Examining arguments from design › Suffering changes the question about the cause

Parts X and XI turn toward the sufferings of living creatures and what these permit us to infer about divine goodness. Demea appeals to human misery in support of religion. Philo develops the discussion in a direction that troubles an inference from the observed world to a perfectly benevolent cause.

The difficulty is more precise than saying that suffering proves no God exists. Suppose someone already believes in a powerful and benevolent deity on independent grounds. That person may argue that there are unknown reasons for allowing suffering. The possibility of such reasons is different from showing that the suffering world itself provides evidence for perfect benevolence.

Philo makes this distinction in Part XI. A hypothesis may be compatible with appearances while failing to follow from them. If someone infers divine goodness from nature, that person needs positive grounds for the inference. Merely showing that an unknown explanation might reconcile suffering with goodness does not provide those grounds.

A hypothetical inspection illustrates the difference. If a damaged structure was made by an expert whom we independently trust, we might look for an explanation of its condition. If the structure is our only evidence about its maker, the same damage limits what we can infer about the maker's skill or intentions. Background evidence changes the argument. This example concerns inference, without pretending to reproduce the moral scale of suffering.

Philo considers several features of living conditions in Part XI, including pain, general laws, limited powers in creatures, and the fragile balance of natural arrangements. These are parts of his challenge to the evidence for benevolence. A reader need not accept every proposed improvement to understand the question: does the observed mixture support the unrestricted moral attribute being asserted?