The Problem of Good

"Mystical explanations are considered deep; the truth is, they are not even shallow." - Friedrich Nietzsche

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From the Philosophy Bites podcast, Stephen Law on a response to apologetic answers to the Problem of Evil which I haven't heard before:

"We could consider that as a hypothesis. There's an all-powerful, all-evil god.

I mean, the first thing you'll notice is that that hypothesis is just as well supported by some of the standard arguments for the existence of God as the Good god hypothesis.

You know if there's a designer, why not an evil designer rather than a good designer? If there's a first cause, why not an evil first cause rather than a good first cause? If I believe in an Evil god, I can help myself to those arguments just as quickly and effectively as a Christian can.

But of course, no one's gonna believe in an Evil God. Why not?

Well, you know, look right out of the window. Right now I can see happy, laughing children frolicking around in the sunshine. Why would an Evil God allow that kind of thing?

Surely a supremely malignant being would be interested in torturing us for all eternity with a red-hot poker, not producing rainbows and laughter and sunshine and ice cream. There's just too much good stuff in the world for this to be plausibly the creation of a supremely powerful, supremely evil being.

You can see that this problem - we might call it The Problem of Good - is just the reverse of the Problem of Evil. If you believe in a, an all-powerful, all-good god, you have to explain why there is so much bad stuff. If you believe in an all-powerful, all-bad god, you have to explain why there is so much good stuff. It seems to me you could probably develop some very ingenious answers.

Why does an Evil God give us a lovely sunset to enjoy? Well in order to make our appreciation of the ghastly dreariness and ugliness of daily life all the more acute.

Why does He give us fit, healthy young bodies? Well, yeah, for about 10 or 15 years, and then they slowly and inevitably they slide into decay, decrepitude until you end up dying hopelessly ugly, incontinent and smelling of wee, having lived out a short and ultimately meaningless existence.

I mean, what better way could there be maximising suffering than giving you something for a short period of time and then slowly and inexorably taking it away?

All of the standard theodicies - not all of them - most of them can be flipped round. And when you flip them round in that way, they're a joke. Well, the question is why do we take the other one so seriously then?

On the scale of reasonableness I place Evil God very low down. But that's exactly the reason why I place the Good god very low down on the scale of reasonableness.

To get back to the scale of reasonableness, it seems to me that the Evil god and the Good god hypotheses are both very low on the scale. A slightly less unreasonable belief would be belief that there is some sort of intelligence, only it is neither All-Good nor All-Evil.

Maybe there's a god and he has good days and bad days. Actually if you look at Old Testament, pretty obviously that being is not supremely benevolent. He's a rather irascible old sort, much of the time, but he has his good days, and if you look at the world that does seem to fit that hypothesis better than either the Evil God hypothesis or the Good God hypothesis."