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Why God is probably good: a response to the evil-god challenge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 September 2019

CALUM MILLER Open the ORCID record for CALUM MILLER [Opens in a new window]
CALUM MILLER*
Affiliation:
St Benet's Hall, University of Oxford, 38 St Giles’, Oxford, OX1 3LN, UK
*
e-mail: c.miller@oxon.org
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Abstract

A number of philosophers have recently defended the evil-god challenge, which is to explain relevant asymmetries between believing in a perfectly good God and believing in a perfectly evil god, such that the former is more reasonable than the latter. In this article, I offer a number of such reasons. I first suggest that certain conceptions of the ontology of good and evil can offer asymmetries which make theism a simpler hypothesis than ‘maltheism’. I then argue that maltheism is itself complex in a variety of ways: it is difficult to articulate a simple precise version of maltheism; maltheism posits a mixture of positive and negative properties; maltheism posits a more complex relationship between moral motivation, practical reason and action; and maltheism relevantly parallels other epistemically ‘complex’ sceptical scenarios.

Type
Original Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 57 , Issue 3 , September 2021 , pp. 448 - 465
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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