Rowe then designed what he calls the "Appearance-->Reality" (AR) defense. He states that if something appears to be true, then in reality it must be true. An example of this would be the following: "My Harley appears to have a badass black paint job; therefore in reality it must have a badass black paintjob." Rowe would say that since it appears that there are pointless evils in the world, then in reality there must be pointless evils. So his argument comes down to this statement; since there exist evils that can be destroyed by a perfect being, but those evils still exist regardless, then there must be no perfect being.
Peter Wykstra, a modern-day theist and major proponent against William Rowe's EAE, believed that Rowe's AR defense was invalid and formulated the Unknown Purpose Defense (UPD). It should be noted that Wykstra is attempting to attack the AR defense alone and not the entire EAE. Wykstra uses two different ideas to prove his UPD, the first being as follows:.
(1) There is a thing called oxygen that is required for me to live.
(2) I do not see any oxygen around me.
(3) Therefore, oxygen must not exist.
As one can see, this argument is blatantly false. Wykstra is trying to show that possibly God's purposes lack something he calls "reasonable seeability". Maybe God's purposes have reasons that are far beyond the level of human inquiry and knowledge. Simply put, Wykstra is stating that just because we cannot see or understand it does not mean that it does not exist. Wykstra also formed a defense he calls the "Parent-Child Analogy" (PCA). Imagine this situation: a parent and a child have a pet cat. The parent finds out that this cat has a terminal illness that will cause it great pain before it dies. The father chooses euthanasia so the cat will not suffer a painful death. The child does not understand that concept and is overcome with sadness. More or less, the child is suffering and he/she does not know why.