  Further, in replying to the reverse parent analogy the theist can bring to bear on it reasons for divine hiddenness. As should be clear at this point, the problem of evil leads quite naturally to the problem of divine silence/hiddenness. Thus, if there were good reasons for God to veil himself in some way, to provide some “epistemic distance” between himself and the casual observer, then these reasons could plausibly be used to defend Obscurity. For let R be the reasons in question. The probability that we are unaware of the reasons for so much suffering, given theism, might be low, but the probability that we are unaware of the reasons for so much suffering, given theism and R, could still be high. Of course, if the probability of R, given theism, is high, then we might have found out upon reflection that the first value isn't low after all.