Following Dr Law's debate with WLC in October there's been no end of discussion about his "Evil God Challenge".

For those who want to crib-up on this then there's a full PDF at the following: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=7247672&jid=RES&volumeId=-1&issueId=-1&aid=7247664&fromPage=cupadmin&pdftype=6316268

Philosopher Glenn Peoples has given a helpful summary and dissects the challenge in his podcast: http://www.beretta-online.com/podcast/audio/berettacast_045.mp3

Just given the article a pretty thorough skim read. I did my MA disertation last year on Aquinas' treatment of the "problem of evil" and its relevance today. I basically agree with most of his agruments about the weaknesses of the theodicies. I think we all risk signing up to "the free-will defence" or the "Evil is necessary to make you stronger" arguments, and I think as Christians we need to be carefull to be a bit more thoughtful.

Thanks for your thoughts on this. You've come to the same conclusions in just a few minutes that it's taken me the best part of 3 months to arrive at! I've really not got the brains for this!

I appreciated Dr Law's challenge because I initially felt it was creative and well thought out. I gave him the benefit of the doubt, but I've concluded that he's a bit too sure of himself and is unaware of the theological traditions he claims to be dealing with.

It is interesting that he doesn't engage with a Christian perspective on evil. The theism he presents of God as a supernatural being certainly is rejected by most mainstream Christian theologies and so from the start the framework of the discussion is skewed. If you don't get your concept of God right then you are not going to end up with a very good acount of God & Evil.

In the initial debate with William Lane Craig, that was the very thing that popped into my head. Surely an Evil God is a metaphysical absurdity from a Catholic theologian's point of view. Thus, it removes the clever "reverse-switching-theodicy-trick" that Dr Law employs, and turns it into a standard 'Evidential Problem of Evil' argument. Glenn Peoples argues this in his podcast above. Six times (according to Glenn) Dr Law mentions that his challenge is aimed at Classical Theism, but then he refuses to engage with it. In fact he has since claimed three things: 1) That the EGC can be run while holding a privation view of evil; 2) That Christians dismiss the Evil God hypothesis intuitively; 3) That evil is not a privation of good anyway!

Not one mention of Jesus, Cross, Resurrection, Incarnation, Revelation. I think his argument can be shown up on largely philosophical grounds, but my foundation and confidence for belief in a good-God are these Christian cornerstones, we he doesn't even seem to "preempt" as arguments against his case.

Agreed! In the debate with Dr Craig, Dr Law tried to compare the resurrection with a notorious UFO siting from the 60s, which suggested to me that he hadn't really given it the thought it deserved - in fact all his eggs went into the Evil God basket, it's fair to say. Christ is at the heart of our Catholic faith, and as useful as the philosophical arguments are, it is only God's revelation in Christ that can lead to the relationship which offers us salvation. Maybe if Dr Law looks at the facts of the resurrection in greater detail he might come to another point of view. I pray he does!

I've expended far too much energy on this whole area recently...