caused by the very mechanics of the world we live in. So, even if there is no Divine plan, the evils are an inevitable result of the workings of the world. 

Now, the belieber B can say, ‘hey, just because we haven’t found any does not mean that they don’t exist’. True, and this takes us to the issue of Divine Hiddenness. Perhaps God has reasons that we cannot detect or know, and to my mind, the real issue is that such undetectability would render our moral judgement completely moot.

For instance, on this position, I cannot conclude that the 2004 Indian Tsunami was evil because maybe God had reasons for allowing it. Ditto for the Holocaust or Rwandan genocide because God could have a reason that I cannot know for allowing it in the service of some greater good. Pick any evil thing and perhaps there is a reason out there that God has that we can never know about. This really is just stating (b): that these evils are not really evil. It also seems like special pleading because this is not how we act in our lives.