3 NEW Ways the Evil God Challenge Fails
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- Опубліковано 3 чер 2024
- Dr. Justin Mooney and Dr. Perry Hendricks have co-authored a recently published paper titled, "The Gap in the Evil God Challenge."
Link to the paper is below.
philarchive.org/archive/MOOTGI
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Justin Mooney is a boss. Currently reading several of his papers and they are terrific.
Thanks for the overview!
Very interesting video. I will definitely read the article to go more in depth
Great job on the interview! Justin does a really nice job explaining and articulating how Swinburne, Rasmussen, and Byerly respond to the gap problem. As usual, i appeciate Jordan's clear summaries.
Swinburne's argument equivocates on the meaning of "best." Omniscience means being able to know the "best" choice of action for any question, not just ones that are morally good. It's not incoherent to say "I know the 'best' method of causing suffering is x." The Evil God is perfectly capable of doing the "best" evil thing. There's also an unargued-for premise that moral goodness is constitutive of rationality, but obviously the proponent of the Evil God Challenge can just stipulate that moral wrongness is constitutive of rationality (or that rationality is orthogonal to morality). Also I find the appeal to simplicity absurd - it would obviously be simpler if God lacked a mind completely and wasn't omniscient or omnibenevolent.
Rasmussen's argument doesn't stipulate a symmetry breaker between having a lot of positive or negative value. The Evil God proponent can use his argument to argue that the value God has is limitlessly negative.
Byerly's argument is just begging the question. The omni-properties attributed to God are done so because of historical contingency. There are a myriad of alternate theories of God that don't posit some or all of the omniproperties - for example, the Evil God challenge posits that God is omnimalevolent instead of omnibenevolent. Obviously, IBE can be used to argue for the Evil God just as well as for the Good God, unless you place huge epistemic weight on human cultural tradition and medieval worldviews that haven't been particularly fruitful (produced any widely recognized truths) like thomism.
I suspect Rasmussen is talking not only about causal explanations in his argument from limits, because an explanation of the Trinity could be explained noncausally by 'shared love'.
the GOd of MONEY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
At 13.03: Why if He is Omnipotent, He must have some value? I don't follow
Omnipotence is a valuable property, therefore an omnipotent being has some value.
@@TheAnalyticChristian I would counter that by saying valuable according to who and by what standard?
Stephen Law is very quick to point out that no evil God need exist for the argument to go through. Ergo, any objection that construed it as an argument for how you get to a good God from traditional theistic arguments, and therefore thinks presenting ways you conclude the good God, and not the evil God, is going to have no bite whatsoever.
The argument is against theodicies, and seeks to establish that if the theodicies fail for the evil God in light of all the goodness in the world, then theodicies fail for the good God in light of all the evil in the world. And, you're supposed to think the theodicies do fail for the evil God, ergo, the theodicies fail for the good God.
I've only watched the first five minutes, but if Mooney's objection takes the form of the first objection then he has completely missed the mark.
Your comment seems very confused to me. Let’s go slowly so I can figure out where the confusion is arising.
Would you agree with me that the Evil God challenge aims to show that belief in an all good God is no more rational than belief in all evil God?
I’d like you to reply yes or no to that question.
Notice, that question does not imply or assume that any god exists. Perhaps no god exists.
Ok, what is your answer? Yes or no?
@@TheAnalyticChristian No.
The aim of the argument is to show that if you think theodicies for the evil God fail to sufficiently counter the good in the world, you should similarly think theodicies for the good God fail to sufficiently counter the evil in the world.
Of course, that is my understanding of the argument, and I could be mistaken.
@@jacobleith6369 Thanks for replying! I think upon a close reading of Law’s paper, you should answer the question I asked you “yes” and here is why.
Law says, “The problem facing defenders of classical monotheism is this: until they can provide good grounds for supposing the symmetry thesis is false, they lack good grounds for supposing the good-god hypothesis is any more reasonable than the evil-god hypothesis- the latter hypothesis being something that surely even they will admit is very unreasonable indeed” (pg 373).
So Law is challenging believers in the good-god hypothesis to provide some good reason to think the symmetry thesis is false. That is the challenge! If the believer in the good-god hypothesis can’t provide such a reason, then Law thinks their belief in the good-god hypothesis is just as unreasonable as belief in the evil-god hypothesis. Before one can show that the symmetry thesis is false though, we must clear on what the symmetry thesis is.
Earlier in the paper, Law states the symmetry thesis like this. “In terms of reasonableness, isn’t there a broad symmetry between the good-god hypothesis and the evil-god hypothesis? Take arguments supporting the two hypotheses. I pointed out earlier that many of the popular arguments in support of the good-god hypothesis turn out to provide much the same support (i.e. not very much) for the evil-god hypothesis. Moreover, when it comes to dealing with the evidence against the respective hypotheses provided by the enormous quantities of both good and evil that we find in the world, we can construct similar kinds of explanation…I shall call the suggestion that, in terms of reasonableness, there is indeed such a rough symmetry between the good-god hypothesis and the evil-god hypothesis, the symmetry thesis” (pg. 359).
From that quote, we see that Law thinks the symmetry thesis holds not only with respect to evidence against both hypotheses (ie. the problem of evil and the problem of good) but also with respect to evidence for both hypotheses (ie. arguments from natural theology).
Ok in light of all that, I will ask my original question again.
Would you agree with me that the evil God challenge aims to show that belief in an all good God is no more rational than belief in an all evil God?
If your answer is now “yes” then I have a follow up question, but I will wait to ask.
@@TheAnalyticChristian That was very well articulated and I think you pinpointed my misunderstanding precisely; I was just considering the evidence against both hypotheses. And that's where the consideration of theodicies came in. I think my rendition does work in certain dialectical contexts, for instance when a theist thinks it is unreasonable for the non-theist to believe a good God doesn't exist in light of all the evil in the world. There it would be useful to bring up the evil God hypothesis to mirror different theodicies and pump the theist's intuitions as to whether they work for the evil God. And there one wouldn't need to consider the independent reasons to think a good God does exist, because the non-theist doesn't have those commitments. Although in that rendition it isn't so much a challenge, as an intuition pump. And, I should add, I've always thought that rendition wasn't very strong, because it relies on the theist prima facie thinking all the good in the world does make it unreasonable to believe in an evil God. That's not to say some theists wouldn't have that prima facie inclination, but it limits the scope somewhat, and thus the strength.
But, anyway, I think I did misunderstand the Evil God Challenge, and I would like to thank you for helping me out there. And, yeah, on that reading, all the theist would have to do is provide some symmetry breaker that works for the good God, but doesn't work for the evil God. That is, it would be evidence that favours the good God over the evil God. Now, whether Mooney does that or not is not really my concern, but that would certainly diffuse Law's argument. In other words, Law's challenge would be met, as I now understand it.
Perhaps I've preempted your question, but go for it anyway.
@@jacobleith6369 thanks Jacob! Your willingness to change your mind is super encouraging and refreshing, not to mention extremely rare in the UA-cam comments section.
My next question was going to be “Do you agree with me that Justin attempted to show the symmetry thesis was false?” Notice that the question says *attempts* not *succeeds*. If you answered “no” then I was going to again try to pinpoint the confusion.
But, it sounds like you would answer my question “yes” so we are now in agreement.
Thanks for a delightful exchange of ideas.