The Evil God Challenge

[Chesterton]

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.

I don't think it's a good challenge for reasons set out by C. S. Lewis. It's a Christian idea that there really is no such thing as evil, in and of itself. All evil is just perverted good, or going about good the wrong way. So that would mean there has to be, initially, something good to pervert. You can't have a perversion of something that doesn't exist, as you can't have something "abnormal" without first having the "normal" for it to be compared to. That would mean the First Cause, or Prime Mover, or God, would have to be good. Good is the original state of things in the Christian view.

 

[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.

What specifically would you define as "showing," Nick?

I ask because for me to have another person "show" his faith TO ME means that he presents an elaborate, maybe ongoing, account of how 1,001 various pieces of existence are all laid out and seemingly connected in his mind, including to some extent how Christ fits into the center of all of THAT. Even with that, I also believe that each Christian has unique epistemic elements in his or her own perceptions supplied by God.

So, my guess is you and I have different ideas as to what qualifies as "having been shown." [Of course, you and I've already had a past taste of how we each respectively approach ethical issues and the existence of God ... and the differences that lie therein.]

I don't 'hope' God is good in some modern, colloquial way, and from my vantage point, Jesus Christ IS Good and Holy, and I have full hope in the fullest sense that the Koine Greek, that Paul used, can mean; moreover, I'll most likely continue to think this no matter what Stephen Law contrives for us to "consider." [And yes, I do have his latest book which I bought a year or two ago, so I'm familiar with his various arguments.]

Peace,
2PhiloVoid

 

[quatona]

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

The question is: Will we be alive in heaven?

 

[Moral Orel]

I don't think it's a good challenge for reasons set out by C. S. Lewis. It's a Christian idea that there really is no such thing as evil, in and of itself. All evil is just perverted good, or going about good the wrong way. So that would mean there has to be, initially, something good to pervert. You can't have a perversion of something that doesn't exist, as you can't have something "abnormal" without first having the "normal" for it to be compared to. That would mean the First Cause, or Prime Mover, or God, would have to be good. Good is the original state of things in the Christian view.

I believe in neutral, though. Neutral can be turned to good or to evil. Something that has been created isn't inherently good, without purpose or use it is still just neutral. Consider even Genesis 1:1-2. At that point, God hasn't said anything is good yet, not until He creates light does he say it is good.

So an evil god can create a universe, and the life within it, for the purpose of spreading hate, and violence, and suffering, and evil, and creating was never good because the intent and the purpose was never good.

 

[ToddNotTodd]

What standard are they using? Where did they get this standard from?

Well, for me the standard would be no suffering at all. And I got that standard from inside my head...

 

[Silmarien]

An evil God seems to be something of a contradiction of terms, since if God is not good, there is no real foundation of values. Human morality is merely a byproduct of evolution, and God becomes amoral. If morality is an illusion, God is not evil, as there is no such thing as evil.

The only scenario in which objective morality is saved and yet God could be evil is the one in which he intentionally gave our species a moral imperative completely at odds with his own nature. In this case, I don't think you could just turn around the traditional answers to the Problem of Evil and say that an evil God would wish that his creatures freely choose evil, since the concepts of responsibility and freedom fall apart once our values become worse than meaningless. There is no reason to expect an evil God to care about responsibility and freedom. Quite the opposite, perhaps! Every rationale we could think to subscribe to this God's actions breaks down because everything about us would be backwards.

The more coherent options, as far as I'm concerned, are a good and an amoral God. One that's working on blue and orange morality or no morality at all, for example, seems a real possibility, but one that would lay down moral imperatives completely against its own interests is a bit of bizarre mental gymnastics.

 

[jayem]

I don't think it's a good challenge for reasons set out by C. S. Lewis. It's a Christian idea that there really is no such thing as evil, in and of itself. All evil is just perverted good, or going about good the wrong way. So that would mean there has to be, initially, something good to pervert. You can't have a perversion of something that doesn't exist, as you can't have something "abnormal" without first having the "normal" for it to be compared to. That would mean the First Cause, or Prime Mover, or God, would have to be good. Good is the original state of things in the Christian view.

But why can't evil be, as you say, the "normal" state? (A better term might be the default state.) And good, therefore exists when the default state is disabled, or attenuated. I know this is a psychologically difficult idea. But I see no logical barrier to it.

 

[jayem]

The only scenario in which objective morality is saved and yet God could be evil is the one in which he intentionally gave our species a moral imperative completely at odds with his own nature. In this case, I don't think you could just turn around the traditional answers to the Problem of Evil and say that an evil God would wish that his creatures freely choose evil, since the concepts of responsibility and freedom fall apart once our values become worse than meaningless. There is no reason to expect an evil God to care about responsibility and freedom. Quite the opposite, perhaps! Every rationale we could think to subscribe to this God's actions breaks down because everything about us would be backwards.

Not necessarily. An evil god would allow some good. He would motivate some people to be kind, loving, generous, and beneficent. As I stated, if everything was unrelenting misery, then we wouldn't know anything different. If anything, it becomes more painful when we see good people suffering or falling victim to wickedness. Which would give an evil deity even more pleasure.

Not to mention that if everyone was unceasingly evil, then fairly soon we would severely depopulate our planet, or very possibly extinct ourselves. It would be lights out. Game over. And what pleasure would an evil god get from that?

 

[Moral Orel]

An evil God seems to be something of a contradiction of terms, since if God is not good, there is no real foundation of values. Human morality is merely a byproduct of evolution, and God becomes amoral.

I'll stop you there. If god is evil, then there is a foundation of values, just not the values you think they should be. If you disagree with evil god on what values should be, it doesn't make evil god amoral instead.

There are some things in the Bible I disagree with. Does that mean that the God of the Bible is amoral because I developed my values differently than His? Of course not. It just means we disagree.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

But why can't evil be, as you say, the "normal" state? (A better term might be the default state.) And good, therefore exists when the default state is disabled, or attenuated. I know this is a psychologically difficult idea. But I see no logical barrier to it.

Well, is the default state of an organism not to seek that which is 'good' for it? Is it not seeking to correct deficits, or fulfill desires in the higher forms?
Life constantly needs to be sustained or it will decay and die. The default state of Life is therefore to attempt to keep on living, to seek what is 'good' or sustaining to it. If this was not the default, then Life would not exist as such: the default of the living can hardly be construed as the dead, its opposite.

Our desires are backed by this simple attempt to reach something we conceive as 'good' for us - some perceived or actual need we wish to be filled. Often this is nothing of the sort, an attempt to reach an excess thereof beyond our needs or impinging on the 'good' of others for the sake of our own. This is evil, which by nature is merely excessive attempt toward our perceived 'good' or one inimical to the 'good' of others. Even serial killers kill to feel an emotion or fill a need, trying to chase a 'good' as it were, by perverted means. Evil cannot exist in isolation, only as a mirror or attempt toward the a perceived Good.

 

[Moral Orel]

Which God, an evil or a good, will then give these commands to us --

"Love one another."

"Love your neighbor as yourself."

"Forgive....not seven times, but seventy times seven times."

As commandments with emphasis and warnings of consequences for disobeying, and even repeated?

Are these emphatic instructions supporting evil or good?

For the sake of the challenge, I've accepted arguments such as the Teleological Argument or the Kalam's Cosmological argument as premises to believe in an intelligent designer behind the universe. Proving that this intelligent designer wrote the Bible is a whole other claim altogether. Notice that whenever I refer to the evil god, I never say the "evil God". The only place you'll see them capitalized together is when stating the title of the challenge itself: "The Evil God Challenge".

 

[Hammster]

I believe in neutral, though. Neutral can be turned to good or to evil. Something that has been created isn't inherently good, without purpose or use it is still just neutral. Consider even Genesis 1:1-2. At that point, God hasn't said anything is good yet, not until He creates light does he say it is good.

So an evil god can create a universe, and the life within it, for the purpose of spreading hate, and violence, and suffering, and evil, and creating was never good because the intent and the purpose was never good.

On what basis would that be evil?

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Not necessarily. An evil god would allow some good. He would motivate some people to be kind, loving, generous, and beneficent. As I stated, if everything was unrelenting misery, then we wouldn't know anything different. If anything, it becomes more painful when we see good people suffering or falling victim to wickedness. Which would give an evil deity even more pleasure.

Not to mention that if everyone was unceasingly evil, then fairly soon we would severely depopulate our planet, or very possibly extinct ourselves. It would be lights out. Game over. And what pleasure would an evil god get from that?

...how interesting it is that the Bible says that God takes NO PLEASURE in the death of the wicked. So, case solved .....

 

[SkyWriting]

Well, for me the standard would be no suffering at all. And I got that standard from inside my head...

The nerve system that produces your eyesight is the same system
for your ears, and touch and pain. There is no seperate system
to produce pain or suffering. It's all the same nerve system.

If you wish to stop pain, use morphine. When all the pain is gone,
then you will stop breathing, but that's just a minor side effect.

 

[cloudyday2]

Becasue good is creative, and evil is incapable of creating.
Evil can only corrupt that which is good.
There is no other version of evil that exists on it's own.
If you can explain any evil that is not a corrupter of what already exists, try.

How do we define create vs. destroy? Often the new creation destroys the old.

 

[Silmarien]

Not necessarily. An evil god would allow some good. He would motivate some people to be kind, loving, generous, and beneficent. As I stated, if everything was unrelenting misery, then we wouldn't know anything different. If anything, it becomes more painful when we see good people suffering or falling victim to wickedness. Which would give an evil deity even more pleasure.

Not to mention that if everyone was unceasingly evil, then fairly soon we would severely depopulate our planet, or very possibly extinct ourselves. It would be lights out. Game over. And what pleasure would an evil god get from that?

You're still looking at an evil God from the perspective of theology that assumes a good God. Why would an evil God care that we didn't know anything different? Why would we expect an evil God to differentiate between good and evil people? Why would an evil God not derive pleasure from extinction events?

I'll stop you there. If god is evil, then there is a foundation of values, just not the values you think they should be. If you disagree with evil god on what values should be, it doesn't make evil god amoral instead.

There are some things in the Bible I disagree with. Does that mean that the God of the Bible is amoral because I developed my values differently than His? Of course not. It just means we disagree.

There are things that happen in the Bible that I disagree with too. Given that there is good reason to believe that much of the Old Testament is mythology, it likely has nothing to do with God's morality one way or the other and everything to do with the values held by ancient societies.

There isn't a foundation for our values if our values are just floating in the wind. If God is evil, we should think that evil is good and good is evil. Since we do not, I do not think you guys understand how close you get to Cartesian Demon territory with this line of reasoning. If an evil God sees fit to toy with our concept of morality just because, maybe he is toying with other aspects of the way we see the world as well. Maybe there is no world and nothing else. Maybe there is only you and your evil God putting on a show.

 

[Moral Orel]

There isn't a foundation for our values if our values are just floating in the wind. If God is evil, we should think that evil is good and good is evil. Since we do not, I do not think you guys understand how close you get to Cartesian Demon territory with this line of reasoning. If an evil God sees fit to toy with our concept of morality just because, maybe he is toying with other aspects of the way we see the world as well. Maybe there is no world and nothing else. Maybe there is only you and your evil God putting on a show.

Why do you use words like "our" and "we"? Surely you just mean "you and me", right? Because there is no moral that is universally held by all people, so whether god is good or evil, there are people in disagreement with god. For everything that you call evil, there is someone out there who thinks it is good. So how does that affect any god, good or evil?

And whoever said "evil god sees fit to toy with our concept of morality just because"? Evil god wants as much evil as possible because he is evil, there is no "just because". If there was only one other being and evil god, there would be less evil than lots of beings and evil god.

 

[Moral Orel]

On what basis would that be evil?

On what basis would it be evil to create a universe for the purpose of spreading evil, as well as other undesirable things? Is that your question?

 

[Hammster]

On what basis would it be evil to create a universe for the purpose of spreading evil, as well as other undesirable things? Is that your question?

More like, on what basis are you calling it evil?

 

[Moral Orel]

More like, on what basis are you calling it evil?

Creating a universe for the purpose of spreading evil could somehow not be evil? It seems self evident the same way spreading love would be loving, and spreading hate would be hateful. I'm afraid I don't understand the objection.