My answer to Stephen Law and his 'Evil-God'
- Tony Vance
- Mar 8, 2016
- 5 min read
Recently I came across an article, in which an atheist gave a very interesting twist on the classic ‘problem of evil’ dilemma. The atheist was none other than Stephen Law, who is the Provost of Centre for Inquiry UK, Senior Lecturer at Heythrop College, University of London, and Editor of ‘Think’. His hypothesis is called the ‘Evil-God Challenge’ (STEPHEN LAW (2010). The evil-god challenge. Religious Studies, 46, pp 353-373. doi:10.1017/S0034412509990369). His idea is simple, we can use the same ‘reasons’ that a ‘Good-God’ would allow suffering, twist it slightly (into an opposite direction) and then conversely show that an ‘Evil-God’ could be plugged into the equation. Let me use his own words to explain:
“Free Will. Why does evil god allow us to help each other? Well, evil god could have made us puppet beings that always behaved badly. But if we are merely puppet beings, we are not responsible for what we do, and so moral evil cannot exist. In order to allow for moral evil, evil god had to cut our strings and set us free. The downside to this is that some of us then choose to do good and relieve suffering. That’s the price evil god must pay for the possibility of moral evil.
Laws of Nature. Many important evils are unavailable without the laws of nature. For example, in order for me to interact with you as a moral agent by cruelly murdering you, I need to know that a struck match causes flame, that a flame will ignite the petrol I poured through your letter box, and that the resulting explosion will likely kill you. Without knowledge of such natural regularities, moral interaction is impossible. Unfortunately, these same laws and regularities also produce beautiful rainbows and stunning scenery. That is the price evil god must pay for the evils such laws and regularities allow.
Character Destroying. Evil god puts some beauty in the world as a contrast: to make the ugliness and dreariness of the rest all the more acute. Why does he give us children to love who love us in return? Evil god hates love. Answer: because it is only if we love our kids that we will really suffer when he kills them, as he has done on an industrial scale. Why does an evil god give some of us wealth and happiness? To make the rest of us experience jealousy and resentment—forms of suffering that are unavailable without the existence of things worth coveting. Why do we receive healthy fit young bodies? So that evil god can slowly and cruelly take them away again. Our suffering is so much more intense as a result of our knowing what we’re missing.” ("A New Problem of Evil." The Forum. 2016. Web. 08 Mar. 2016. <http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/theforum/newproblemofevil/>.)
Notice there are some very intuitively strange notions in this description of the ‘Evil-God’s’ activity in this world, if such a deity existed. I think on the surface the vast majority of people, Christian or not, would reject this description out-of-hand, with very little debate. Yet, there are a small segment of skeptics, atheists, agnostics, and anti-theist that find such an argument compelling, if not at least logically possible. This is not a defense against the logical problem of evil but the evidential one, I should note. Law states, “But if the evidential argument from good is fatal to belief in an evil god, why isn’t the evidential problem of evil fatal to belief in a good god?” I think there are three very clear reasons, as a Christian, why this argument is very weak.
Image
We must be very careful of violating the commandment, Exodus 20:4 (KJV) “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” This image of God is the idea of imagining God as if He is anything less than He is. John Lennox explained very nicely why Christians don’t believe in ‘other’ gods, “The problem with this idea is that 'gods' such as Zeus and Thor are not comparable with the biblical understanding of God. There is a vast distinction between all of the Ancient near eastern gods and the God of the Bible. They are products of the primeval mass and energy of the universe. The God of the Bible created the heavens and the earth.” (Tomlinson, Heather. "Ten Quick Responses to Atheist Claims." Christian Today. Web. 8 Mar. 2016. <(http://www.christiantoday.com/article/ten.quick.responses.to.atheist.claims/41439.htm>.)
Nature of God
Law misunderstands the Christian’s theological position of God’s goodness. There could be nothing outside God, before Him, as He is the only eternal entity. God doesn’t ‘do good’ He is good. By the very essence of who He is, He must be good. In other words, as a Christian I believe God is the standard of goodness (morals, values, and righteousness) not because He does it, but because He is. Jesus explained, Matthew 19:17 (KJV) “And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.” Notice, it is not that there is one that does good but one that is good. Good exist because God exists. By essence and nature, goodness is part of His attributes, not something He does. An ‘Evil-God’ could not exist, as by His very nature what He is would be good.
Jesus
This brings me to the most damaging critique of Law’s argument, Jesus of Nazareth. I would argue that because Jesus rose from the dead, He proved to be God in the flesh. Whatever He did and said was clearly what we should understand to be God’s nature and essence. Jesus wrecks the whole ‘Evil-God’ notion, because would an ‘Evil-God’ send his son to die for us, I venture to say, no. I guess Law could say that ‘Evil-God’ sent Jesus here to send us to Hell, but Jesus dismissed that, John 3:17 (NLT) “God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.” An ‘Evil-God’ would have no part in saving us, he would only want us condemned.
I am aware of many apologist that are Christians. There are other theistic, such as Muslim, apologist, but very few deistic or non-Christian theist, that I am aware of. Why? Because theism will lead you to a conclusion of some idea of God, but it is incomplete outside of the Bible. C. S. Lewis was famously persuaded to belief in theism from atheism, but he soon found the truths of the Bible and specifically Jesus, unsurmountable in his investigation. He spoke of his conversion, “I know very well when, but hardly how, the final step was taken. I was driven to Whipsnade one sunny morning. When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did. Yet I had not exactly spent the journey in thought. Nor in great emotion…. It was more like when a man, after long sleep, still lying motionless in bed, becomes aware that he is now awake.” (Lewis, C. S. Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1956. Print.)
Jesus changes the whole equation, I would say to Law. He gives no consideration to the idea of God in the flesh, giving Himself; sacrificially, lovingly, graciously. This flies in the face of Law’s ‘Evil-God’. I will admit, as a hypothesis it is curious, but then my eyes get fixed on Christ, again, and I say, as the writer of old, Hebrews 1:3 (NLT) “The Son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God, and he sustains everything by the mighty power of his command. When he had cleansed us from our sins, he sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God in heaven.” That doesn’t sound very ‘evil’.