Encountering Evil: The Evil-god Challenge from Religious Experience

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24204/ejpr.v0i0.2617

Keywords:

God, evil, good, religious experience, miracle, arguments for God's existence

Abstract

It is often thought that religious experiences provide support for the cumulative case for the existence of the God of classical monotheism. In this paper, I formulate an Evil-god challenge that invites classical monotheists to explain why, based on evidence from religious experience, the belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent god (Good-god) is significantly more reasonable than the belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, evil god (Evil-god). I demonstrate that religious experiences substantiate the existence of Evil-god more so than they do the existence of Good-god, and, consequently, that the traditional argument from religious experience fails: it should not be included in the cumulative case for the existence of Good-god.

Author Biography

Asha Lancaster-Thomas, University of Birmingham

Asha Lancaster-Thomas is a PhD student at the University of Birmingham. Her current research focuses on the Evil-god challenge.

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Published

2020-09-24

How to Cite

Lancaster-Thomas, Asha. 2020. “Encountering Evil: The Evil-God Challenge from Religious Experience”. European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 12 (3):137-61. https://doi.org/10.24204/ejpr.v0i0.2617.