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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The power of this, I think, is not that there are *no* asymmetries, since clearly there are, but that these do not move the good god hypothesis towards reasonable *enough*, away from the generally accepted unreasonableness of the evil god hypothesis.
(One or two typos though, I think; theodices instead of theodicies a couple of times)
People who attribute natural disasters to God or Divine forces are especially prone to a perverted view of God. They perversely attribute natural disasters to human activity because God is ‘not happy’. We live in a lottery universe, and whilst we owe our very existence to super novae, another super nova could just as easily wipe us all out in a blink, depending on its proximity.
God, at his or her best, represents the sense of connection we have to all of humanity, and, by extension, nature. Whether that sense be judgmental and exclusive, or compassionate and inclusive, depends on the individual, and the God one believes in simply reflects that. Even atheists sense this connection, though they don’t personify it or conceptualise it like theists do. At the end of the day, what matters is how one perceives and treats their fellows, not whether they are theists or atheists; the latter being a consequence of the former (for theists), not the other way round.
By the way, there are people who do believe very strongly in an ‘evil-god’, called Satan, and that ‘he’ is responsible for ‘anti-miracles’, if anti-miracles be acts of evil and suffering.
Your best argument is all the suffering that occurred before we (as moral agents) came on board. Also, people tend to forget that the Old Testament God is not a nice bloke by any stretch. The story of Job demonstrates that (amongst many others) which, people seem to forget or ignore, arose from a ‘dare’ by Satan. What sort of role-model tortures someone as the result of a dare?
The standard Christian explanation of evil is ‘original sin’, so it’s completely relevant to your argument. As you point out, it’s an entirely mythical story, and so it’s allegorical, not meant to be taken literally. The idea that evil arose from eating from the ‘tree of knowledge’ is effectively an argument for the moral supremacy of ignorance over knowledge.
Evil is an intrinsic attribute of human nature, but its origins are evolutionary, not mythical or Divine. God is a projection of the ideal self, and therefore encompasses all that is good and bad in all of us.
Or is it, as you say earlier, a partial realization that "Without consciousness there would be no good and evil, .." coupled up to the idea that good is simply the absence of evil?
Please don't get the idea that I agree with that argument (about the tree of knowledge inferring that ignorance is morally superior to knowledge). It's just one possible interpretation of the biblical story. I actually think that 'original sin' or the 'fall of man' is one of the most iniquitous ideas ever invented. It propogates the idea that humans are born evil.
I stick to my opening argument about consciousness being a pre-requisite for good and evil. As to whether good is simply the absence of evil, I'm not so sure. It's like saying darkness is the absence of light - but good and evil are concepts not so easily defined. Many people who commit evil believe they are committing good. Jihadists, for example, who are condemned by Westerners for committing evil, are treated as heroes by many of their countrymen and political supporters.
Regards, Paul.
Just a couple thought abouts about the "Miracles and religious experience" theodicies.
I think schizophrenic and psycopathic experiences, much like the Son of Sam experiences (being talked to by dogs, ordering him to murder people), could be construed as actions of an evil god. It's just not religious people who hear voices, huh. :)
Also, as far as miracles go, the religious folk always bring up the people "miraculously" being cured by cancer, but they never seem to be so garrulous about cases where people who are completely healthy, suddenly, and against all odds, contract a vicious disease and die within days, sometimes even hours. This would certainly be more indicative of an evil God.
Just a couple thoughts.
Also, it's harder for an evil god to prevent good, than it is for a good god to prevent evil. For example, in good God's universe, if John is going to shoot Jim, it's quite simple for God to prevent John from shooting Jim. There are a myriad of possibilities, quite many of which don't even require good God to reveal his existence. Stopping evil for an omnipotent God; not terribly hard.
Now, in evil God's universe, let's put John and Jim in a room together, but this time, John doesn't want to kill Jim, and likewise, Jim doesn't want to kill John. Pretty good stuff if you ask me. Evil God doesn't like this, and he wants to stop it. But, how do you stop people from being good? It takes some work, doesn't it? Does evil God magically place a gun in John's hand? What does he do to make this happen?
To stop evil, generally requires stopping evil activity. To stop good, you'd have to actually instigate evil activity, which is much harder.
It just seems like the problem of good is not as large a problem for an evil god, whereas the problem of evil really shouldn't be much of a problem for a good god.
Didnt mean to give the impression that I had got that impression...
I was just sort of musing that maybe the thought processes behind the Adam and Eve tale was the idea that to recognize good and evil, consciousness (knowledge) is required and that it was a slightly later bit of reasoning that sanctified ignorance. Read in isolation wasn't Adam and Eve's punishment for disobedience rather than being smart?
Oddly enough there was a BBC programme recently where a historian pointed out that the doctrine of Original Sin being inherited was due to Augustine and Genesis 1 and 2 don't mention it.
Hyman notes in passing that of course Adam and Eve could not have morally sinned by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge, as before eating the fruit they did not know good and evil.
The good and evil referred to would seem to be specific to man-made good and evil. If this were not so then God's threat of "lest ye die" from eating the fruit would seem a bit futile. Why fear death? Why fear at all? Why bother anaesthetising Adam to take a rib out if he couldn't suffer?
The "knowledge" we gained is shown as a particularly useless variety - embarassment - rather than fire. Theres a touch of self deprecating irony there too since Eve could have had a shot at the other tree which would given us mastery of life. I can imagine this being told around a campfire with the sort of humour that explains why the Saudis got the oil and the Irish got the potato.
Thanks for the clarification, Wombat.
Stephen, I find what you say about Augustine and 'original sin' very interesting - I wasn't aware that it was effectively 'his idea'.
And I concede that I wasn't aware that there could be another interpretation: the snake liberating humanity; but I like it much better.
Regards, Paul.
C4 programme The Daughters of Eve
There may be an asymmetry though in that a benevolent god would surely not be expected to grant evil prayers whereas an evil good might grant good ones. This could not only incite jealousy in others when only a few prayers are answered, but also cause those with unanswered prayers considerable anguish, particularly if they might felt that they were denied their blessing because they were in some way unworthy.
It doesn't work. Here are three reasons why:
(i) you have assumed, without argument "evil is ontologically secondary to good in the same way as falsehood is secondary to truth." Even many theists reject this. Notice also I can simply reverse it. After all "peace" is a good, and it's the absence of war, violence, etc. according to the dictionary! Some evils are best explained as absence of goods, but sometimes the reverse is true.
(ii) even if evil is ontologically secondary, whatever that means exactly, why does it follow an evil God is impossible? Actually, think about it, and you'll see it doesn't just follow (e.g. you may just be assuming there cannot be good with god, or that good/evil scale requires existence of good god). At the very least you owe us an argument. What is it?
(iii) most importantly, even if the evil God is contradictory (as the good god may be!), notice the evil god challenge still works. For we can ask, supposing there were not this logically flaw in the idea of an evil god, how reasonable do you otherwise think it would be to believe in such a being. If the answer is "very unreasonable", the onus is still on you to explain why a good god is any more reasonable.
We know that few (if any) requests to God expressed in prayer are granted. There is also no evidence of criteria used to distinguish the worthy from unworthy requests, with lottery wins doled out but pleas to cure a child's cancer ignored. Why would a good God inspire divine scripture that exhorts us to prayer only to choose randomly which are granted, while ignoring the overwhelming majority? An evil God, however, would derive cynical pleasure from this activity, granting a paltry number of randomly-chosen prayers to keep people praying, while frustrating them with the obvious unfairness.
The Abrahamic religions are based on scriptures, which, if not the inerrant word of God are at least divinely inspired. Yet the vagueness of these scriptures has led to existence of numerous sects, dozens within Christianity alone, which hold differing interpretations. These differences of interpretation have led to internecine conflicts, such as the horror of the Thirty Years war, or fighting among the Islamic sects. An omniscient God would have forseen this future conflict when He inspired the scriptures, and could have easily inspired different words to ensure a common understanding. What possible motive would a good God have had for failing to do so? On the other hand, the motives of an evil God are clear.
Careful consideration of prayer and scripture tip the scales of religious experience heavily in favor of the evil God.
thanks!
In effect, the idea of an "all-evil" God is logically incoherent.
However, Craig’s moral argument comes in different forms. There’s this one:
1. If a good and loving God does not exist, then moral obligations do not exist.
2. Moral Obligations exist.
3. So, a good and loving God exists.
Premise (1) is an invocation of the modified divine command theory. Craig also makes a reference to the impossibility of moral accountability without a good God.
I propose a different evil god hypothesis. This evil god commands only the good, because he genuinely wants people to do the good (he is also impartial since he hates everyone equally; he is all-knowing; all-powerful; he is the highest authority in the universe). The difference is: the evil god would secretly send all the good people to hell. Of course, the theist might then argue that the difference implies that there really are no moral obligations or moral accountability because it is essentially unjust.
But then, to prove that moral obligations and moral accountability exist, they must prove that we have not been deceived by an evil god, and that good people really go to hell.
As for the Fall, I don't see why it is difficult to come up with a parallel, given my story. The evil god doesn't want people to do evil, so when they decide to be evil, this results in The Fall.
Your argument seems to do more than simply supplememt the evidential argument from evil. If it turns out to be correct, it would prove atheism.
The way I see, your argument proves that the best theistic arguments support an evil creator as equally as they support a good creator.
However, atheism= evil god v naturalism; theism= good creator. So given all the arguments for creators and all the arguments for naturalism, atheism becomes more probable than theism.
Of course, this is because the arguments for naturalism lend credence to atheism only, while the arguments for creators lend credence to both atheism and theism equally.
It seems to be based on the idea that if I can use a kind of argument as evidence for contradictory gods, then the argument is flawed.
I disagree with this idea, because the arguments don't provide evidence for God, but instead defend against the conjecture that a perfectly good deity cannot create a world containing evil.
It is possible to use reasoning to show that a wide variety of deities are compatible with a world containing good and evil. Trivially, it can shown that a morally indifferent deity could have created such a world, but that doesn't mean that a morally indifferent god exists - let alone that every conceivable morally indifferent god exists.
If the arguments can indeed be inverted to show that an evil god could have created the world, then that doesn't mean the arguments are flawed. In fact, if the arguments truly do hold for an evil god (though I don't think they do), then that means they are definitely not flawed.
But how do we know that this perfectly honest God is morally upright? How do we know that He never sins?
The Bible describes "sin" as "the transgression of the law". In order for God to sin, in order for God to be immoral, He would have to command Himself to do something -- give Himself a law -- and then refuse to obey His own command for Himself.
Does an omnipotent, omniscient God who refuses to do what He Himself wants to do (an evil god) really seem just as reasonable as an omnipotent, omniscient God who actually does what He Himself wants (a good God)? I think not.
God bless.