Defeating the Evil-God Challenge

Download or read book Defeating the Evil-God Challenge written by Jack Symes and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-05-16 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The evil-god challenge is one of the most popular topics in contemporary philosophy of religion. In this landmark text, Jack Symes offers the most detailed examination of the challenge to date. Exploring the nature of god through the leading schools of philosophical theology, Symes argues that it is significantly more reasonable to attribute goodness to god than evil. Drawing from a breadth of ground-breaking material – in metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics and epistemology – Symes claims to defeat the evil-god challenge on behalf of traditional theism. Is it any more reasonable to believe in a good god than an evil god? Not according to proponents of the evil-god challenge. After all, the world contains a significant amount of good and evil for which either god could be held responsible. However, if belief in both gods is equally as reasonable, then religious believers are unjustified in favouring one hypothesis over the other. Therefore, in order to defend their faith, theists must respond to the evil-god challenge: the question of what justifies belief in good god over evil god.