Jack Symes interviews me on The Evil God Challenge for his book Philosophers on God. Also included Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennett, Richard Swinburne, Yugin Nagasawa, and William Lane Craig. Prepublication draft.
Chapter Eight
The Evil-god Challenge
Stephen Law
Introduction
The problem of evil is perhaps the most powerful argument against classical monotheism. However, as Nagasawa pointed out in our previous chapter, religious believers claim to have an infinite number of resources at their disposal; resources which, they say, can be used to explain why God allows evil to exist. A lot of ink has been spilt on whether these explanations are successful. It’s a complex and contentious debate, which rarely leads to opponents changing their minds. Perhaps, if we want to break the deadlock between theists and atheists, we need to reframe the discussion?
The problem of evil is perhaps the most powerful argument against classical monotheism. However, as Nagasawa pointed out in our previous chapter, religious believers claim to have an infinite number of resources at their disposal; resources which, they say, can be used to explain why God allows evil to exist. A lot of ink has been spilt on whether these explanations are successful. It’s a complex and contentious debate, which rarely leads to opponents changing their minds. Perhaps, if we want to break the deadlock between theists and atheists, we need to reframe the discussion?
In 2010, Stephen Law released a paper that would do just that. Today, Law’s article – ‘The evil-god challenge’ – is among the most downloaded and discussed papers in philosophy of religion of the past decade. Law’s work – through books, videos, podcasts and live events – has a global audience in the millions and has attracted the attention of some of the world’s most notable religious philosophers.
The evil-god challenge can be stated as follows: why is believing in a good god significantly more reasonable than believing in an evil god? Fundamentally, this question depends on the truth of what Law calls ‘the symmetry thesis’, which states that the two beliefs (belief in good god or evil god) are roughly as reasonable. To answer the challenge, religious believers need to explain why belief in a good-god is significantly more reasonable than belief in its malevolent counterpart. If they can’t do this, says Law, then traditional theism is scarcely more reasonable than belief in an evil god, which is, surely, absurd.
The challenge
One of your arguments against god’s existence, ‘the evil-god challenge’, has received enormous attention. Who is this ‘evil god’, and how are they a challenge to theism?
One of your arguments against god’s existence, ‘the evil-god challenge’, has received enormous attention. Who is this ‘evil god’, and how are they a challenge to theism?
According to Christians, Jews and Muslims, there exists one god who is all-powerful, all-knowing and maximally good. Religious believers give lots of reasons for thinking that this god – let’s call them ‘good god’ – exists. For example, some argue that the universe’s existence and finely tuned character point towards a supremely intelligent creator. Let’s say, just for a moment, that their arguments have some credibility. (I don’t think they do, but suppose do.) Now, I want you to consider an alternative hypothesis. Imagine a similar god who differs in one crucial respect: rather than being maximally good, this being is maximally evil. That’s what I mean by ‘evil god’. The first thing to notice is that many of the arguments used to support a good god – such as the universe’s existence and fine-tuned character – can also be used to support an evil god. In fact, I think that once we consider all of the arguments and evidence at our disposal, we’ll find that the likelihood of both hypotheses (good god and evil god) is fairly similar. In other words, I think there’s a rough symmetry between the two hypotheses. I call this the ‘symmetry thesis’.
Now, here’s the problem. The evil-god hypothesis is obviously ridiculous. If a grown-up told you they believed in an evil god, you might question their sanity. However, according to the symmetry thesis, believing in good god is no more reasonable than believing in evil god. So, if the good-god hypothesis is roughly as reasonable as the evil-god hypothesis – and believing in an evil god is absurd – then we ought to think that believing in a good god is absurd as well. For the Abrahamic believer, the only way to avoid this conclusion is to answer the challenge. The challenge is, in essence, to explain why the symmetry thesis is false: what makes believing in good god significantly more reasonable than believing in evil god?
Why does one hypothesis need to be ‘significantly’ more reasonable?
If one is downright ludicrous, then pointing out that the other one is slightly more reasonable is hardly good enough. Maybe believing that fairies are at the bottom of your garden is somewhat more reasonable than believing Santa delivers your presents on Christmas Day. The minor difference doesn’t matter; both are absurd beliefs. That’s why the theist needs a reason to suppose the good-god hypothesis is significantly more reasonable.
Could they achieve this by appealing to goods within the universe? Might they not point out that the world is not nearly evil enough to be the creation of such a malevolent deity?
This response, which I call the ‘problem of good’, says that we can reasonably rule out the existence of evil god because the world contains a very significant amount of good. After all, surely an evil god would not create a world with so much laughter and love, rainbows and contentment? And why does evil god allow us to help each other and to reduce the suffering of others? I accept that the problem of good is a strong enough reason to reject the evil-god hypothesis. Don’t forget, however, that the world also contains a very significant amount of evil. This parallel argument, the notorious ‘problem of evil’, is just as big of a problem for the theist. ‘Why,’ asks the evil-god challenger, ‘would good god create a world that contains so much pain and misery?’ Consider all of the terrible things that we do to each other – murders, genocides, torture, cruelty, exploitation – and then there’s all of the natural diseases, disasters, and millions of years of animal suffering. For example, for almost the entire sweep of human history, your chances of making it to adulthood were little better than fifty-fifty. Many of those child deaths would have been slow and horrific. And then there’s the psychological suffering of the parents. Ask any parent, ‘What’s the worst thing that could happen to you?’ They’ll probably tell you it’d be watching their child die a slow and unpleasant death. If we can reasonably rule out the evil-god hypothesis because of the problem of good, and I think we can, then why can’t we rule out the good-god hypothesis because of the problem of evil?
Theists have been responding to the problem of evil for centuries. Can’t they overcome the challenge by appealing to theodicies and defences?
Yes, the good-god defender might appeal to theodicies and defences, but so can the evil-god challenger. Let’s take an example. One of the most popular responses to the problem of evil is the free-will defence. According to this argument, good god allows for evil to allow for the greater good of free will. If good god had created human beings as puppets who always did the right thing, then we wouldn’t be morally responsible for our actions. Therefore, good god cut our strings and set us free. Sometimes we do the wrong thing, but if we weren’t free, then good god would miss out on the tremendous good that is the human capacity to engage in genuinely virtuous actions.
The problem with this kind of response is that appears to work more or less equally effectively in defence of an evil god. Answering the problem of good, the challenger can argue that evil god allows some people to be virtuous, but that’s the price evil god pays for free will and genuinely malevolent actions. Evil god could have created us as puppets who always did wrong, but then we wouldn’t be responsible for our actions. Therefore, to get the very worst kinds of evil – like freely chosen genocide and slavery – he cut our strings and set us free. Unfortunately, some of us then behave virtuously. That’s the price evil god pays to allow for such horrendous moral depravity.
What about explanations of natural evils? The soul-making theodicy, for example, claims that evils that aren’t caused by humans – from hay fever to hurricanes – allow us to develop our characters. Can the challenger mirror this response?
I think they can. First, let’s be clear on what the soul-making theodicy is supposed to show. As you say, according to theists, some of the evils in the universe allow us to develop our characters. Evil can help us grow and become better people. Call it a ‘vale of soul-making’. As a parent, I taught my daughter to ride her bike. She didn’t enjoy falling off and grazing her knees – children spill a lot of blood and tears when they’re learning to ride a bike – but I encouraged her to keep trying. Why did I do that? Because that’s how she’ll grow as a person. She ought to learn the skill of riding a bike; she should learn how to overcome hardships and she’d benefit from the sense of achievement. According to the theist, the same is true for many of the evils in the natural world: the suffering that we go through in this life brings us closer to perfection. They give us opportunities. No pain, no gain.
But now notice that, with some minor adjustments, the challenger can use this same theodicy in response to the problem of good. ‘Why,’ asks the theist, ‘does evil god give us healthy young bodies that can ride bikes?’ So he can take them away with age, of course. It’s cruel to give something wonderful and then take it away – like giving a child a wonderful toy and then smashing it up in front of them. That makes them more miserable than if they never had the toy. The same is true of our friends, children and all of our accomplishments. ‘Why,’ asks the theist, ‘did evil god give us children to love and to cherish?’ Because it’s only if we love our kids that we’ll suffer torment when he kills them on an industrial scale, as he has for hundreds of thousands of years. If we are indifferent, we’ll just say ‘meh’. Love is required for the most appalling forms of psychological torment. This is not a vale of soul-making but a vale of soul-destruction.
So what are these reverse-theodicies supposed to show?
I’m trying to get the penny to drop. If you’ve spent a long time engaged in a certain kind of intellectual activity that’s pretty flaky – but everyone around you is doing it, and everyone’s telling you that it’s pretty effective – then it can be hard to see that there’s something suspect about the way you’re thinking. The evil-god challenge is, in part, a way of getting theists to step outside of their skin and see what they’re doing from a different perspective. Most of us can see immediately that, notwithstanding such ingenious mirror moves that might be used to defend belief in an evil god against the problem of good, it remains pretty obvious, given observed goods, that there’s no evil god. Most theists would remain entirely unconvinced – would see through the charade - if somebody used such mirror theodicies to defend their belief in evil god. I’m asking them a question: why is what you’re doing any better?
Breaking the symmetry
There are some theodicies that don’t have obvious parallels. For example, Saint Augustine thought that evil entered the world when Adam and Eve committed the original sin and, therefore, good god isn’t responsible for the world’s evils.[1] It’s difficult to imagine what a reverse-original sin would even look like. Does this difference, this asymmetry, offer a possible solution to the challenge?
It doesn’t solve my version of the challenge, though it might be a problem for earlier versions. One of the earliest evil-god challenges appeared in Edward Madden and Peter Hare’s book, Evil and the Concept of God.[2] For Madden and Hare, the problems of good and evil were ‘completely isomorphic’.[3] In the 1970s, Stephen Cahn defended a similar view and,[4] in the 1990s, Edward Stein and Christopher New came to the same conclusion.[5] I disagree. Original sin is just one example of an explanation that doesn’t have an obvious parallel. Remember, however, that I claimed that there’s a ‘rough symmetry’ between the reasonableness of both hypotheses. This is different to what the earlier challengers thought. In assessing the reasonableness of each hypothesis we should look at all the available evidence and explanations for it. True, some defences of a good god might be less effective than defences of an evil god, and vice verse. Original sin is an example; there is no obvious parallel theodicy. However, it’s one of the least plausible theodicies. There was no Adam or Eve, and we now know unimaginably vast quantities of pain and suffering stretch back millions of years before human ever lived or sinned. So yes there’s an asymmetry here – this theodicy doesn’t flip - but that doesn’t change the overall balance of reasonableness much.
Are there any asymmetries that favour evil god over good god?
In think so. One candidate is the argument from religious experience – miracles, revelations and the like. Now you might think that miracles and religious experiences are clearly evidence for a good god and against an evil god. A good god will want to cure us, alleviate suffering, and reveal himself to us. An evil god wouldn’t miraculously cure people. So here is evidence that tips the balance in favour of a good god. However, on closer examination, maybe this evidence actually better supports an evil god. The fact that the world’s religions and denominations are so varied in their beliefs seems to be a bigger problem for the theist than it does for the challenger. If I were an evil god, I’d might well maximise evil by engaging in deception. I might dress up in a white outfit, throw on a halo and appear in the religious experiences of one group. I’d also perform some genuine miracles (which, being a god, I can do). Perhaps I’ll tell them that Christianity is the one true religion and raise Jesus from the dead. Then, I would go to another group – still dressed in my good god garb – and tell them things that contradict my messages to the first. Perhaps I’d perform miracles but also reveal that Jesus was not raised from the dead. Now each of these groups believes – because of the genuine miracles and so on - they have the one true god on their side, and that’s a recipe for of deep and bloody conflict! An evil god would be delighted with that result. He might even engineer it. A good god, on the other hand, would surely never reveal himself in such a misleading way, or allow such confusion to reign because of contradictory revelatory experiences, miracles, teaching, and so on. The question that we should ask is: which of our two hypotheses is a better fit for the evidence – that a good god is responsible for these things, or that an evil god is?. The distribution of religious miracles, experiences, and scriptures looks like it offers more support to an evil god than good god.
I wonder if it’s even possible for a maximally perfect being to be evil rather than good?
There might be a logical problem with the idea of an evil god, just as some atheists think there’s a logical problem with the idea of a good god. Critics have argued for a long time that god’s various attributes can’t be combined, or that individual attributes – such as god’s omnipotence – generate contrdictions. It may be that you can present similar objections against an evil god too. Perhaps better logical objections to an evil god. However, even if you could establish a logical problem when it comes to the idea of an evil god, we can still run the evil-god challenge. My argument is this: if you can reasonably reject evil god because of the problem of good, and I think you can, then why can’t you reasonably reject belief in good god because of the problem of evil? To point out that there are further, logical problems with the idea of an evil god not mirrored by problems for a good god is to miss the point. The evil-god challenge can still be used in this way, even if it turned out that the idea of an evil god is logically incoherent.
Perhaps the theist could claim that the world contains significantly more good than evil. If this is true, some might say, then the problem of good would rule out the evil-god hypothesis; however, the problem of evil wouldn’t rule out the good-god hypothesis. Is this a better response?
I don’t think so. First, is there significantly more good than evil? It’s very hard to quantify good and evil. I wouldn’t be confident about the assessment that there’s a lot more good than evil, or vice verse. And remember, a mainstream Christian view is that the world is absolutely saturated in evil – in particular, every single human being is so morally depraved as to deserve everlasting torment. And, as anyone that’s watched a few nature documentaries will know, for many of the world’s sentient inhabitants, life involves quite extraordinary amounts of suffering. Nature is cruel beyond our imagining. Secondly, even if it’s true that there is significantly more good than evil, which I doubt, there can still be more than enough of each reasonably to rule out both god hypotheses. Compare: perhaps there’s ten times as much evidence against Santa than there is against fairies. Clearly, there can still be more than enough evidence to rule out both. Most theists acknowledge that the problem of evil really is a very significant problem precisely because there’s so much of it. They acknowledge that, prima facie at least – it’s hard to see how there could be a good god-justifying reason for every last ounce of it. And if there’s any pointless evil – even a teaspoonful - then there’s no good god. Ditto pointless good of course: an evil god won’t permit any pointless goods – good’s for which there’s a more than adequate evil justification. So, even if there is a significant asymmetry in terms of the amount of good and evil that exists, that needn’t alter the fact that both hypotheses can reasonably be ruled on the basis of the distribution of observed good and evil.
What about the suggestion made by skeptical theists – that we are in non position to know whether any evils are pointless. Sure there is pain, suffering, and moral depravity. And it may be that we can’t think of a good-god-justifying reason for that evil. But just because we can’t think of such a reason doesn’t mean a reason doesn’t exist. We are mere humans, with limited intellectual abilities. Just as I shouldn’t expect to be able to see an insect half a mile away, given my perceptual abilities, so I shouldn’t expect to be able to think of all the reasons a good god might have to allow the evils we observe. But now the problem of evil collapses. Fot all we know, all evils are justified. Does this move tip the balance of reasonableness strongly in favour of a good god?
No. For the exact same reasoning applies to an evil god. Perhaps there are evil reasons for the goods we observe, but we just can’t think of them. Skeptical theism works just as well in defence of an evil god as it does in defence of a good god. But in any case, I argue that skeptical theism is untenable. It generates other skepticisms that the theist is unlikely to accept. For example, if skeptical theism is true, then for all I know there’s a good reason for a good god to deceive me about the existence of the external world and the past. I can’t reasonably assign a low probability to there being such reasons. But then I can’t reasonably trust my senses or my memory. For all I know I am being deceived. In short, skeptical theism opens a skeptical Pandora’s box, with the skepticism spreading out in ways the theist is unlikely to want to accept.
William Lane Craig offered an interesting response to your evil-god challenge. Craig thinks that your argument misses the point. Christians don’t believe in god’s goodness because of the goods they find in the world, he claimed, but because ‘being good’ is what it means to be ‘God’.
I think Craig has missed the point. I don’t assume Christians make their case for a good god based on observation of the world around them. Sure, the religious may sing songs about how everything’s bright and beautiful, but most don’t typically infer god’s goodness from observed goods in the world. I hope it’s clear that my point is not that Christians can’t reasonably support belief in a good god based on such observed goods. Rather, it is that if we can reasonably reject belief in an evil god based on observed goods, and I think we can, then why can’t we can reasonably reject belief in a good god based on observed evils? Surely we can. So Craig seems to have misunderstood this challenge. Why can’t we reasonably rule out both hypotheses based on observation of the world around us?
Well, let’s consider another of Craig’s responses. To run the evil-god challenge, you need to appeal to objective moral values. However, objective moral values, says Craig, can’t exist unless there’s a god. Therefore, your challenge proves the very thing you set out to disprove!
There are lots of Christian apologist internet videos and posts making this same point: atheists can’t use the problem of evil, because they don’t believe in evil! Good and evil only exist if good god exists. So if I admit evil exists, I admit god exists. Of course this objection relies on the thought that moral good and evil can’t exist in the absence of god, which is highly dubious; even some theists deny that. But in any case, this response to the problem rests on misunderstanding. To run the problem of evil, atheists don’t need to believe in evil. The point is that the problem of evil is an internal problem for theism. If a Christian thinks that pointless (i.e. good-god-unjustified) suffering is an evil, and they do then, then given the existence of much pointless suffering, they have a big problem. I can point out this problem even if I’m not myself committed to the existence of good, evil, and/or god. Atheists don’t need to believe in good and evil in order to run the problem of evil.
There is another response to the evil god challenge worth mentioning. What if we could come up with an argument for a good god – a really powerful argument – that was not mirrored by a good argument for an evil god? Of course, given what appears to be such compelling evidence against both an evil god and a good god, that argument is going to have to be very strong. I mean, in order to make it reasonable to believe in an evil god, given the problem of good, any argument for an evil god is going to have to be really strong. Ditto any argument for a good god that is capable of outweighing the problem of evil. It’s going to need to be a knock-out argument.
The trouble is, there are no such arguments. Most of the most popular and intuitively appealing arguments for god aren’t even arguments for a good god. They are merely arguments for a first cause, necessary being, prime mover, or intelligent designer. These arguments, as such, provide no clue as the moral attributes, if any, of the thing they’re arguing for. Considered in isolation, these arguments provide as much support for an evil god as they do for a good god. They do nothing to show that belief in a good god is significantly more reasonable than belief in an evil god.
Having said that, there are of course some arguments specifically for a good god. However, they are among the weakest arguments for god’s existence. For example, the moral argument for a good god, which Craig favours, is notoriously flimsy, with even Christian Philosophers like Richard Swinburne rejecting it (though I know the argument plays well to lay audiences). Other arguments for a good god – e.g. a maximally great being, which must then include perfection, including moral perfection – tend to be pretty abstract and slippery. Again, theists disagree even amongst themselves about whether such arguments are any good – which suggests they’re really not that compelling. Further, even some of the arguments specifically for a good god can be mirrored, like this flipped ontological argument:
I can conceive of a maximally evil being.
It is more evil for such a being to exist in reality than in my imagination.
Therefore a maximally evil being exists.
And as the evil such a being is capable of increases with its power, this maximally evil being must also be maximally powerful.
So, in summary, and on balance, the case for a good god looks at best pretty flimsy, and certainly not nearly strong enough to outweigh the problem of evil.
The ghost of god
There are religious believers who argue that it’s reasonable to believe in good god without evidence or argument. One such proponent, Alvin Plantinga, suggests we can come to know that god exists through a god-given sense, the sensus divinitatis. This provides direct, non-inferential knowledge of good god’s existence. Might this be a way of unlocking the evil-god challenge?
In order to illustrate Plantinga’s thinking, let’s consider an example. Imagine that you’re observing an apple in a bowl. It very much seems to you that there’s an apple there – that you can see it, feel it, smell it, and taste it. Suppose that somethere in the bowl. Here’s compelling evidence that there’s a global shortage of apples, with none in the UK!’ You would think their argument was ridiculous; you can just see there’s an apple in the bowl! It can be reasonable for you to believe despite the evidence to the contrary, given it just very much seems to you that there’s an apple there and you’ve no reason to believe your senses aren’t to be trusted on this occassion. That’s Plantinga’s view. But then the religious person can insist that it can be reasonable for them to believe in the existence of a good god, given that’s very much how things seem to them, and even if there’s strong evidence that there’s no such god (such as a lot of apparently gratuitous evil).
Is this an effective way of meeting the evil god challenge? Can direct religious experience trump the problem of evil?
I think there are excellent grounds for being sceptical about such religious experiences. What would you think if I told you that, right now, my dead auntie was here in the room with us?
It depends on whether she’s a corpse or a ghost.
She’s a ghost.
I’d be relieved that she wasn’t a corpse… but I’d still think you were crazy.
Exactly. It might really seem to me that my dead auntie is in the room with us, but, given other background information, it still isn’t reasonable for me to believe it. Psychologists have pointed out that we human beings are horribly prone to false positive beliefs about extraordinary hidden agents. People believe in all sorts of thing - including goblins, ghosts, nature spirits, fairies, angels, and miraculous appearances of the Virgin Mary - on the basis of subjective experience and testimony. We know that very many of these beliefs are false. Indeed, they are constantly being debunked (take out a subscription to Skeptical Inquirer magazine for numerous examples). We are notoriously prone to such false positive beliefs – thinking that there are extraordinary beings there when there aren’t. Psychological theories are now being developed to explain this striking tendency we have to over-detect agency. Given this well-established tendency to think we are experiencing extraordinary hidden agency when we’re not, it is not reasonable to trust our own experiences, or the experiences of others. And this obviously extends to experiences of gods, including good god. There’s huge amount of evidence against the existence of such a deity - the problem of evil. Plus we have very good reason to distrust such experiences given we’re so prone to false positive beliefs based on them. Yes it’s reasonable to believe there’s an apple in the bowl if that’s very much how it seems to me, notwithstanding the evidence that there are no apples in the country. But it’s no longer reasonable to trust appearance once I have grounds for thinking I may well be hallucinating, or being deceived by a hologram, or am in an environment where people regularly falsely report seeing apples. Under those circumstances I have what philosophers call an undercutting defeater for my belief. My belief there’s an apple there could still be true, but it’s no longer reasonable for me to hold that belief given this additional information. For much the same reason, then, it’s no longer reasonable to trust god experiences once we know they are a variety of experience notoriously prone to producing false positive beliefs.
But still, can’t we explain a great deal by appealing to god – explain many things that are otherwise deeply mysterious? Doesn’t this count heavily in theism’s favour?
I suspect this takes us close to the heart of the debate between atheists and theists. There’s no doubt that if you posit an invisible being with supernatural powers, you can explain all sorts of things. And, when somebody points out evidence against your belief in such beings, you can always explain away that evidence, given sufficient ingenuity. Nine times out of ten, that’s the theist’s strategy: explain away the evidence and keep hammering away at the mysteries. Funnily enough, that’s exactly how all sorts of conspiracy theories work. They employ those same basic strategies. The same goes for belief in extraordinary supernatural beings such as fairies or gremlins. ‘I can’t find my keys! I thought I put them on the mantelpiece, but now they’re here on the sofa.’ Can you explain that? No you can’t. It really is quite mysterious! But if I say that gremlins moved your keys – mischievous invisible creatures with supernatural powers – then I can explain what you can’t. Once I introduce an extraordinary hidden agent, I can explain anything I want. And if you argue that there can’t be any gremlins because we never see them, etc. I can, with a little ingenuity, always cook up ways to explain that evidence away. We never see the gremlins because they’re invisible, or are just really, really good at hiding. And so on.
Rather than engaging in such make-believe, I think right thing to do is just honestly admit we don’t know the answers to all of these questions. I don’t know how my keys ended up on the mantelpiece. Yes, gremlins would explain how they got there, but that doesn’t give me much reason to believe in gremlins. Similarly, I don’t know why the universe exists and I don’t know how consciousness arises. But still, it’s clear that I can quite reasonably rule out the suggestion that an evil god created the universe and conscious beings in order to torture them. And if I can do that, then why can’t I rule out a good god on much the same basis? Surely I can. We may not know the answers to various deep philosophical questions, but that doesn’t prevent us quite reasonably ruling out certain answers.
Afterthoughts
In my experience, the evil-god challenge never fails to inspire a passionate conversation. Whether it be a friend at a party or a professor at a conference, the idea of an evil god – and a new lens through which to explore the question of God’s existence – seems to capture people’s imaginations. Philosophically, the challenge’s greatest asset is its simplicity. Rather than launching a head-on attack, the challenger points to analogous belief that is clearly silly: ‘Look how silly that belief is,’ says Stephen, about belief in an evil god. And of course you recognise that it really is silly. But then he adds: ‘So now explain why your belief is significantly more reasonable.’
In the wider literature, the evil-god challenge is treated as if it can be used to respond to every argument for God.[6] I don’t think that’s right. For example, theists have many reasons for thinking that god is good rather than evil. As Hill explained in our opening chapter, for example, the concept of God – namely, the greatest conceivable being – would possess every great-making property that it’s possible to have. As moral goodness enhances greatness, but moral wickedness detracts from greatness, theists seem justified in attributing goodness (and not evil) to the greatest conceivable being. As we saw in his response to Craig, Law doesn’t think this rebuttal applies to his version of the challenge. This is worth considering too. Law’s version of the challenge rests on the claim that theists believe that evil god is absurd because of the problem of good. I wonder, however, whether this is something that theists actually believe. Do religious believers reject the evil-god hypothesis because the world contains so much good? If that is not their reason, then perhaps they can free themselves from the clutches of the challenge.
Questions to consider
1. Could an evil god have created the world?
2. How strong is the symmetry between the problem of good and the problem of evil?
3. Are religious experiences better evidence for good god or evil god?
4. When, if ever, is it reasonable to believe in invisible beings with supernatural powers?
5. Is the good-god hypothesis more reasonable than the evil-god hypothesis?
Recommended reading
Advanced
John Collins, ‘The evil-god challenge: extended and defended’, Religious Studies, vol. 55 (1) (2019): 85–109.
Collins’s paper develops further symmetries between the good-god hypothesis and evil-god hypothesis. He also addresses those who have responded to Law’s challenge, maintaining that each fails to overcome the symmetry thesis.
Christopher Weaver, ‘Evilism, Moral Rationalism and Reasons Internalism’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, vol. 77 (1) (2015): 3–24.
There are so many of papers responding to the evil-god challenge; this is one of the best. Weaver argues that, following certain meta-ethical assumptions, it would be impossible for an evil god to exist.
Intermediate
Stephen Law, ‘The evil-god challenge’, Religious Studies, vol. 46 (3) (2010): 353–73.
This is Stephen’s landmark paper on the evil-god challenge: he introduces the challenge, compares it to previous versions and addresses a series of responses. If you enjoyed this chapter, this is a must-read.
Stephen Law, Believing Bullshit: How Not to Get Sucked into an Intellectual Black Hole (New York: Prometheus Books, 2011).
In this short and accessible book, Stephen exposes fallacious ways of thinking and how we can respond to them. Law’s focus isn’t just religion but the techniques used by a range of dangerous belief systems. If you’re looking to develop your critical thinking skills, then this is definitely worth a read.
Beginner
Asha Lancaster-Thomas, ‘The Evil-god Challenge Part I: History and Recent Developments’, Philosophy Compass, vol. 13 (7) (2018): 1–8.
For those looking to engage with the wider evil-god literature, this is a great place to start. Lancaster-Thomas discusses the history of the challenge, its nature – including a synopsis of the different types of evil-god challenges – and several arguments to which the challenge can be applied.
Asha Lancaster-Thomas, ‘The Evil-God Challenge Part II: Objections and Responses’, Philosophy Compass, vol. 13 (8) (2018): 1–10.
This is the follow-up piece to the previous recommendation, in which Lancaster-Thomas gives an overview of different responses to the challenge. Lancaster-Thomas also discusses the strengths of the challenge and its implications for theism more generally.
Notes & Sources
[1] Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 31.
[2] Edward Madden and Peter Hare, Evil and the Concept of God (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1968), 32–4.
[3] Ibid., 34.
[4] Steven Cahn, ‘Cacodaemony’, Analysis, vol. 37 (2) (1977): 69–73.
[5] Christopher New, ‘Antitheism: A Reflection’, Ratio, vol. 6 (1) (1993): 36–43.
[6] See Asha Lancaster-Thomas, ‘The Evil-God Challenge Part II: Objections and Responses’, Philosophy Compass, vol. 13 (8) (2018): 1–10.
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