Encountering Evil: The Evil-god Challenge from Religious Experience
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...
Subtitles: | Special Issue - Evolutionary Research on Morality and Theological Ethics |
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Main Author: | |
Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
Published: |
University of Innsbruck in cooperation with the John Hick Centre for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Birmingham
[2020]
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In: |
European journal for philosophy of religion
Year: 2020, Volume: 12, Issue: 3, Pages: 137-161 |
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Evil
/ Attributes of God
/ The Good
/ Religious experience
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RelBib Classification: | AB Philosophy of religion; criticism of religion; atheism AG Religious life; material religion NBC Doctrine of God |
Further subjects: | B
Miracle
B Religious Experience B Evil B arguments for God's existence B Good B God |
Online Access: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
Summary: | 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. |
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Contains: | Enthalten in: European journal for philosophy of religion
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.24204/ejpr.v0i0.2617 |