But an important point is that, once again as with “scientific” proofs of atheism, it is not the cast-iron intellectual reasoning which convinces, but the relief of revolt. Whether one wants to take refuge in this will depend, first, on how much one has already felt the inner point of our being nevertheless in the love of God, that God suffered with us. It is easier if one hasn’t, and even easier if one’s sense of the love of God was of a protecting father who could easily prevent this (a sense strengthened by the anthropocentric shift). Then the painful paradox is at its worst, and it can become unbearable to go on holding on to this, and one flips over. Which means that, parallel to the case of becoming atheist through “science”, the more childish one’s faith, the easier the flip-over.

Charles Taylor. A Secular Age (pp. 306-307). Kindle Edition.

The idea of blaming God gets a clearer sense and becomes much more salient in the modern era where people begin to think they know just what God was purposing in creating the world, and can check the results against the intention. The issue as posed in an atheist context inherits this clarity; only now it is we who are setting the standards, while assuming that what we know and can discern about human fate is all there is to know-in particular that there is nothing after or beyond our traceable life-path here, or that if there were, it would have to be of such and such a nature. God is set up to flunk the atheist exam, as surely as He was set up to pass that of Providential Deism with flying colours.

The atheist and the Deist are arguing within similar frameworks: we know the standards, and we know what happens to people. And they can thus score points against each other. And when we look at the most horrifying sides of nature and history, it is the atheist who tends to score. For the Christian, these arguments to a negative theodicy, a condemnation of any God who might claim to exist, are deeply disturbing, as is indeed, any tragic event seen up close: the death of a loved one, for example. But they realize that they are helpless to argue against these accusations. To do so, one would have to know, that means be able to exhibit or demonstrate, things we will never know. The case for the defense depends on there being more to human fate than we can exhibit as undeniable in history: that these people died in the earthquake, and those in gas chambers, and no-one came to rescue them. Christians can only reply to the accusations with hope.

In a sense, the only possible stance for a Christian is to recover something like the pre-modern one I described above, to see God as helper, and not cruel puppet-master. Only where earlier this was often adopted naively, that is, without the sense that there was an alternative, it now has to be recovered in full awareness. This is perhaps what Dostoyevsky was telling us in The Brothers Karamazov, in the dialogue between Ivan and Alyosha which culminates in the “Legend of the Grand Inquisitor”. Ivan has all the arguments; Alyosha’s only response is to be profoundly perturbed: “Blasphemy”, he says; or pitiful attempts to deflect the force of the arguments. But the ultimate issue is, which stance can begin to transform the savage and cruel plight which Ivan so tellingly describes? The rest of the novel is meant to offer an answer to this question.

Charles Taylor. A Secular Age (pp. 388-389). Kindle Edition.