Evil God challenge
Thought experiment in philosophy
The evil God challenge is a philosophical thought experiment. The challenge is to explain why an all-good God is more likely than an all-evil God. Those who advance this challenge assert that, unless there is a satisfactory answer to the challenge, there is no reason to accept that God is good or can provide moral guidance.
Origin
Papers by Stephen Cahn, Peter Millican, Edward Stein, Christopher New, and Charles B Daniels, explored the notion of an "anti-God"—an omnipotent, omniscient and all evil God. The evil God challenge was developed at length and in several formats by the philosopher Stephen Law.
Supporting the greater likeliness of an omnimalevolent creator, in 2015, John Zande published an extended argument for the evil God thesis, arguing that the irresistible, self-complicating nature of this universe not only resolves the problem of good, but establishes unignorable theological evidence for the wicked disposition of the Creator. Stephen Law noted this work to be an intriguing development in the theology of the evil God.
The challenge
The evil God challenge demands explanations for why belief in an all-powerful all-good God is significantly more reasonable than belief in an all-powerful all-evil God. Most of the popular arguments for the existence of God give no clue to his moral character and thus appear, in isolation, to work just as well in support of an evil God as a good God. This challenge supports why suffering exists in the world.
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