Skip to main content

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
Cancel
×
Home
  • Home
Article
  • Cited by 7
  • Cited by
    Crossref Citations
    Crossref logo
    This article has been cited by the following publications. This list is generated based on data provided by CrossRef.

    Thibodeau, Jason 2017. God’s Love is Irrelevant to the Euthyphro Problem. Sophia,

    MILLER, CALUM 2016. Is theism a simple hypothesis? The simplicity of omni-properties. Religious Studies, Vol. 52, Issue. 01, p. 45.

    SCRUTTON, ANASTASIA PHILIPPA 2016. Why not believe in an evil God? Pragmatic encroachment and some implications for philosophy of religion. Religious Studies, Vol. 52, Issue. 03, p. 345.

    VEBER, MICHAEL 2015. What's It Like to Be a BIV? A Dialogue. Journal of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 1, Issue. 04, p. 734.

    Weaver, Christopher Gregory 2015. Evilism, moral rationalism, and reasons internalism. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 77, Issue. 1, p. 3.

    FORREST, PETER 2012. Replying to the anti-God challenge: a God without moral character acts well. Religious Studies, Vol. 48, Issue. 01, p. 35.

    Oderberg, David S. 2011. Morality, Religion, and Cosmic Justice. Philosophical Investigations, Vol. 34, Issue. 2, p. 189.

    ×
  • Access

The evil-god challenge

  • STEPHEN LAW (a1)
Abstract
Abstract

This paper develops a challenge to theism. The challenge is to explain why the hypothesis that there exists an omnipotent, omniscient and all-good god should be considered significantly more reasonable than the hypothesis that there exists an omnipotent, omniscient and all-evil god. Theists typically dismiss the evil-god hypothesis out of hand because of the problem of good – there is surely too much good in the world for it to be the creation of such a being. But then why doesn't the problem of evil provide equally good grounds for dismissing belief in a good god? I develop this evil-god challenge in detail, anticipate several replies, and correct errors made in earlier discussions of the problem of good.

    •
      • Send article to Kindle

      To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle.

      Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

      Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

      The evil-god challenge
      Available formats
      ×
      Send article to Dropbox

      To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox.

      The evil-god challenge
      Available formats
      ×
      Send article to Google Drive

      To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive.

      The evil-god challenge
      Available formats
      ×
Copyright
COPYRIGHT: © Cambridge University Press 2010
Corresponding author
e-mail: think@royalinstitutephilosophy.org
References
Hide All

Notes

1. See John Hick (ed.) Classical and Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of Religion, 2nd edn (Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970), 515.

2. See e.g. Wykstra Stephen ‘The Humean obstacle to evidential arguments from suffering: on avoiding the evils of “appearance”’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 16 (1984), 73–93, in which Wykstra writes ‘[I]f we think carefully about the sort of being theism proposes for our belief, it is entirely expectable – given what we know of our cognitive limits – that the goods by virtue of which this Being allows known suffering should very often be beyond our ken.’

3. I allow that considerations pertinent to reasonableness may include the fact that a belief is, in the terminology of reformed epistemology, ‘properly basic’.

4. Edward Madden and Peter Hare Evil and the Concept of God (Springfield IL: C. Thomas, 1968).

5. Ibid., 34.

6. Cahn Stephen ‘Cacodaemony’, Analysis, 37 (1976), 69–73.

7. Ibid., 72.

8. Stein Edward ‘God, the demon, and the status of theodicies’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 27 (1990), 163–167.

9. Ibid., 163.

10. New Christopher ‘Antitheism’, Ratio, 6 (1993), 36–43.

11. Daniels Charles ‘God, demon, good, evil’, Journal of Value Inquiry, 31 (1997), 177–181.

12. Ibid.

13. With the exception, of course, of a few scientific thought-experiments – such as Galileo's experiment involving chained falling balls, designed to show that two balls of different weights must fall at the same speed.

14. Between acceptance and publication of this paper I discovered an excellent early discussion of the evil-god hypothesis: Millican Peter ‘The devil's advocate’, Cogito, 3 (1989), 193–207. Millican makes much the same move as I make here, and also offers a similar treatment of the first moral argument below.

15. Mawson T. J.Belief in God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), ch. 12.

16. Ibid., ch. 12.

17. See New ‘Antitheism’, 37.

18. Daniels ‘God, demon, good, evil’.

Recommend this journal

Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this journal to your organisation's collection.

Religious Studies
  • ISSN: 0034-4125
  • EISSN: 1469-901X
  • URL: /core/journals/religious-studies
Please enter your name
Please enter a valid email address
Who would you like to send this to? *

CAPTCHA *

Skip to the audio challenge
×

Metrics

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 661
Total number of PDF views: 722 *
Loading metrics...

Abstract views

Total abstract views: 1111 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between September 2016 - 11th December 2017. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Cancel
Confirm
×