The evil god challenge

Source: Could God Be Evil?, Alex O’Connor, 17:10, uploaded 2020-12-04.

Stephen Law’s evil god challenge asks why common theodicies should make a perfectly good god more plausible than a perfectly evil one when the same arguments can be reversed.

From the problem of evil to the problem of good

The video begins with traditional monotheism’s joint claim that God is both omnipotent and perfectly good. J. L. Mackie’s familiar objection is that such a being would want to remove evil and possess the power to remove it. Cancer, murder, cruelty, and other apparently needless suffering therefore require explanation.

Theistic answers to this problem are often called theodicies. They do not usually deny suffering. They argue that a good God could have morally sufficient reasons to permit it: freedom, the possibility of higher goods, or the contrast required to understand goodness.

O’Connor then introduces a maximally evil creator. The suggestion initially seems ridiculous because the world contains love, beauty, laughter, safety, and people living comfortable lives. A perfectly evil and omnipotent being appears incompatible with so much good. That immediate response creates the mirror problem of good.

The symmetry

The problem of evil asks why an omnipotent, perfectly good god permits suffering. The problem of good asks the mirror question: why would an omnipotent, perfectly evil god permit love, beauty, courage, comfort, and joy?

Most believers dismiss an evil god because ordinary goodness makes the hypothesis absurd. Law’s challenge is that ordinary suffering should then count with equal force against a good god unless there is an independent reason to break the symmetry.

Law is not asking anyone to worship the evil creator or claiming that good and evil gods are equally plausible in every respect. He isolates the structure of the standard defenses. If a defense makes observed evil compatible with perfect goodness, can its reversed form make observed goodness compatible with perfect evil?

Reversing three theodicies

Free will

A good god permits the freedom to do evil because coerced goodness and love have no moral value.

Reversed, an evil god permits the freedom to do good because coerced cruelty lacks genuine moral depravity. Free agents can betray and harm one another in ways puppets cannot.

The reversed argument depends on moral responsibility. An evil god could populate the world with puppets that always behave unpleasantly, but their behavior would lack the voluntary selfishness that makes an act properly cruel. Allowing people to choose kindness is the cost of making their betrayals and acts of malice their own.

Higher-order values

A good god permits danger and suffering because courage, hope, and compassion require them.

Reversed, an evil god permits trust, love, and possession because betrayal, heartbreak, grief, and loss require something good to destroy.

The symmetry operates through dependency. Bravery needs danger; betrayal needs trust. Hope needs uncertainty; heartbreak needs love. Possessing something pleasant creates the possibility of losing it. An evil creator could therefore allow lower-order goods because they enable more acute forms of suffering.

Appreciation through contrast

A good god permits evil so that goodness can be recognised and appreciated.

Reversed, an evil god permits beauty and comfort so that ugliness and suffering become more painful by comparison. Unequal luxury can intensify poverty because relief is visibly possible and withheld.

This is the video’s most developed reversal. Uniform ugliness might become psychologically normal. Patches of beauty make ugliness perceptible. A person freezing outside a warm mansion does not merely suffer from cold. The nearby comfort reveals that relief exists, that other people possess it, and that they could help but do not. The arbitrary distribution of wealth and health can deepen the cruelty rather than count against an evil creator.

What the challenge establishes

The argument does not prove an evil god, disprove every god, or decide whether theodicies work. It pressures one narrower claim: if a defence reconciles evil with perfect goodness, and the same form reconciles good with perfect evil, that defence alone cannot justify preferring the good-god hypothesis.

The believer needs an additional asymmetric reason. Otherwise, the immediate judgment that an evil creator is inconsistent with the world also threatens the mirrored claim.

O’Connor includes a short conversation with Law near the end. Law says that a belief system can be built around an evil god using arguments and defensive moves structurally similar to those used for a good god. The theist is right to regard the result as absurd. The challenge is to explain why the same first-glance evidential reasoning should not apply in the other direction.

This means the argument can work without first deciding whether any individual theodicy succeeds. Someone who regards the three defenses as weak can reject both versions. Someone who regards them as strong inherits their reversed versions and must identify a further reason for asymmetry.

Limits of the symmetry

The challenge is aimed at arguments from the world’s moral character. Other theological claims might try to break the symmetry through revelation, the concept of worship, theories about the nature of perfection, or independent arguments that identify goodness with divinity. Those arguments require separate evaluation. They cannot borrow their conclusion from the same reversible theodicies.

The terms “maximally good” and “maximally evil” also hide questions about what counts as maximizing either value over an entire world. The video uses the mirror to test consistency, not to supply a complete moral theory of possible universes.

Further reading / references

• Stephen Law, “The Evil-God Challenge” (2010).
• J. L. Mackie on the problem of evil.
• C. S. Lewis on recognising a crooked line by reference to a straight one.