THE EVIL GOD CHALLENGE - forthcoming in Religious Studies

POSTSCRIPT:

My Paper "The Evil God Challenge" is now available online at the CUP journals page http://journals.cambridge.org/repo_A72V8TEm

This is the final, published version, appearing in Religious Studies shortly. PDF VERSION.

THE EVIL GOD CHALLENGE

Stephen Law

NB Note COPYRIGHT RESTS WITH CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS. This is forthcoming in Religious Studies.

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.