Evil God and anti-theodicy

[FrustratedFool]

Isn't the idea of an omnimalevolent God as reasonable as an omnibenevolent God, and doesn't a reverse theodicy work just as well to justify the problem of good as the problem of evil?

And if so, isn't this a reductio ad absurdum argument against theism?

If you posit that God is omnimalevolent, I suppose you'd have to solve a reverse version of Epicurus's challenge:

Is God willing to prevent good, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. 
Is he able to prevent good, but not willing? Then he is not malevolent. 
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh good things? 
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

The same defeators of the logical problem of evil could be used for the problem of good (freewill defence; soul making; morally sufficient reason).

The evidential problem seems even easier to refute, since it seems good is less intuitively gratuitous than evil.

For my response, I'd just say that Evil-God is able to prevent good but prefers to allow it so that the sum total of suffering will be even greater in that people will know what they're missing, and have formed love connections to others, to make their eternal suffering all the worse.

[Belacqua]

For my response, I'd just say that Evil-God is able to prevent good but prefers to allow it so that the sum total of suffering will be even greater in that people will know what they're missing, and have formed love connections to others, to make their eternal suffering all the worse.

That does seem like a reverse version of what some Christians say: that there must be evil in the world so that we can know what is good.

[MarcusA]

I know nothing. - Socrates

Plea bargain?

It's just commonsense.

[FrustratedFool]

Yup. Evil-God has an immorally-sufficient reason for allowing evil as part of this vale of soul-breaking. He also permits freewill, which necessitates some good, so that evil and suffering can be truly maximised and that vices like wrath, gluttony and lust can be more fully established. After all, hurting robots isn't as evil as hurting freewilled beings, and having robots commit sins isnt as evil as having agents freely choose to commit rape and murder etc.

[GrandizerII]

Isn't the idea of an omnimalevolent God as reasonable as an omnibenevolent God, and doesn't a reverse theodicy work just as well to justify the problem of good as the problem of evil?

And if so, isn't this a reductio ad absurdum argument against theism?

I think one of my struggles with this kind of argument is what do we mean by "evil God" exactly? Do we mean a maximal being that is consistently evil in the human sense, thus always lying, never showing love, and constantly enjoying the suffering of others? It seems to me that as problematic as the idea of a loving God may be, there appear to be more problems with having an evil God instead. I find that being consistently good (in the human sense) is more conceivable than being consistently evil.

Also, it seems like an evil God would be less likely to create a world like this in which we get to experience love and great companionship and enjoy all sorts of fun activities. Why even let us have so much fun?

Furthermore, for a lot of theists, God being good isn't anything like how us humans can be good. In fact, under Christian theism, God is the reason why anything is good. So replacing the word "good" with "evil" or "benevolent" with "malevolent" isn't really going to do anything effective; it's just substituting words.

What do you think?

[MarcusA]

Methinks FrustratedFool is trying to make a moral point. Good luck to her.

[FrustratedFool]

Isn't the idea of an omnimalevolent God as reasonable as an omnibenevolent God, and doesn't a reverse theodicy work just as well to justify the problem of good as the problem of evil?

And if so, isn't this a reductio ad absurdum argument against theism?

I think one of my struggles with this kind of argument is what do we mean by "evil God" exactly? Do we mean a maximal being that is consistently evil in the human sense, thus always lying, never showing love, and constantly enjoying the suffering of others? It seems to me that as problematic as the idea of a loving God may be, there appear to be more problems with having an evil God instead. I find that being consistently good (in the human sense) is more conceivable than being consistently evil.

Also, it seems like an evil God would be less likely to create a world like this in which we get to experience love and great companionship and enjoy all sorts of fun activities. Why even let us have so much fun?

Furthermore, for a lot of theists, God being good isn't anything like how us humans can be good. In fact, under Christian theism, God is the reason why anything is good. So replacing the word "good" with "evil" or "benevolent" with "malevolent" isn't really going to do anything effective; it's just substituting words.

What do you think?

I don't think there's any conceptual issue, in that they seem equivalent. And there's certainly no problem explaining fun with an anti-theodicy in the same way that theists would explain evil. And also, the issue about substitution seems moot since in both cases we'd argue it was only an analogous good/evil based on human perception.

I think your strongest (only?) argument would be whether a maximally evil being is as coherent as a maximally good being (if we pull the Augustinian trick of defining evil in terms of an absence of good then doubly so). Should we examine this point in more detail? I think it the most profitable avenue to explore.

[MarcusA]

Only Christians believe the Devil rules the world.

[Belacqua]

I don't think there's any conceptual issue, in that they seem equivalent.  And there's certainly no problem explaining fun with an anti-theodicy in the same way that theists would explain evil.  And also, the issue about substitution seems moot since in both cases we'd argue it was only an analogous good/evil based on human perception.

I think your strongest (only?) argument would be whether a maximally evil being is as coherent as a maximally good being (if we pull the Augustinian trick of defining evil in terms of an absence of good then doubly so).  Should we examine this point in more detail?  I think it the most profitable avenue to explore.

We might think that evil god and good god are equally possible if we are talking about the anthropomorphic version which is so popular in these discussions. This view pictures God as a big guy in the sky whose will functions more or less like a person's does. 

If we go all the way back to Plato, though, and the Neoplatonic Christians, it makes less sense. As I understand it, they largely start with the view that we desire the good. Every action we take, we take because we think it will be good in some way. So all of our desires are aimed toward the good, and if we do aim toward what's evil it's because we are mistaken in our judgment; we have miscalculated. (Even a so-called Satanist or someone like that, who claims he wants evil, does so because paradoxically he thinks it will be good for him in some way -- it will show up his enemies or stick it to his parents, or whatever.) 

So in this view there is a chain of good acts, which end in a highest good. The Form of the Good, in Plato's language. The Form of the Good is God. 

As you rightly say, in this view evil is deprivation. There is no Form of Evil, only lack of Good. And when we talk about God's will, it isn't as if he wants something, in the way that people want things. What we call God's will is really just people aiming directly and uncomplicatedly toward the good. 

(And I realize my description is oversimplified -- after all, Plato and Dante, in their different ways, wrote a hell of a lot of pages to explicate the idea more fully.)

So this seems to me less easy to flip. In this view it's harder to make the end of the Great Chain of Being into evil instead of good.

[FrustratedFool]

@Belacqua

I'm not sure I grasp this view of God, nor see exactly what makes it harder to flip

So, on this view, what is goodness?