The “Evil God” Challenge
For many atheists today, the best argument available against the existence of the Christian God is the "evil God" challenge, as posed by philosopher Stephen Law. For Law, the standard arguments for the existence of God, like the cosmological and teleological arguments, could serve equally well to support an "evil God" hypothesis - and if the evil God is incoherent, as Christians believe it is, then so is theirs.
Law writes:
“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.”
There follows an extended imaginary conversation with the inhabitants of a far-flung planet, in which everyone believes in an evil God. The sceptic asks them why they believe in an evil God when there is so much good in the world, and they respond using the standard Christian responses to the problem of evil, only in reverse. For many, this article, and the thought-experiment behind it, constitutes a serious and compelling challenge to Christian theism.
Some responses to Law have failed to grasp his argument, or have suggested Law’s argument fails to challenge Christian theism (Edward Feser is the clearest example). From my perspective, this is incorrect, and Law’s challenge should be taken seriously. More reasonable responses to Law have appealed to the fact that Christian theism has other arguments in addition which move us toward a specifically Christian God (such as the moral argument). While there is clearly some value in such approaches, I think there is a better approach, which is to argue against the evil god hypothesis on the basis of an a priori argument, rather than a string of a posteriori responses.
As soon as we look at the proposal in detail, we find a problem with Law’s challenge. Whereas Christian theists have been very specific with their definition of a good God, Law is quite vague about what the exact nature of this evil God is. In describing the evil God, he continues:
“Imagine that he is maximally evil. His depravity is without limit. His cruelty knows no bounds. There is no other god or gods – just this supremely wicked being. Call this the evil-god hypothesis.”
However, I am going to argue that such a being is logically incompatible with the very fact of our existence. As I noted earlier, since Law is ambiguous about the specific attributes of an evil God, one has to think he means a God with completely opposing attributes to the broadly traditional monotheistic God: maximally cruel, unjust, selfish, and so on. And as a maximally selfish being, this evil God would have to be exclusively concerned with itself. Not only would it be exclusively concerned with itself, but it would have to be concerned only with itself to the logically maximum degree possible. So far, so uncontroversial.
My argument, then, runs as follows:
1. Any maximally logical great being (MLGB) in any possible world would need to have all their characteristics to the logical maximum.
2. An evil MLGB in any possible world would have selfishness to its maximum extent.
3. An evil MLGB in any possible world would not be willing to share anything at all being maximally selfish and completely self-absorbed.
4. An evil MLGB in any possible world would be capable of not creating anything else.
5. An evil MLGB in any possible world would not have the will to create anything due to its supreme selfishness.
6. An evil MLGB in any possible world would not create anything.
However, if the last proposition follows, and logically it appears to, then our very existence appears to contradict the proposal of any logically possible evil God. In fact, we could take step 6 further, and add that any evil MLGB would not even have the thought of considering the creation of anything else since that would be, even in some small sense, to think of others, which would be a good. For an evil MLGB to have a good thought is illogical.
The response to the evil god hypothesis is, therefore, that it is completely unreasonable that such a being should exist. We can now show an evil God to be an illogical concept by adding:
7. Something other than an evil God exists.
Two lines of attack might be made upon step 5. Some might posit that an evil god could create something else for purely evil intentions, merely in order to create more opportunities to be evil. However, this premise can be defended against this point by stating that this creation of torture and sadism, whilst consistent with the evil God’s evilness, is not consistent with his supreme selfishness. With selfishness to the absolutely logically maximum possible degree, such a being could never give any thought whatsoever to anything else, let alone creating any other creature. Creation, as such, is incompatible with being maximally selfish. Thus our mere existence remains completely incompatible with the evil God hypothesis.
Another possible reply would be to insist that in order for an evil God to maximize his evilness, this might require some lack of maximal selfishness, to accommodate for the fact that we do exist. In this scenario, the evil God is unable to be completely self-consumed, and thus the atheist must make some case for a coherent evil God who is no longer maximally selfish. Perhaps the evil God sacrifices some selfishness in order to be maximally evil, in terms of the suffering it causes to something outside itself. However, if evilness itself requires some object which it can be evil toward, then this God cannot be a necessary being, but must be contingent; it could not be maximally powerful, since its very existence would depend upon the existence of something other than itself. This reply, then, would open up a host of philosophical problems for the evil God theory, and the atheist would open himself up to the charge of moulding the evil God ad hoc. In contrast, the notion of a good God is not logically incoherent, and thus Law’s challenge falls.
I have taken the evil god challenge seriously, as I think is necessary. However, since I have given good reasons for thinking the notion of an evil God is completely illogical, and since I reject the empirical experience of good and evil as pointing toward either a good God or an evil one, I would suggest I have met the challenge as given by Law. Any thoughts?
Comments
By Andrew Wilson on 02/03/2012 at 10:25
Brilliant. Really well argued - great job!
By Jamie Franklin on 02/03/2012 at 13:56
Hey Mike,
Interesting post, but I’m just trying to think how Law would react and I think he would object along the following lines.
Law’s argument runs on the basis of the idea that we reject belief in Evil God because of the good that we see in the world. There are too many cute babies and happy people to believe in Evil God. For this reason, in order to be consistent, we should also reject belief in a good God because there is too much evil, pain and suffering in the world to believe in one. There are sufficiently strong grounds to not believe in the existence of Evil God (fun and and joy and laughter) as there are to not believe in a good God (pain and suffering).
You’re saying that the idea of a maximally selfish God who is also creator is logically incompatible and that makes his existence less plausible than a good God’s. I think Law would probably say that this is akin to some of the things that theists try to do when they attempt to reconcile omnipotence with omnibenevolence or things of this nature. Law would say that we would say, ‘God has sufficiently good reasons to allow evil to happen that we don’t know about.’ But the Evil God follower could say, ‘Evil God has sufficiently selfish reasons to create that we don’t know about. There may be some hidden selfish reason to create that only he can see.’
I think we must say to Law’s challenge that he is fundamentally mistaken about why we reject belief in Evil God. We don’t reject belief in Evil God on the basis of empirical observations of joy and fun and laughter. We reject it on the basis of the fact that we have a worldview that seems to us more plausible that doesn’t have room for the existence of Evil God . That goes for everyone who doesn’t believe in Evil God, not just theists. Richard Dawkins doesn’t believe in Evil God because it is inherently incompatible with his beliefs about the origin and nature of the universe, not because he sees too much happiness in the world. I don’t believe in Evil God because, as a competing worldview it does not have as much explanatory power as the Christian worldview. It is not compatible with the revelation of God in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, for example. Nor is it compatible with the existence of objectively existing moral values, and so on.
Finally, I would not reject belief in Evil God on the basis of the empirical evidence of fun and joy and laughter in the same way as I would not reject believe in the Christian God because of pain and suffering. There are sufficiently good reasons for believing the latter whilst there are not sufficiently good reasons to believe the former.
I’ve thought about this a lot since I heard his debate with WLC, which is why I’m sticking my oar in, but I really think this is why I find it so unconvincing. Some arguments genuinely seem challenging for the theist, but I don’t find this to be one of them.
By Richard Spear on 02/03/2012 at 19:51
Very interesting Mike. You are the first person that i’ve seen take this seriously and you do a good job. I still find WLC’s response persuasive though - Christians don’t take their cue from God’s character from observation. I didn’t feel that Law answered this on the night. He said that wasn’t what he was saying, but he didn’t specify where he proposed its origins were.
By Michael Rundle on 02/03/2012 at 22:18
Thanks Jamie. Some nice observations.
Have you read his paper? He goes a bit further than you suggest. He’s claiming that evil god is on a par with the Christian God intellectually [that is - they’re both ridiculous postulations]. I’ve heard him deliver his evil god presentation three times now [once in the debate against Craig and twice at philosophy conferences] and each time he asks the audience how seriously they take an evil god hypothesis and of course no-one dares say they do. He then uses that reaction to then ask why we take a monotheistic version of God anymore seriously. It’s his way of then trying to discredit any kind of cosmological or teleological arguments for God since they could be used equally for some evil god [or so he says!]. It does not actually matter if any atheist does not take evil god seriously - in fact that is exactly the point Law is making. He’s trying to suggest evil god and theism are equally ridiculous. It won’t matter to an atheist philosopher if you tell them it does not fit with the revelation you feel you have had from God. Remember, they reject that revelation anyway along with the incarnation of Jesus so appealing to them won’t cause the atheist [in this case Law] any problems. Law might even reply that evil god gave you that false revelation in order to make your immediate after-death experience so much more painful when you find out god is evil.
Now, this is where I think my response is strong [in all humility]. The cosmological argument points to some ontically necessary being which does not depend on anything else for its existence. But evil god cannot fit that bill. In order to be necessary it cannot depend on anything else to exist as itself and evil god cannot meet that challenge. However, interestingly neither can a good god. However, a trinitarian good God can. Since there are a trinity of persons expressing love perfectly to each other in eternity.
I have to disagree with responses which think that further additional theistic arguments will help against Law’s challenge. The reason is because they can be flipped too [just like the way Law flips the standard theodicies]. Evil god can be the standard of what is evil and therefore what is good. It’s just in order to make the world that much more sadistic evil god makes us think we know which is which in order to maximise suffering. So a moral argument won’t get us far. Also, Law has hinted that he might be willing to concede there are no objective moral truths in order to hold onto the evil god hypothesis. Now, whilst that won’t help his case it would make it consistent at least. See the debate he had on the programme ‘Unbelievable’ against Glenn Peoples on the 10th December 2011 where Peoples tried using a moral argument and it ended up in a bit of a stalemate and Peoples almost admitted that it made the Christian God only slightly more plausible than evil god.
Sorry for going on so much!
By Gareth on 03/03/2012 at 03:20
I’m no expert, but I think the argument falls apart at a number of levels.
It is very odd that we should think, if such a being as an ‘evil god’ were to exist, that it would have characteristics in its personality that were even vaguely recognisable to us. Drawing conclusions after anthropomorphizing in this way seems very futile indeed when you consider this. How could we guess how a god would think?
In any case my intuition tells me that trying to guess the implications of ‘maximum logical selfishness’ (whatever that means) is a real minefield of logical contradictions. In a sense I agree with previous commenter Jamie Franklin, another way to think about it is that even if this argument were possible, it would in essence disprove a ‘good god’ concept too, because if a good god were in possession of ‘maximum logical altruism/selflessness’ then it would be unable for it to create a world in which some experience only fear, pain and death.
I was not aware of Stephen Law, so I am grateful for having seen this. For me though, this Evil god metaphor is not supposed to be taken as a serious hypothesis. I think has been posed to prove a point.
The beginning of the argument mentions that this was postulated as a question in the face of the classic WLC teleological / cosmological arguments. So even granting that these arguments have validity and that the logical ‘prime mover’ is a god, then it gives us absolutely no more information than that. We cannot presume anything about any characteristics of this proposed god/being nor can we know its intentions. We cannot know anything about this entity because conceptual arguments like the cosmo/telio do absolutely nothing to tie the concept of a prime moving god to conventional terrestrial religions.
Since there is no evidence to give us any information, calling the god names like ‘good’ or ‘evil’ or labelling it with any other characteristic of any kind is purely a matter of personal belief - not logic.
By Nathan Lambert on 03/03/2012 at 11:30
Thanks for the thoughts on a really interesting challenge.
However, your post has lead me to a few thoughts :
1. Is selfishness evil for God ? I follow John Piper in his assertion that God is ultimately God-centric, and that this is a good trait, not an evil one. If God is the ultimate object of focus, admiration, etc. then it is good, not evil, for God to be God-centric. If God is the center of it all (as would also an evil God be), then it is right, just, holy and good for such a God to focus on himself as a way of being good and loving, by also pointing other creatures to be God-focused as he is the fount of all good. So this creates a problem : in light of this, should we be asking of an all-evil God to be human-centric, and therefore call humans to look at themselves instead of himself ? But then as an evil God, he would not be the fount of all good, so maybe as an evil-God, he should point humans to his own horrible self, for their great displeasure and anguish.
2. I would actually like to step back from all of this, and suggest that the very idea of an evil-God is a non-starter, for this very simple reason : the reason why one thing is good and the other is not is simply that one thing is consistent with God’s character (good), and another is not (bad). Therefore, whatever God is (whether selfish, loving, muderous, creating, ordering, chaotic or whatever else), that is what is good. Good and evil exist because there is a benchmark called God. No God could be evil, because any God would be the benchmark of good. If God were different to who he has revealed himself to be, then what is good would also be different.
An evil-God could simply not exist. A God who is different from the God of the Bible may be a philosophical possibility. But anything that would be different about him would simply redefine good. Many things allow us to see what is Good and what is not (not least the workings of this world, our consciences and most of all the Bible), but they can only be good if they and consistent with the character of the Ultimate standard - God.
Law’s argument is a non-starter, and is based in the idea that humans decide what is good, and judge God by their own standards, instead of the recognition that any notion of good comes from the one true plumbline : an almighty, creator, absolute, ultimate, eternal and infinite God.
By Paul on 03/03/2012 at 19:08
I agree with Nathan that the use of selfishness is a possible weakness in the argument. Note that you say that torture is consistent with evilness but not maximal selfishness, which is inconsistent with saying maximal selfishness is an aspect of maximal evilness…
On the other hand, I think the Trinitarian argument outlined in the comments above might be the way to go. After all an evil trinity would be unsustainable.
By Jamie Jolly on 05/03/2012 at 00:01
Interesting Stuff, I also didn’t know of this argument before this post so thanks for putting it up.
I think if we really want to get to the bottom of what law really believes someone needs go to one of these debates and shoot jelly babies at him in the name of theology!
The Reasons rolls thusly.
If god is omni potent,present,scient and maxi evil then all his actions must be maxi evil.
God being soveriegn means that at every moment all places in the universe must be bent towards the maximum evil possible.
You cannot argue that everyone on earth suffers the maximum possible evil at all point at all times. Therefore the only arguement you would seem to be able to muster is that God is setting us up for an even bigger fall later on that outweighs the loss of evil in the earlier stages of the plan.
This cannot be so though because if God holds the omnipotent card he can surely inflict maximum evil on someone without the need for any simple cause and effect setup. If the catastrophic evil comes at the end of a string lesser evil events then Gods just waisting valuable evil time and is not being as evil as he can be, when all of the moments before the end can be maxi evil whilst the end result remains maxi evil and all the moments hence forth. Unless there is an outside influence limiting his actions.
For a Good God this limiting factor can logically be argued to the nature of love. But for an evil God I can see no such restraint.
So if the evil God is unrestrained in the definition of his nature where the Good God is (restrained is not really what I mean as there is no contension within God but you know what I mean). The result left is to say people are experiencing the maximum evil at all time, here comes the jelly babies.
If one were to fire a jelly baby at stephen laws he may get a little bothered but may shrug it off as a minor inconvenience. If one were then to leave a gap, say 5 minutes, then barrage him with jelly babies unrelentingly I think we would find he would find himself having a far greater negative reaction to these events than the first. This would then prove he believes himself to be experiencing more evil in the second event than the first proving he was not experiencing consistent ultimate evil throughout.
Any thoughts?
By Michael Rundle on 05/03/2012 at 00:15
Hi Gareth,
I agree with you that it’s odd to be thinking of an evil god hypothesis. However, Law is merely using it as a heuristic device in order to ask why an atheist should take traditional theism any more seriously. Since this is the reason for the challenge I think we have to take the concept on as articulated by Law.
I agree with you that I think the concept of evil god, when explored, leads to some huge philosophical problems which require answering - indeed that is my main criticism regarding evil god. I would suggest, by contrast, that the philosophical problems for the Christian God are nowhere near as substantial. You state that an ultimately good God would not create a world where some experience only suffering. I could question, for starters, whether that has ever actually taken place. How do we know that there has ever been a person who has ONLY experienced “only fear, pain and death”? I would submit that the assertion that there has been such an existence is both highly unlikely and unknowable. In order to appreciate pain or fear one must have some knowledge of their opposite which implies they know, at the very least noetically, of pleasure and safety.
I’ve already said a lot but on your last points I would suggest that there are characteristic of God which can be infered from the cosmological and teleological argument. The recent book called ‘The Blackwell Guide to Natural Theology’ has some very good articles drawing them out and I would recommend that book.
Thanks for your thoughts.
By Michael Rundle on 05/03/2012 at 00:39
Thanks Nathan and Paul for your thoughts.
1. Is selfishness evil for God? I admit I have not read much Piper so don’t want to second guess what he’s saying but I doubt he means that the Father, Son and Spirit all seek their own individual personal glory. [Maybe he does I don’t know.] The more common articulation of this in Christian thought has been that each member of the Trinity is actually seeking the glory of the other two. They glorify each other. We get this theme a lot from Jesus in John’s gospel for example. Jesus seeks the glory of his Father but the Father, in turn, gives glory to the Son. I think it would be philosophically problematic even if it were God being self-absorbed - yes I do. I think it would be hard to make a virtue of that just because the being is ‘god’. Which leads to 2…
2. On this point I think Law is simply trying to suggest that there could be another type of god, a first cause, who is radically different in nature to the God of, say, Christianity. And then he’s wanting to ask whether this type of god is worth taking any more seriously than the Christian God. Of course, he wants to say no - they are both ridiculous postulations in his opinion. What I want to say is that evil god is incoherent whereas good God is not. The issue of defining God is another interesting one but I think this is where Plantinga is helpful, following the tradition which comes from Anselm, as defining God as a “maximally great being”. Evil god would have all the opposite characteristics of the Christian God but this would not make him ‘god’ unless one starts equivocating with the term ‘god’.
Therefore I do think Law’s argument is a starter, but I also think it’s not a finisher.
By Michael on 06/03/2012 at 02:21
Overall, I like your argument in that you lean back on the fundamental structures of what it means for God to be Creator. It’s also important to note, however, that good and evil are not actually opposites in the Christian faith. Evil is a distortion of good. Any attempt to reverse that (i.e. good as a distortion of evil) falls apart quickly for many of the same reasons. Evil cannot be the creative norm. If the good is “sinful” in the alternate existence, then that “sin” is holding everything together and becomes the true basis of existence.
The challenge of this exercise comes in that it is very abstract whether conceived generally or focusing in on a specific that may not apply to a discussion of the Christian God. In the end, the best case for Christian faith is that this God has revealed Himself to us in Jesus Christ. To my knowledge there is no claim at all to a concrete revelation of an “Evil God”.
By Nathan Lambert on 06/03/2012 at 13:47
Hi Michael R.
I recommend reading “Desiring God”, and particularly the first chapter. The main reason is that it will lead you to worship, if you’re anywhere near being stirred by the same things that I am (although countless people have told me they find these chapters drab, so I may just be weird!). And although it is particularly tricky to grasp at first, it is well worth the read. The idea that for God, the more selfish he is, the more loving he is is quite a brain-twister, but once you manage to contort your mind to see his perspective, it is actually brilliant.
I would, once again though (and please excuse me if I seem stubborn!), state that I cannot see how God could do something evil, as good and evil are defined by nothing else than what God decides and does. He is the law-maker and his law resides in what he does. Our attempts to be more righteous are attempts to be consistent with the being of God. So any god, if he is ultimate (which seems quite fundamental to the idea of godness), can only do good, because anything he does becomes good and a law unto us. As I said, I think that we don’t see an evil-God as a problem because we like to think that Good and Evil come either from “Ultimate Standards” or from humans, when actually law flows from what God is like.
By Michael Rundle on 06/03/2012 at 23:31
Hi Michael,
Yes there are Christians who hold to evil being merely the privation of good. C.S. Lewis used this argument and it’s common in Thomism but, even though it might be true, I’ll tell you why I’m less keen on it. Firstly, because I’m not sure I can find a justification for it in Scripture [which does not, in itself, make it wrong I would accept in the same sense that we don’t get a fully developed doctrine of the church in the Bible either]. Secondly, because this claim is lacking in philosophical support. I don’t think I have ever heard an actual decent argument for it [which might be due to a lack of knowledge of Thomism]. Do you know of any? Whenever I hear people use this argument they tend to just assert it which bothers me. I do see good and evil heavily contrasted in Scripture though through many metaphors [flesh/spirit, light/darkness, of this world/of the Kingdom etc.] so I do think there’s good reason to set them in opposition to each other. As for the last bit keep in mind that whilst that is a perfectly good and reasonable explanation of your own faith it will not work in a debate against an atheist. After all, they will simply dismiss the notion that God has revealed himself. Thanks.
By Michael Rundle on 06/03/2012 at 23:44
Thanks Nathan. I will take a look at that. I don’t like the way it’s worded. Of course God is deserving of all attention, worship and glory but if one person of the Trinity were completely selfish in terms of seeking his own glory how could this not be said to be at the exclusion of the other two members of the Trinity? I think the picture of each member of the Trinity always seeking to glorify the other two is more biblical and is a philosophically sounder way of looking at the issue. So if Piper is suggesting that the Father seeks the glory of the Father or that the Son seeks the glory of the Son or that the Spirit seeks the glory of the Spirit then I think I would have to, in all humility, disagree with him on those two grounds. [Perhaps he’s not really saying that though?]
No problem being stubborn! You said: “...good and evil are defined by nothing else than what God decides and does.” I think that’s oversimplifying Divine command theory [if that’s what you’re referring to?]. Usually what is good is linked also to who God is - his nature. You see if you only articulate it as what God commands then you are in trouble due to the Socratic question of whether good is what the gods command or the gods command what is good. The way out of that dilemma is that good is what God is and his commands flow from his nature.
Coming back to Law though; he is setting evil god up as having the opposite attributes of the traditional monotheistic concept of God. So to answer Law we don’t have to get into the Euthyphro dilamma at all. Law is making it clear he is setting up a being who would be the moral opposite of the God Christians believe in. Thanks.