Law’s argument really just IS the Evidential Problem of Evil (EPoE). The EGA isn’t actually an argument at all. It’s simply an analogy that flips the components of the standard EPoE and the defenses against it.

After Law posits the existence of “Evil God” (or Anti-God, but we’ll go with his Evil God for simplicity) he says that it occurs to us that the amount of good in the world is too great for Evil God to exist. Ok, so this is precisely the EPoE, only flipped.

Then, just like Theists offer theodicies to explain why a survey of the amount of evil in the world cannot reasonably be used to rule out the existence of God, Law offers his own set of (anti-?) theodicies to explain why a survey of the amount of good in the world cannot reasonably be used to rule out the existence of Evil God.

Ok, so here we have the inverse of both the standard EPoE and the responses to it. Great. Now where does Law go next with the EGA? He basically says, ‘Of course, this is absurd and we all know that the good in the world DOES prove Evil God doesn’t exist, so we should accept the exact same thing about good God being disproved by the evil in the world.’

Insert dramatic screeching-to-a-stop sound…

What? This is not an argument at all. This is literally *IDENTICAL* to offering the standard EPoE, getting a series of reasoned responses why it fails, and then saying, “obviously that’s absurd, you should simply accept that I’m right.”

This *IS* the EGA. There is literally no argument here. Law simply makes it SEEM like there’s an argument here by placing a little analogical thought-experiment in between his initial presentation of the standard EPoE and his declaration that the EPoE succeeds. He could just as well have chosen to recount what he had for lunch that day instead of using the EGA. Both go equally far towards establishing his ultimate point; which is to say they both go nowhere at all.

What Law does with the EGA, and ALL he does with it, is use it to avoid making any response to the theodicies that are offered against the EPoE. What the EGA is designed to do is capitalize on the *BARE FACT* that most Theists think Evil God is absurd, so that when he switches back to the standard EPoE he can cash in on that to say the Theist must also think good God is absurd if they want to remain intellectually honest and consistent.

The major problem with this, however, is that the REASON(S) most Theists think the idea of Evil God is absurd has virtually NOTHING to do with the REASON that Law says he is absurd in the EGA, which is purely as a result of an inductive survey of the good in the world. And if the Theist does not think Evil God is absurd solely because of the inductive survey to which Law appeals, then when Law switches back to the standard EPoE, the Theist has absolutely no reason whatsoever to carry the absurdity charge back over to good God, which means Law ends precisely where he started: he has to respond to the theodicies that are offered in response to the standard EPoE.

Law cannot simply offer the EGA (which should now be renamed the Evil God *Analogy*), offer a series of anti-theodicies, assert that they obviously fail proving Evil God absurd, then declare victory over the standard EPoE.

The fact of the matter is that his anti-theodicies actually succeed, as Mentat has pointed out. They are all coherent and plausible. The claim that he doesn’t need to disprove his own theodicies because it wasn’t his intent to prove that Evil God is plausible is ABSOLUTELY WRONG. Of course he’s not trying to prove Evil God is plausible. What he’s trying to prove is that GOOD God is NOT plausible BECAUSE theodicies fail to counter to the EPoE. To allow him to simply dismiss his own theodicies as failures and declare Evil God is clearly absurd in spite of them because of a survey of the good in the world is to allow him to simply say he is right because he is right. It is exactly that shallow.

In order for Law to make any headway whatsoever with the EGA, he would need to show that his theodicies really do fail for some philosophically sound reason. And then, even succeeding in this, he would need to show that his anti-theodicies are uniformly AT LEAST as strong and work AT LEAST as well as the standard theodicies for God. But if he could do this then the EGA would be entirely useless, because it just adds several steps for him in arguing against the efficacy of standard theodicies!

Ironically, rather than helping the case for Atheism, the EGA actually BOLSTERS the standard arguments against the EPoE. By creating coherent and plausible theodicies for Evil God, Law actually demonstrates all the more forcefully why inductive surveys of the good and evil in the world are a terribly ineffective way to determine the moral character of the Creator; because for any observational evidence you might cite about the amount of either good or evil in the world, you can come up with a coherent and plausible reason why one type of God or the complete opposite type of God might have a good reason to let it exist. Rather than *overcoming* the standard objections to the EPoE, Law’s EGA merely *strengthens* them by driving home the point that there really are philosophically sound reasons for rejecting *any* definitive claims people try to make one way or the other on this subject based on this sort of inductive survey.

All that having been said, the fact that the Evil God Argument is not actually an argument at all and is merely an analogy that attempts to steal bases is only *one* of its major problems.

After Law presented the EGA, Craig pointed out that it fails because the typical Theist does not conclude that God is good by a simple inductive survey of the good in the world. He said this multiple times and Law kept saying Craig was misrepresenting him because he never said they do, but that they eliminate Evil God on this basis and should eliminate Good God on the same basis. I think Craig was actually right on the money here, so let’s unpack this.

First of all, Law is merely claiming without any support at all that typical Theists consider Evil God absurd solely on the basis of the good in the world. But this isn’t true of Craig, or me, or Mentat, or anyone else we’ve met, or any Theists I’ve seen commenting on this subject at various other blogs. Indeed, it’s not at all clear that much of anyone considers Evil God absurd solely on the basis of the good in the world. But this is the very claim upon which Law’s whole case hangs, as I’ve addressed above. And the fact that it doesn’t reflect *Craig’s* theology means it is ineffective against *Craig*. So much for Law arguing specifically against Craig’s conception of God. Against Craig’s conception of God it gains no ground.

But let’s set that aside and say that we allow the existence of these Theists who rule Evil God to be absurd based solely on an inductive survey of the good in the world. Let’s consider the implications of this. In order to do so we must constantly keep in mind two important points: 1) The person is a Theist, and 2) Their conclusion on this matter is based SOLELY on the observable evidence; that is, on an inductive survey of the good and evil in the world.

Any *Theist* who rules out an Evil God based solely on the amount of good in the world is not simply going to be deciding that there is TOO MUCH good for an Evil God. Rather, they’re going to decide that there is MORE good THAN evil in the world, which leads them to believe that the God they already believe exists is good RATHER THAN evil. After all, finding MORE good THAN evil is the only way one could determine God is good RATHER THAN evil based solely on an inductive survey. Theodicies can’t enter the picture so there can be no attempted explanation for there being 51% evil in the world and God being good. In such a case, the God who they are already convinced exists would have to be classified as evil.

This means that *any* Theist who would make the conclusion Law wants – that Evil God is absurd based solely on the amount of good – would necessarily be one that DOES determine God’s moral character based on an inductive survey of the good in the world (There’s more good than evil, hence God is good, not evil). This means that Craig’s point hit the nail right on the head. He simply didn’t take/have the time to lay out all the connections for Law to realize it.

But it gets even worse, because even though we could say that this brand of Theism (one that DOES determine God’s moral character based solely on an inductive survey) is the only kind of Theism that Law’s argument might even get off the ground against, the actual fact of the matter is that in the very process of finding Evil God absurd due to such a survey as Law wants them to, they will have determined it IS significantly more reasonable to believe in Good God, simply because they think there is significantly more good than evil in the world. So once again Law’s argument fails to get off the ground even with this unusual brand of Theism.

It seems to me that this argument simply could not work against anyone who already believes that a being like God exists, because if, for example, you believe that a being of the sort demanded by the Kalam argument exists, attempting to determine his moral character through an inductive survey of the good and evil in the world will simply cause you to determine that he is good or that he is evil, but you definitely won’t conclude in either case that he doesn’t exist at all or that Atheism is even in the vicinity of being true. For this reason, as Mentat pointed out, it was impossible for Law to win the debate for the Atheist side while failing to counter the Kalam argument.

In reality, it appears that the *only* way Law’s EGA could even conceivably get off the ground is if it is being presented to someone who DOES NOT YET believe in a Godlike being of any kind AND who views Evil Creator and Good Creator as two distinct beings whose existence are being proposed separately so that each one’s existence can be determined to be absurd independently of each other rather than affirming the existence of one by the very act of determining the other’s existence to be absurd.

Finally, even if we abandon Law’s actual argument for Atheism and put in it’s place a misrepresented version that has been put forth elsewhere, whereby the EGA is really just a gambit intended to block the Theist from being able to prove God is good, or at least more likely to be good than bad, I think it still fails in this more humble form.

I think the Moral Argument does implicitly show that that it is significantly more reasonable to think God is good rather than evil. The key in my explication of these implications (Mentat has a slightly different and more concise one) is not simply the existence of objective moral values, but particularly our sense of moral obligations. Craig read a good quote during the debate from, I believe, an Atheist, who said that even in the face of arguments against objective moral values, we are more sure of their existence than of the validity of the arguments against them. We have this powerful intuition that there really are objective moral values, and if a person accepts premise 2 of the Moral Argument, it will generally be because they find this powerful intuition to be MORE powerful and dependable than arguments that could be adduced against it. However, it is by the very same intuition that we not only sense there are objective moral values, but that we have moral obligations with respect to them, and we strongly intuit that our obligation is to do that which is considered good. In fact, even when we find ourselves uncertain of what is ACTUALLY the good, we nonetheless feel that our moral obligation is to do whatever we deduce is the good whether we happen to be right or wrong. And further, we even have a feedback loop by way of our conscience that can nag us and make us miserable to varying degrees if we ignore this obligation we feel to do good, sometimes nagging us even over something like making a comment that hurt somebody’s feelings, or a *potentially* hurtful comment about someone that they didn’t even hear, and this alone can prevent us from the doing what is bad again in the future.

When considering this aspect of our “moral duties” that are mentioned in the Moral Argument, it seems clear that believing this sense of obligation to do the good is rooted in a good God is a significantly MORE reasonable and MORE parsimonious conclusion than believing they are rooted in an Evil God who instilled them in us for an ulterior motive other than to have us feel obligated to do good. Likewise, it is more reasonable than not to the think that there WOULD be a greater degree of suffering in the world if our sense of moral obligations were reversed, since 1) being a mean, bad person does not cause someone to suffer any less when terrible and painful things are done to them, and 2) we would then be disinclined to so actively attempt to punish and incarcerate offenders and prevent or reduce further opportunities for suffering.

So, all in all, I find that Law’s Evil God Argument utterly fails to even get started in the form he actually uses, and ultimately still fails even in the gambit form I addressed towards the end here. It accomplished absolutely nothing of substance in the debate with Craig and Craig’s rebuttals were entirely sound, even if he didn’t fully unpack them to show Law why.

As a final side-point, I think that the Teleological Argument could conceivably be used to show that God is incredibly powerful, incredibly intelligent, AND good all in a single argument. The Cosmological Argument could then be used to show that he must transcend the universe. And, in reality, if the Teleological Argument could show all three things I mentioned, it could reasonably be argued that the Cosmological and Teleological Arguments must go hand in hand, or perhaps hand in glove, in light of the fact that God, as the cause of the universe coming into being is a cause that was concurrent with its effect of the universe coming into being, while the Teleological Argument includes the finely-tuned INITIAL conditions of the universe, which would be part and parcel with the bringing of the universe into existence. This would result in a pair of necessarily connected arguments that give a single being who transcends the universe and is incredibly strong, intelligent and good.

Anyway, that’s it. Sorry for the length.

So Evil God is indeed just as likely as Good God, if all we have to work from is an inductive survey of the world. But inductive surveys are NOT the right way to answer this kind of question. When Craig pointed this out (at least three separate times during the debate), Law could just smirk and chuckle and say “we all know that won’t wash” or “we all know that’s not true”. That kind of hand-waving should not be confused with a rational rebuttal. They are quite different!

As to Craig’s arguments FOR the goodness of God: Law’s response to the Moral Argument was to say “perhaps we can’t rationally deny P2, but maybe it’s still false”. Well, maybe, but WE CAN’T RATIONALLY BELIEVE THAT! If affirming atheism requires accepting something irrational, then the rational position is *theism*. And Law’s response to the Resurrection Argument was to provide what he felt was an analogous situation involving a UFO sighting. The problem is that Craig gives 3 pieces of evidence, only 1 of which is parodied in the UFO sighting. So, there is no real rebuttal for the Resurrection Argument.

In sum: For all the smirking and hand-waving that Law did, his basic premise was dead-wrong. You actually cannot dismiss Evil God on the basis of an inductive survey. Therefore, you cannot dismiss Good God on such a basis either.

P.S. The Kalam may not give the moral character of God, but it also doesn’t preclude goodness. Therefore, it takes atheism off the table (thus counting against Law in this particular debate, which was not entitled “Is God Good?”; it was “Does God Exist?”). It leaves lots of possible THEISMS, but Law isn’t allowed to argue for any of those in this debate, and so Craig wins with the Kalam alone (since the God proved by the Kalam may very well be good). Indeed, to say that the argument proves an uncaused, beginningless, non-spatiotemporal, non-material, very powerful PERSON, who created the Universe, and yet say that it didn’t give enough qualities to call that person “God”, is to demand far too much from a single argument. It doesn’t give goodness, but it also doesn’t give omniscience, omnipotence, divine simplicity, or that God used a virgin to produce Jesus. It shouldn’t have to. All these things are available to the God proved by the Kalam, and may very well be true. But the one thing that CAN’T be true, if the Kalam is sound, is *atheism*.

Cheers.

I concluded:

The Evil God Challenge is an interesting but unfruitful ruse – based on some bad assumptions about the purpose of theodicies and the nature of good and evil, it draws some poor conclusions – namely that the existence of an evil God is just as likely as that of a good God, and therefore, both must be dismissed.

Now, the argument for a neutral God might have merit (from the atheist point of view), but I haven’t seen Law make such an argument. He does take issue with the Moral Argument, which I will address in a future post.