The evil God challenge is an argumentative strategy that has been pursued by a number of philosophers in recent years. It is apt to be understood as a parody argument: a wholly evil, omnipotent and omniscient God is absurd, as both theists and atheists will agree. But according to the challenge, belief in evil God is about as reasonable as belief in a wholly good, omnipotent and omniscient God; the two hypotheses are roughly epistemically symmetrical. Given this symmetry, thesis belief (...) in an evil God and belief in a good God are taken to be similarly preposterous. In this paper, we argue that the challenge can be met, suggesting why the three symmetries that need to hold between evil God and good God – intrinsic, natural theology and theodicy symmetries – can all be broken. As such, we take it that the evil God challenge can be met. (shrink)

This paper is a defense of the view that existence is a perfection. Anselm’s First Ontological Argument is referred to throughout. Two major objections are advanced: the ‘perfect island’ objection and the ‘perfect devil’ objection. A rebuttal of both, based on Anselm’s reply to Gaunilo, is tendered, but itself faces a major objection. Two lines of defense against this objection are possible. The first is sympathetically explained but it is argued that it ultimately fails. The second, which focuses on the (...) idea of a perfection and a perfect being, is elaborated and defended against a seemingly powerful objection. It is concluded that there is a reasonable interpretation of the claim that existence is a perfection. (shrink)

Otte :165–177, 2009) and Pruss :400–415, 2012) have produced counterexamples to Plantinga’s famous free will defence against the logical version of the problem of evil. The target of this criticism is the possibility of universal transworld depravity, which is crucial to Plantinga’s defence. In this paper, we argue that there is a simpler and more plausible free will defence that does not require the possibility of universal transworld depravity or the truth of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. We assume only that (...) libertarianism is possibly true and that God’s existence is consistent with the existence of free agents who never go wrong. We conclude the paper by explaining how our defence may be able to succeed without assuming, in a way that is consistent with compatibilism. (shrink)