ABSTRACT
More recently, Thomas Nagel’s remark that he doesn’t want God to exist has triggered a debate about whether it is rational to prefer God’s non-existence to his existence. This premise is accepted by many contemporary Christian philosophers as well as many (but not all) contemporary philosophical critics of Christianity. Stanley Milgram’s infamous obedience experiments dramatically illustrate the psychological costs of failing to do what one believes one ought to do. Milgram’s subjects were instructed to administer what they thought were increasingly severe electric shocks to an increasingly upset victim. James Petrik defends Lewis’s view by proposing that differences in God’s knowledge and that of human beings imply that while it is permissible for God to use suffering as part of a character-building project it is not permissible for humans to do so.
