Why hope God exists?

Suffering, misery, injustice is guaranteed to have sufficient moral reason only in a world where God exists

Many philosophers hold that belief in God is epistemically irrational, meaning that they’ve concluded there is insufficient evidence to warrant belief—just as one may think there is insufficient evidence to warrant belief in unicorns or Santa Claus. And perhaps that is right—the question of evidence for or against the existence of God is a detailed and complicated question.

It is odd that atheists, despite the alleged absence of evidence for God’s existence, rarely hope that God exists. Even if one has their doubts about whether God exists, there are clearly excellent reasons to hope that God exists. What would those reasons be? Well, if God existed—as an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly free and just being—then He would only permit evil and suffering provided it was sufficiently morally justified. Just like a good, loving parent would only subject their children to suffering for good reason, e.g., going to the dentist to prevent even more suffering later on. God, if He exists, would do likewise with regard to us. As I explain,

[If[ we had a button that when pressed would eliminate all gratuitous suffering from the world (while leaving everything of value intact), it is difficult to imagine that anyone, except perhaps sociopaths, would think that they lacked a strong moral […] reason to press it. But if theism is true, then the implication would be ipso facto the same as pressing the button. If we have a strong […] reason to press the button, then we likewise have a strong […] to adopt aspirational theism [the view that we should hope that God exists].

Why should we hope God exists? Because horrific evil exists whether God exists or not—better that the evil and suffering are morally justified, even if we do not know what the reason could be—than that the evil and suffering lack moral justification.