That is a fair possibility, in principle. Of course, it radically questions our ability to understand the nature of our own experiences.
Following that logic, you could say:
*when the five-year-old says, “My Daddy loves me! My Daddy cares for me!” that you ought not to take his word for it. Perhaps he thinks Daddy loves him because Daddy gives him candy for breakfast and lets him drink beer. The 5-year-old is not a sufficient judge of whether Daddy is a good parent.
By this analogy, if we can say, “when God wills pain, he may still love us” then we can also say, “if God showers us with blessings and happiness --which we accept as proof of his existence and benevolence — he may still
not love us, or still be a bad parent.”
It’s also true that this 5-year-old could be absolutely right in his interpretation of things. For example, there was a case of child abuse (the child died, actually, because of the abuse of the parent), and the child’s last words were reported to be, “I hate you, Daddy” (it was her stepfather, in fact). This was a three-year-old child, no less; a heart-rending story.
Most radical of all, though, one could say, “why take a 5-year-old child’s word about
anything?” So, one could say, “great… the 5-year-old is telling me that God exists, or that God came down and
told him that He exists. I’m not sure whether I should take a 5-year-old’s word for it” (that 5-year-old being the human race).
And one could say, “exactly – but why take the 5-year-old’s word for it that God
doesn’t exist”
Ultimately, you may be saying, “the atheist is the 5-year-old and the believer is the adult or adolescent. That’s obvious.”
But that is precisely what the atheist may be saying, just in reverse.