The Evil God Challenge is a thought experiment. The challenge is to explain why an all-good god should be more likely than an all-evil god. Those who advance this challenge assert that, unless there is a satisfactory answer to the challenge, there is no reason to accept God is good or can provide moral guidance.
Contents
Origin
Papers by Stephen Cahn, Peter Millican, Edward Stein Christopher New, and Charles B Daniels, explored the notion of an 'anti-God'—an omnipotent, omniscient God who is all evil. The Evil God challenge was developed at length and in several formats by the philosopher Stephen Law.
Supporting the greater likeliness of an omnimalevolent creator, in 2015, John Zande published an extended argument for the Evil God thesis, arguing that the irresistible, self-complicating nature of this universe not only resolves the Problem of Good, but establishes unignorable teleological evidence for the wicked disposition of the Creator. Stephen Law noted this work to be an intriguing development in the theology of the Evil God.
The challenge
The Evil God Challenge is to explain 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. Most of us consider belief in an evil god absurd, so why is belief in a good god considerably less absurd (i.e. at least not unreasonable)? An obvious answer is - there is too much good in the world (love, laughter, rainbows) for this to be the creation of an evil God. But if that is true, why isn't the existence of vast amounts of suffering (including animal suffering over hundreds of millions of years) equally good evidence against a good God? Surely, while not knowing why the universe exists, we can still reasonably rule out both these two god hypotheses. Of course theists defend belief in a good God against this objection by devising theodicies - explanations for the suffering - and appealing to God's mysterious ways. However, as Stephen Law and others point out, both these strategies appear to work equally well in defence of belief in an evil god.
Criticisms and responses
Several criticisms and responses to the Evil God Challenge have been presented. William Lane Craig, Steve Wykstra, Dan Howard-Snyder, and Mike Rea have all suggested that the evident presence of good in the world makes impossible the notion of an all-evil, omnipotent God. Law contends that even if an evil God is logically untenable, if we would nevertheless rule out an evil god in any case based on observed goods, then shouldn't we similarly rule out a good god on the basis of observed evils.
Max Andrews objects to Law's contention here not by denying the existence of evil, but by denying the existence of evil as Law defines it. In general, Law's challenge is only valid if evil is defined as "equal and opposite" to good: the "Evil God Challenge" is premised not upon "the existence of evil", but upon a peculiar belief about what evil "is", a belief Law borrows from the "religious fundamentalist" described in the quotation above. Andrews instead adopts Augustine's definition of evil not as "equal and opposite" to good, and thus as the presence of some "thing", but rather as an absence of good, and thus as something with no nature of its own: according to this definition, an evil God and a good God are not comparable, making the line of argument involved in the "Challenge" meaningless. The comparison between a good God and an evil God according to this definition would be like a comparison between apples and no apples. Andrews further suggests, given this definition of evil, the notion of an all-evil God is incoherent, since such a God would be unable to imagine everything he did was evil.
Of course, it is equally possible to define "good" as nothing but a temporary reduction in evil and suffering, and therefore as something with no nature of its own—"equally possible" in that the merits of this definition could be debated in the same way as those of any other. The point to be taken from Andrews's refutation is that a particular, otherwise contested definition of "good" is taken for granted by the "Evil God Challenge". Law's challenge cannot function as a general challenge to all people who believe or disbelieve in a "Good God" writ large. It is only a challenge to people who, like Law and his "religious fundamentalist", believe or disbelieve in the "Good God" of a universe where good and evil are equal and opposite. Since not all people—neither all theists nor all atheists—accept that good and evil are equal and opposite, not all people will accept Law's challenge as a challenge to the belief in a "Good God." In other words, the "Evil God Challenge", far from being purely "atheistic", is premised upon a controversial theological belief about the nature of evil.
Rebutting Andrews's characterization of evil as presented in his "A Response to the Problem of an ‘Evil God’ as Raised by Stephen Law", John Zande argued that maximum evil (identified as The Owner of All Infernal Names: a metaphysically necessary, maximally powerful being who does not share His creation with any other comparable spirit) is not, as Andrews proposes, "maximally selfish", hateful, vengeful, or even hostile, rather best described as intensely pragmatic and thoroughly observant of His needs; promoting, defending, and even admiring life in its struggle to persist and self-adorn. As presented, maximum evil is not, therefore, an Ouroboros on a colossal scale, hopelessly given over to self-indulgence and destined to defile itself and anything it imagined into being, for a world driven only by impetuous brutality would resemble more a raging, super-heated, short-lived bonfire than a secure, creative, and ultimately profitable marketplace desired by a Creator who, above all other things, seeks to maximize His pleasure over time.
Peter Forrest has suggested an evil God is less likely than a good God, because the term ‘good’ is intrinsically linked to the notion of ‘God’ in a way that ‘evil’ is not. Edward Feser has argued with Law from a similar position. According to these arguments, an evil God, whatever this might be, would simply not be God.