If there is a god is he evil?

[dastardly stem]

It is often argued that believers know God is there because of the good that exists all around us. If in response someone wonders, what of the bad that happens all around us? How does that suggest a God. There are three popular ways to address that from a believers perspective (I'm taking much of these thoughts from "The evil-god challenge", from "Cambridge University Press 2010. Religious Studies, 353-373, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals ... B25F649F27:

1. God gives people free will. In order for someone to truly be good, they must have an evil possibility. If not, then God is simply forcing people to do good and they really aren't choosing good, learning good, and being good. So, as it is, the argument for evil in existence is free will. God gives free will and free will is meaningless without evil choices happening or under consideration.

2. God needs to get people to desire second-order goods. In the face of travesty or natural disaster people or someone might desire bravery, for instance. As Stephen Law puts it:
"Take, for example, charity. Charity is a great virtue. Yet we can only be charitable if there exist others who are needy. Charity is a so-called second-order good that requires first-order evils like neediness and suffering (or at least their appearance) to exist. The second-order good outweighs the first order evils, which is why God allows them."

3. If there was only good, then people would not appreciate good because everything is good. God needs evil so people learn to recognize and appreciate good. This can be summed up as the appreciation argument.

There are other theodicies that have been proposed.
Ok. Let's reconsider all of this from an opposite perspective. Let us consider God, but not a good God but an evil God. All of these reasons can apply equally to it. If God is evil then we must ask, in a similar vain, why is there good? You see the presence of evil on the good God hypothesis is explainable by suggesting evil must be allowed.

You might say, that is absurd God is not or cannot be evil? I would ask why? Is God not the one who has commanded murder and slaughter (according to the Bible)? Is God not the one who claims to not have ever known believers? Has it not traditionally been true that God is the one who maintains life, chosing to end it as He pleases? Maybe the question is why do we assume God is good rather than evil?

If God is evil, then (1) He has to allow good, in order for people to choose the evil. No one is really evil if they are forced to be evil. They are simply robots, of sorts, doing exactly as God forces them. If God is evil, then (2) he must have a way for people to desire second-order evils by allowing respite from plagues or draughts. Or if the second-order evil is betrayal, betrayal does not exist without the good of trust and friendship. If God is evil, then (3) He allows good so people appreciate the evil. If everything was just evil, then we would not know anything but evil. So we need good to appreciate the evil that is God.

Consider (from Stephen Law, "The evil-god challenge"):

"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?"
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals ... B25F649F27

Why I normally find theodicies lacking, I wanted to point out even if we grant them, there is no real reason to trust the assumptions behind them. If you are in wonder of the beauty, and goodness and think it must be a God...then you ought to, for consistencies sake, wonder at the ugly and evil around and think it must be God.

[mentalgymnast]

If you are in wonder of the beauty, and goodness and think it must be a God...then you ought to, for consistencies sake, wonder at the ugly and evil around and think it must be God.

2 Nephi 2:11
For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my first-born in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility.

If you really want to get into the thick of it:

https://rsc.byu.edu/book-Mormon-second- ... all-things

If you’re like me you probably won’t make through the whole thing either out of choice or you will start to doze.

What I do think, however, is that your question shows a lack of trust in the success of a plan with opposition and free will at its core. Sure, it’s an interesting thought experiment to consider an evil god, but ultimately I think the argument will fail. Does a greater good come from all things being a “compound in one” or things acting and being acted upon? Which demonstrates a good god vs. an evil god to a greater extent?

Good god =
Evil god=

Which has the greater potential for success? Compound in one vs. acting and being acted upon.

Regards,
MG

[Lem]

It is often argued that believers know God is there because of the good that exists all around us. If in response someone wonders, what of the bad that happens all around us? How does that suggest a God. There are three popular ways to address that from a believers perspective (I'm taking much of these thoughts from "The evil-god challenge", from "Cambridge University Press 2010. Religious Studies, 353-373, https://www.cambridge.org/.../content/v ... 2509990369):

1. God gives people free will. In order for someone to truly be good, they must have an evil possibility. If not, then God is simply forcing people to do good and they really aren't choosing good, learning good, and being good. So, as it is, the argument for evil in existence is free will. God gives free will and free will is meaningless without evil choices happening or under consideration.

2. God needs to get people to desire second-order goods. In the face of travesty or natural disaster people or someone might desire bravery, for instance. As Stephen Law puts it:
"Take, for example, charity. Charity is a great virtue. Yet we can only be charitable if there exist others who are needy. Charity is a so-called second-order good that requires first-order evils like neediness and suffering (or at least their appearance) to exist. The second-order good outweighs the first order evils, which is why God allows them."

3. If there was only good, then people would not appreciate good because everything is good. God needs evil so people learn to recognize and appreciate good. This can be summed up as the appreciation argument.

There are other theodicies that have been proposed.
Ok. Let's reconsider all of this from an opposite perspective. Let us consider God, but not a good God but an evil God. All of these reasons can apply equally to it. If God is evil then we must ask, in a similar vain, why is there good? You see the presence of evil on the good God hypothesis is explainable by suggesting evil must be allowed.

You might say, that is absurd God is not or cannot be evil? I would ask why? Is God not the one who has commanded murder and slaughter (according to the Bible)? Is God not the one who claims to not have ever known believers? Has it not traditionally been true that God is the one who maintains life, chosing to end it as He pleases? Maybe the question is why do we assume God is good rather than evil?

If God is evil, then (1) He has to allow good, in order for people to choose the evil. No one is really evil if they are forced to be evil. They are simply robots, of sorts, doing exactly as God forces them. If God is evil, then (2) he must have a way for people to desire second-order evils by allowing respite from plagues or draughts. Or if the second-order evil is betrayal, betrayal does not exist without the good of trust and friendship. If God is evil, then (3) He allows good so people appreciate the evil. If everything was just evil, then we would not know anything but evil. So we need good to appreciate the evil that is God.

Consider (from Stephen Law, "The evil-god challenge"):

"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?"
https://www.cambridge.org/.../content/v ... 2509990369

Why I normally find theodicies lacking, I wanted to point out even if we grant them, there is no real reason to trust the assumptions behind them. If you are in wonder of the beauty, and goodness and think it must be a God...then you ought to, for consistencies sake, wonder at the ugly and evil around and think it must be God.

I like this thought experiment, D stem. Is there room to conclude the coexistence of an evil god and a good god with relatively equal powers, or would that complicate the initial consideration too much?

[Lem]

It is often argued that believers know God is there because of the good that exists all around us. If in response someone wonders, what of the bad that happens all around us? How does that suggest a God. There are three popular ways to address that from a believers perspective (I'm taking much of these thoughts from "The evil-god challenge", from "Cambridge University Press 2010. Religious Studies, 353-373, https://www.cambridge.org/.../content/v ... 2509990369):

I can't access your link for some reason, dstem, is there another ?

[Dr Exiled]

I find these questions to be interesting but frustrating at the same time. There isn't a definitive answer to the problem of evil in my mind as we cannot see beyond the grave. It looks like a great reason to eliminate the God concept at least how humans envision it. Even so, the evil we see could be just part of the experience we wanted to have and that when we die we discover that the point of life was to see how we would act and react but without all the eternal punishment and hierarchy nonsense Mormons love?

[Moksha]

1. God gives people free will. In order for someone to truly be good, they must have an evil possibility.

What if this is a misdefinition of God? What if He/She/It is a celestial mechanics kind of guy? An unmoved mover who lets that which was set in motion sort itself out?

Our framework for defining God might be fine for us, but what if it doesn't work for all of humanity or let alone a Deity? Would those on Proxima Centauri b or even the Q Continuum (not those crazy Trump people) have a different viewpoint?

On the other hand, Good having an Evil opposite seems like a workable yin-yang idea.

[honorentheos]

To ants, existence around humans includes gifts of abundance and catastrophies of destruction. To the humans involved, most of these are unnoticed accidents.

In an indifferent universe, good and evil are simply expressions of human preference for certain outcomes over others. Except when it comes to the actions of other humans. When we are gone, good and evil will go with us.

[Gadianton]

Thinking it through like that Stem is really working out what does good and evil actually mean. by definition, god can't be evil. but we can ask how could it look like he allows or authors evil but it really isn't evil when you take the whole thing into account?

Our long departed friend EA shared this with me a very, very long time ago, and It's still a good one to bring up once a year or so:

https://infidels.org/library/modern/mar ... /five.html

This deals with pretty much every practical rationalization conceivable.

[Lem]

Thinking it through like that Stem is really working out what does good and evil actually mean. by definition, god can't be evil. but we can ask how could it look like he allows or authors evil but it really isn't evil when you take the whole thing into account?

Our long departed friend EA shared this with me a very, very long time ago, and It's still a good one to bring up once a year or so:

https://infidels.org/library/modern/mar ... /five.html

This deals with pretty much every practical rationalization conceivable.

Wow. That was brutal to read. But it makes the point. This one hit especially hard, as it is the reason given here most recently for why things are hidden:

"I would have defended Ms. K," said the sixth officer, who was notoriously careful about staying out of the public eye, "but it simply was not feasible. You see, I want everyone to freely choose to believe in me. But if I were to step in every time someone was about to be raped or murdered, then the evidence would be so clear-cut that everyone would be forced to believe in me. Can you imagine a more diabolical infringement upon their free wills? Obviously, it was better for me to back off and let Ms. K be raped and murdered. Now everyone can freely choose to believe that there is this extraordinary cop out there who loves them like his own children."

[Physics Guy]

The only Biblical answers to the problem of evil that I have identified are the next-to-last scene in the book of Job, where God says that humans just have no idea what it takes to run a universe, and the episode where Jesus gives sight to the man who was born blind, as a parable to show how overwhelmingly greater good can result from evil.

These are essentially the answers offered by Officers 5 and 9 in "The Tale of the Twelve Officers". They are answers, though, that work a lot better for an actual God than for a police officer. I think the Tale of Twelve is abusing the rhetorical device of the allegory, here, because these two answers only seem ridiculous for a human police officer. If the police officers were superhuman aliens like Star Trek's Q, then answers 5 and 9 wouldn't be so absurd.

The Tale of Twelve seems effective because the notion of God as a cop is a reasonable analogy up to a point, but I think you're really missing a point about the theological problem of evil if your charge against God relies essentially on overlooking superhuman knowledge and power. Both these 5,9 / Job,Jesus answers seem plausible to me as the way things might look from God's point of view, though they hardly resolve the problem for humans who can't see any even comparable good emerging from some evils, or imagine why the universe might break down so badly in some cases when it otherwise seems to run fairly well.

A God who can arrange a tailor-made afterlife has infinite powers of recompense. I can't recall whether it's a Quran verse or just a Muslim tradition but the concept is that just a few moments in heaven are enough to make one forget that one has ever suffered at all. Unfortunately for human argument on the subject, we have no hard information about any afterlife, but I think this issue is unavoidably on the table if one is trying to convict God of evil. It's close to a get-out-of-jail-free card for God, because I think it does logically counter the otherwise overwhelming charge that some evils are just too big.

Nobody is going to say that little kids occasionally scraping their knees proves that there is no good God. That level of evil seems pretty bad at the time to the children involved but adults know good things in the world that far outweigh the scraped knees. It doesn't seem too hard to suppose that maybe a universe that allows some scraped knees could really be a lot better than one that sacrifices other possibilities in order to ensure that scraped knees never happen. Unfortunately for the clear resolution of our discussion of evil, however, the scope of possibilities available to God is so great that even evils that overwhelm human adults might be like scraped knees in that larger perspective.

We don't know, and I don't think we could expect to know, what it would actually cost for God to prevent bad things from happening, or what opportunities for good God may have. I can only reply to Job's whirlwind, "No, I've never commanded the morning," and to Jesus, "Well, I sure hope you're right."