The Evil God Challenge

[SkyWriting]

Now that is... harsh.
I just told you a story that ended - ended!

You've told the story and it brought me memories
of "wheelies" I'd forgotten. We all die.
All lives end with that same ending. I was in the hospital
when babies of relatives were stillborn. We had a very moving
service in the graveyard that brought us all very close.
That life is always in my memory and how mom delt
with the loss.

 

[SkyWriting]

I met this boy when I was serving my social service in a school for handicapped children. This place was "rife with people in wheelchairs". A lot of them just "normal" children... sometimes happy, sometimes sad, sometimes angry. A lot of them were in pain, physically and mentally. A lot of them died very young. Death trumps over all.

I did wheelchair seating for a couple years. I put one kid in his first wheelcair
and he moved it himself. He was so happy to be able to move himself.
Likely he is not alive. But that moment will live forever in history.

 

[Freodin]

Life trumps the game over death. No matter how brief.

Life is life. It just is. It doesn't "trump" anything. It is not a win. It is not a loss. It is not a game.

1.“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

Except when he cannot. And then he is gone and can't complain anymore, so we can ignore him.

I had an older brother. Mentally handicapped from birth. Already his life was... not pleasant. And especially not for his family. Yes, he "brought us together". By necessity. By force. You could say that he cost me my life.
I don't have an older brother anymore. His handicap influenced the way he lived, but didn't threaten his life. He could go through life happy thinking about his next bike trip, a computer game or a music show.
Cancer ended him nontheless. Not in a nice way. I have seen him through the end, and his "why to live". I have seen him go.

2. “The salvation of man is through love and in love.”

And all love ends. All hate ends. And in the meantime we have enough of both. No salvation. Just existence. Not good, not evil. Just existence.

3. You can get used to anything

Getting used to evil is... good? Well, if you say so. You can get used to anything.

4. You can resist your environment’s influence

No, you cannot. You can try, but in the end you will always "fail". The quotes because this isn't something bad. After all, the enviroment is "good", isn't it?

5. There is meaning in suffering

Then why do we try to alleviate it? Do you want to deprive people of meaning? SO LET THEM SUFFER!

6. Without hope, meaning, a future, death will come soon

Not earlier and not later than with hope, meaning and "a future".

7. Logotherapy is a practical solution to your problems

In the eyes of a logotherapist.

You've told the story and it brought me memories
of "wheelies" I'd forgotten. We all die.
All lives end with that same ending. I was in the hospital
when babies of relatives were stillborn. We had a very moving
service in the graveyard that brought us all very close.
That life is always in my memory and how mom delt
with the loss.

I wouldn't have though you that selfish.

 

[SkyWriting]

Then why do we try to alleviate it? Do you want to deprive people of meaning? SO LET THEM SUFFER!

Morphine solves all pain.
The problem is though,
the more morphine,
the less pain,
the slower your breathing.

You can stop short, in that bliss state.....but just a litttle less pain...and no breathing.

One of the side effects of living, is pain.
And we do all suffer it.


So..I'm still waiting for the support for existence, is bad.

I mentioned my grandchild pinwheeling down stairs,
the aftermath of a stillborn baby,
100's of kids in wheelchairs working through college degrees
so what is your support for an evil god?
(The "Good Book" does mention an evil god by the way)

 

[Freodin]

Morphine solves all pain.
The problem is though,
the more morphine,
the less pain,
the slower your breathing.

You can stop short, in that bliss state.....but just a litttle less pain...and no breathing.

One of the side effects of living, is pain.
And we do all suffer it.

Do you think that life is good because it includes pain? Or do you think that life is good in spite of pain?

So..I'm still waiting for the support for existence, is bad.

You might have noticed that I do not think that existence is bad. Nor is it good.

 

[SkyWriting]

Do you think that life is good because it includes pain? Or do you think that life is good in spite of pain?

Life requires pain in order to exist.
There is no seperate nerve system for pain.
It's all the same biological system.
Your mind blocks the pain that causes each heartbeat.

Just like you think the world is right side up.
But the image on your retina is completely inverted.
Your brain flips the image mentally. You are really
seeing everything upside down. (Pun noted.)

 

[Freodin]

Life requires pain in order to exist.
There is no seperate nerve system for pain.
It's all the same biological system.
Your mind blocks the pain from each heartbeat.

That's the way it is. You could say that it is because of "enviromental influence".

Do you think it is the way it should be?

 

[quatona]

One of the side effects of living, is pain.
And we do all suffer it.

Explain Heaven, then.

 

[Moral Orel]

But I am proving evidence that creation is good and you have not provided any.

I feel I provided a pretty detailed response to why creating something isn't good all by itself, and why creating something could actually be evil, which you snipped from this quote and didn't address at all.

 

[Chriliman]

Why would a good god create anything let alone give its creation free will?

Out of love and the desire to make good, loving realationships last forever.

Why would an evil God do that?

 

[2PhiloVoid]

First the disclaimer:

This is not a thread about God commanding and doing evil deeds in the Bible. This is a thought experiment and not accusatory in any way. I am not attempting to attack or defame God, I am putting this here to question the justification for believing that any god that might exist is all good.

With that aside, I'll get right into it. A summary from Wikipedia:

The Evil God Challenge demands explanations for why belief in an all-powerful all-good God is significantly more reasonable than belief in an all-powerful all-evil god. Most of the popular arguments for the existence of God give no clue to his moral character and thus appear, in isolation, to work just as well in support of an evil god as a good God.​

The Evil God Challenge was created by Stephen Law. He's written a paper on the topic here, and there is also a neat little video on YouTube that summarizes the concept, but I won't link to it here because it may contain images that certain viewers could find offensive. But I'll transcribe most of it here:

Many atheists argue the world contains too much suffering to be the creation of a good god. There are wars, diseases, and natural disasters; horrific human and animal suffering is built into the very fabric of the world we’re forced to inhabit. Isn’t this good evidence that even if there is a creator, he is not all powerful and all good?

Of course the faithful try to explain the suffering. Some talk about free will. They say God could have created us puppet beings that always behaved well. But if we’re god's puppets, we’re not responsible for what we do. God cut our strings so that we can freely choose to do good. Then some of us choose to do evil and cause suffering. That’s the price god pays for our free will. So have we shown that it’s reasonable to believe in god after all? I don’t think so.

Suppose that after a bump on the head i come to believe that the universe was created not by a good god, but an evil god. I believe there's a single all powerful creator who’s malice knows no bounds and who’s wickedness is beyond our comprehension. Who believes in a god like that? Almost no one. Why not? Because the world would look more like a torture chamber if it was created by such a powerful and wicked being. There's too much love and laughter and too many people being kind and helping each other for this to be the creation of an evil god. Yet notice, I can explain why my evil god allows good in the same way religious folk explain why their good god allows evil.

I can say my evil god could have made us puppet beings that always did bad things, but if we’re his puppets, we’re not responsible for what we do. That’s why evil god cut our strings and set us free to allow us to freely choose to do evil. Unfortunately for evil god some of them choose to do good deeds; thats the price evil god pays to allow moral evil. Have I shown that belief in an evil god isn’t absurd. No, of course not.

Sure, I can cook up such ingenious explanations to defend both belief in a good god and belief in an evil god, but still, we can be pretty sure there’s no evil god can’t we? So why can’t we be pretty sure theres no good god either? We may not know why the universe exists but surely we are justified in supposing it is not the creation of either of these two gods.​

So can anyone rise to the challenge and explain why, if there is a personal, intelligent creator of the universe, that such a being is significantly more likely to be good than he is to be evil?

I don't think anyone can "rise" to the challenge; faith in Christ is a kind of Rorschach Test, and how we see the existence and the nature of God will depend on the unique psychological patterns that we each have. For us to think that God and His Creation should somehow be empirically subject to our ethical scrutiny, apart from any revelation He might give us, is to me an axiological and epistemic quandry that often ends up in our [...place here the title of one of Stephen Law's more recent philosophy books].

Peace,
2PhiloVoid

 

[Halbhh]

Now that is... harsh.
I just told you a story that ended - ended! - in horrible pain, loss and death... and you wipe it away with "well, I found a pretty flower today, that means everything is rainbows."

I met this boy when I was serving my social service in a school for handicapped children. This place was "rife with people in wheelchairs". A lot of them just "normal" children... sometimes happy, sometimes sad, sometimes angry. A lot of them were in pain, physically and mentally. A lot of them died very young. Death trumps over all.

But I am sure they all would have gladly accepted all the "evil" in their life because of all the pretty flowers... that some of them could neither see nor feel nor smell.

Please consider post #29

 

[SkyWriting]

Explain Heaven, then.

Not earth, for sure.
Heaven is where your Spirit will reside if you have Faith in God.
Without Faith, likely you will be alone.

 

[SkyWriting]

What I'm getting at is that simply creating something isn't inherently good. I could even imagine creating something for the purposes of doing evil with it. Would creating it still be a good thing because creating is good? Imagine an inmate in prison creating a shiv for the sole purpose of stabbing an innocent guard. Is creating that shiv good because creating is good?

Yes, creating that shiv might be an amazing skill involving
inventiveness, persistence, and actually fun. I've done
this in boy scouts. There is nothing evil about making knives.
It is a great skill.

Now....evil perverts this admirable skill and uses it to harm others.
There are even museums that store these handmade items from prison
and celebrate their inventiveness and skill. Creation is considered good
even if it is from evil people. So sorry I failed to address this earlier!


Imagine the skill of creating a shiv out of toilet paper.
Even your co-prisoners would laugh.
Evil does not even appreciate evil unless it is highly skilled and moral.
Child rapists often die in prison. Bad does not appreciate true evil.
Jeffrey Dahmer died in prison. "Bad" people have their standards too.

 

[Moral Orel]

Out of love and the desire to make good, loving realationships last forever.

Why would an evil God do that?

Well an evil god wouldn't create for that reason, no. He would have different reasons. Wouldn't an evil god enjoy creating a world that creates cruel, hateful relationships that last forever though?

 

[Moral Orel]

Yes, creating that shiv might be an amazing skill involving
inventiveness, persistence, and actually fun. I've done
this in boy scouts. There is nothing evil about making knives.
It is a great skill.

Now....evil perverts this admirable skill and uses it to harm others.
There are even museums that store these handmade items from prison
and celebrate their inventiveness and skill. Creation is considered good
even if it is from evil people. So sorry I failed to address this earlier!


Imagine the skill of creating a shiv out of toilet paper.
Even your co-prisoners would laugh.
Evil does not even appreciate evil unless it is highly skilled and moral.
Child rapists often die in prison. Bad does not appreciate true evil.
Jeffrey Dahmer died in prison. "Bad" people have their standards too.

See you have to add people interacting with a created object in order for it to become good. That's why I talked about a creation with nothing in it except a pebble. Even if it's just beholding and appreciating something, you've made it so that good in creation only exists through interaction. If you need there to be people to interact with some created object in order for it to be good, then creating it isn't good in and of itself.

I said it was created for the "sole purpose" of stabbing that guard. So no one else saw it ever to appreciate it, and the inmate didn't derive enjoyment from the crafting process, only from the stabbing. Anything that "might" have happened that you mentioned, didn't happen It coming into existence didn't create some good, in fact, the world is a worse place for it existing because now there's one more murderer and one less innocent guard.

 

[jayem]

It’s more reasonable to believe in a good God because the Bible shows Him to be a good God.

But if God were evil, it's reasonable to assume he's also deceptive. Such a diety could have inspired the Bible's authors to portray him falsely as good. This god has also convinced gullible believers that we ourselves are responsible for bad things that happen, and that he can forgive us. This way he encourages people to worship him by disguising his true nature.

In keeping with the scam, a deceptive god would allow benevolence, love, compassion, and beauty to exist. Because if all of life is unmitigated ugliness and suffering, we wouldn't know anything else. God will answer prayers at times, because this maintains the facade. Similarly, the whole idea of salvation could be a ruse. Jesus's life and death were part of the plan. God can torment us with misery during earthly life, and all the while we're fooled into thinking that belief in Jesus will redeem us eternally after our death.

And why would a god create such an elaborate fraud? Just because he is evil. He enjoys anguish and despair. And he enjoys it even more if he's deceived us into thinking it's our own fault.

As I see it, the only answer to the Evil God challenge is faith. One just has to believe that God's nature is good. And I won't argue with faith.

 

[Hammster]

But if God were evil, it's reasonable to assume he's also deceptive. Such a diety could have inspired the Bible's authors to portray him falsely as good. This god has also convinced gullible believers that we ourselves are responsible for bad things that happen, and that he can forgive us. This way he encourages people to worship him by disguising his true nature.

In keeping with the scam, a deceptive god would allow benevolence, love, compassion, and beauty to exist. Because if all of life is unmitigated ugliness and suffering, we wouldn't know anything else. God will answer prayers at times, because this maintains the facade. Similarly, the whole idea of salvation could be a ruse. Jesus's life and death were part of the plan. God can torment us with misery during earthly life, and all the while we're fooled into thinking that belief in Jesus will redeem us eternally after our death.

And why would a god create such an elaborate fraud? Just because he is evil. He enjoys anguish and despair. And he enjoys it even more if he's deceived us into thinking it's our own fault.

As I see it, the only answer to the Evil God challenge is faith. One just has to believe that God's nature is good. And I won't argue with faith.

I would agree. I think trying to give reasons for anything about God to unbelievers is a waste of time. Faith comes by hearing. I am required to give a reason for the faith I have. I’m not required to convince you that God is real.

 

[Moral Orel]

I would agree. I think trying to give reasons for anything about God to unbelievers is a waste of time. Faith comes by hearing. I am required to give a reason for the faith I have. I’m not required to convince you that God is real.

I know it isn't a requirement, but it is kind of the point of the apologetics section, to try at least, isn't it?

 

[Moral Orel]

I don't think anyone can "rise" to the challenge; faith in Christ is a kind of Rorschach Test, and how we see the existence and the nature of God will depend on the unique psychological patterns that we each have. For us to think that God and His Creation should somehow be empirically subject to our ethical scrutiny, apart from any revelation He might give us, is to me an axiological and epistemic quandry that often ends up in our [...place here the title of one of Stephen Law's more recent philosophy books].

Peace,
2PhiloVoid

It's a good challenge, isn't it? If there's no way to show that it's more likely for the creator of the universe to be good than evil, is it even fair to call it "faith"? Instead of saying something like, "I have faith that God is good", wouldn't it be more accurate to say, "I hope God is good"? Which isn't entirely without Biblical basis: "share the reason for the hope in our hearts" and all that.