Int J Philos Relig (2007) 62:65–79 DOI 10.1007/s11153-007-9128-7 Skeptical theism and the problem of moral aporia Mark Piper Received: 25 April 2007 / Revised: 4 May 2007 / Accepted: 16 May 2007 / Published online: 17 July 2007 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007 Abstract Skeptical theism seeks to defend theism against the problem of evil by invoking putatively reasonable skepticism concerning human epistemic limitations in order to establish that we have no epistemological basis from which to judge that apparently gratuitous evils are not in fact justified by morally sufficient reasons beyond our ken. This paper contributes to the set of distinctively practical criticisms of skeptical theism by arguing that religious believers who accept skeptical theism and take its practical implications seriously will be forced into a position of paralysis or aporia when faced with a wide set of morally signifi- cant situations. It is argued that this consequence speaks strongly against the acceptance of skeptical theism insofar as such moral aporia is inconsistent with religious moral teaching and practice. In addition, a variety of arguments designed to show that accepting skeptical theism does not lead to this consequence are considered, and shown to be deficient. Keywords Bergmann, Michael · God · Evil · Evil, Problem of · Practice, religious · Rowe, William · Theism · Theism, skeptical Introduction The classic formulation of the evidential problem of evil was given by William Rowe (1979). 1 Let us call it argument A: (1) There exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse. 1 See Rowe (1979). M. Piper (B ) Department of Philosophy, St. Louis University, 3800 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63108, USA e-mails: pipermc@slu.edu; piperofyork@hotmail.de 123