Abstract:The Evil‐god challenge attempts to undermine classical monotheism by arguing that because the existence of an evil god is similar in reasonableness to the existence of a good god, the onus is on the theist to justify their belief in the latter over the former. In the Part I paper, I defined the Evil‐god challenge, distinguished between several types of Evil‐god challenge, and presented its history and recent developments. In this paper, I describe the merits of the challenge, outline and address the main objec… Show more
“…We shall now explain why the bracketing move fails. The support for (6) consists in the arguments offered by Law (), Collins () and Lancaster‐Thomas (2018a, 2018b). We shall come to those in due course, but for now, let's suppose that (6) is true.…”
Section: Intrinsic Coherence Asymmetrymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…We can still ask theists to explain why, if they would otherwise reject the evil‐god hypothesis as highly unreasonable, do they not take the same view regarding the good‐god hypothesis? ( Law, , p. 372; Lancaster‐Thomas, 2018b, p. 7)…”
Section: Intrinsic Coherence Asymmetrymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The evil God challenge is an argumentative strategy that has been pursued by a number of philosophers in recent years (Madden & Hare, ; Haight & Haight, ; Cahn, ; Millican, ; New, ; Law, ; Lancaster‐Thomas, 2018b; Collins, ) . The challenge has also gained considerable traction at the popular level .…”
mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Lancaster‐Thomas (2018b, p. 7), for instance, suggests that showing GG is impossible due to internal incoherence would restore the symmetry with GG.…”
mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…We say this because it has been acknowledged by EG defender Lancaster‐Thomas (2018b, p. 2) that most of the literature is negative towards EG, and therefore, if we are to judge a view's worth based on the number of adherents, it has then the EG challenge comes out very poorly. We, however, think defenders of EG would like this conclusion to be resisted, and therefore, they should also resist ignoring ontological arguments just because not all theists think they are successful.…”
The evil God challenge is an argumentative strategy that has been pursued by a number of philosophers in recent years. It is apt to be understood as a parody argument: a wholly evil, omnipotent and omniscient God is absurd, as both theists and atheists will agree. But according to the challenge, belief in evil God is about as reasonable as belief in a wholly good, omnipotent and omniscient God; the two hypotheses are roughly epistemically symmetrical. Given this symmetry, thesis belief in an evil God and belief in a good God are taken to be similarly preposterous. In this paper, we argue that the challenge can be met, suggesting why the three symmetries that need to hold between evil God and good God – intrinsic, natural theology and theodicy symmetries – can all be broken. As such, we take it that the evil God challenge can be met.
“…We shall now explain why the bracketing move fails. The support for (6) consists in the arguments offered by Law (), Collins () and Lancaster‐Thomas (2018a, 2018b). We shall come to those in due course, but for now, let's suppose that (6) is true.…”
Section: Intrinsic Coherence Asymmetrymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…We can still ask theists to explain why, if they would otherwise reject the evil‐god hypothesis as highly unreasonable, do they not take the same view regarding the good‐god hypothesis? ( Law, , p. 372; Lancaster‐Thomas, 2018b, p. 7)…”
Section: Intrinsic Coherence Asymmetrymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The evil God challenge is an argumentative strategy that has been pursued by a number of philosophers in recent years (Madden & Hare, ; Haight & Haight, ; Cahn, ; Millican, ; New, ; Law, ; Lancaster‐Thomas, 2018b; Collins, ) . The challenge has also gained considerable traction at the popular level .…”
mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Lancaster‐Thomas (2018b, p. 7), for instance, suggests that showing GG is impossible due to internal incoherence would restore the symmetry with GG.…”
mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…We say this because it has been acknowledged by EG defender Lancaster‐Thomas (2018b, p. 2) that most of the literature is negative towards EG, and therefore, if we are to judge a view's worth based on the number of adherents, it has then the EG challenge comes out very poorly. We, however, think defenders of EG would like this conclusion to be resisted, and therefore, they should also resist ignoring ontological arguments just because not all theists think they are successful.…”
The evil God challenge is an argumentative strategy that has been pursued by a number of philosophers in recent years. It is apt to be understood as a parody argument: a wholly evil, omnipotent and omniscient God is absurd, as both theists and atheists will agree. But according to the challenge, belief in evil God is about as reasonable as belief in a wholly good, omnipotent and omniscient God; the two hypotheses are roughly epistemically symmetrical. Given this symmetry, thesis belief in an evil God and belief in a good God are taken to be similarly preposterous. In this paper, we argue that the challenge can be met, suggesting why the three symmetries that need to hold between evil God and good God – intrinsic, natural theology and theodicy symmetries – can all be broken. As such, we take it that the evil God challenge can be met.
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