On another blog, FideCogitActio, some theists of a "classical" stripe (that's to say, like Brian Davies, Edward Feser) are criticisng the Evil God Challenge (or I suppose, trying to show how it can be met, or sidestepped). The main post includes this: In book I, chapter 39 , Aquinas argues that “there cannot be evil in God” (in Deo non potest esse malum). Atheists like Law must face the fact that, if the words are to retain any sense, “God” simply cannot be “evil”. As my comments in the thread at Feser’s blog aimed to show, despite how much he mocks “the privation theory of evil,” Law himself cannot escape its logic: his entire argument requires that the world ought to appear less evil if it is to be taken as evidence of a good God. Even though he spurns the idea that evil is a privation of good, his account of an evil world is parasitic on a good ideal; this is no surprise, though, since all evil is parasitic on good ( SCG I, 11 ). Based on the conclusions of se...
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Every now and then, I translate a journal article into plain talk for my readers. Last time, I did Buckareff and Plug's article on escapism. This time, I've selected The Evil God Challenge.
Lucky for me, you tend to write in plain talk by default, so not much translation is required. :)
"Perhaps the logical problem of evil does not pose such a great challenge to theism. To deal with it, it would suffice to show that an all-powerful, all-knowing and maximally good God might allow some evil for the sake of some greater good."
I know at least one philosopher who finds rationalization extremely contentious. For instance, before God created suffering, the universe was already maximally good because of God's presence. Creating people who could suffer might not have decreased the good (infinite thanks to God) but it certainly increased suffering. That's inconstant with the all good God. I understand not wanting to address both issues in this paper, but I don't think you should dismiss the logical argument out of hand.
"Still, there remains an acknowledgement by many serious-minded theists that it is certainly isn’t easy to explain quite why omnipotent, omniscient and supremely benevolent being, would unleash so much horror on the sentient inhabitants of this planet over hundreds of millions of years. "
"Surely, if a supremely evil being is going to introduce sentient beings into his creation, it will to torture them and have them do evil."
"We suppose there is little of any substance to place on the left had side of the scale, and that, when the boulder that is the problem of good is added"
I think you meant "if," there, but it could be a difference between GB and USA English.
I would argue that Evil God gave us morality so that we might feel guilt. If we didn't feel that something was wrong, we wouldn't feel guilty for doing it, even if we knew in a sense that it was supposed to be wrong.
On "A second moral argument":
If good is good because God says it is, then you have no way of defining God is good by definition. "Good" simply means "in accordance with God." But that has no baring on whether God delights in human suffering.