Abstract

Sceptical theism claims that we have vast ignorance about the realm of value and the connections, causal and modal, between goods and bads. This ignorance makes it reasonable for a theist to say that God has reasons beyond our ken for allowing the horrendous evils we observe. But if so, then does this not lead to moral paralysis when we need to prevent evils ourselves? For, for aught that we know, there are reasons beyond our ken for us to allow the evils, and so we should not prevent them. This paralysis argument, however, shall be argued to rest on a confusion between probabilities and expected utilities. A connection between this paralysis argument and Lenman's1 discussion of the butterfly effect and chaos will be drawn, and the solution offered will apply in both cases.