  Howard-Snyder adds two arguments to the defense of Obscurity.  First, he offers the Progress Argument (1996, 301). The gist of the argument is that there has been significant progress in knowledge and understanding of moral truths, including knowledge of what intrinsic goods there are, in the past, and there is no good reason to think this trend is at an end. But if so, it follows that we are now ignorant concerning certain intrinsic goods. And for all we know these might include the goods for the sake of which God permits evil. He combines this with the Argument from Complexity (1996, 301). This argument begins by recalling that the data from which the strongest arguments from evil start are the profusion or seeming excess of evil in the world which, indeed, seems to be integrated into the fabric of nature and society. But for that very reason (their complexity and intricacy), any complex good whole of which these evils are a part would have to be exceedingly complex. Thus, he infers that it would not be surprising if it were beyond our ability to fathom. 