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...
Stephen Law is a philosopher and author. Currently Director of Philosophy and Cert HE at Oxford University Department of Continuing Education. Stephen has also published many popular books including The Philosophy Gym, The Complete Philosophy Files, and Believing Bullshit. For school talks/ media: stephenlaw4schools.blogspot.co.uk Email: think-AT-royalinstitutephilosophy.org
Comments
I think the point about putting up an argument one knows not to be true just to win rhetorical points with the audience is a good one.
Regards, Paul.
"Now, first of all, it’s inaccurate to call this being an evil “God” because God, by definition, is a being which is necessarily good."
Hence if I can show there's no good God, I show there's no God, period.
I should have nailed Craig on this in the debate.
I think I mucked up on something after the debate. I think I said that Craig admitted to "debate tactics" when using the "evil proves God" argument, which he himself knows to be easily sidestepped and admitted as much in the debate. In fact his explicit admission of "debate tactics" concerned his saying I has conceded there's a God by ignoring the cosmological argument.
Had Craig dropped the resurrection he would have been down to one argument for a specifically good God, which would be pretty threadbare.
Interestingly, his response to the evil God challenge was to embrace skeptical theism, which is not only implausible and was not effectively argued for in the debate, but has the consequence that it actually undermines Craig's resurrection argument for the Christian God. Again, I should have nailed Craig on that in the debate. Craig plays the skepticism card selectively - being a skeptic about what we can infer about God on the basis of empirical observation when it suits him, dropping the skepticism when it does not.