Imagine the universe was made by an evil god, a god of perfect malice who wanted us all to suffer. But then why are there sunsets? Why is there music, the smell of baked bread and the sound of a child laughing in the room next door? Well, according to the philosopher Stephen Law, this is the problem of good, and it's a trap for religious believers. Many believers have offered solutions to the problem of evil. They say that God has given us free will, or that suffering builds character. But Law's move is to run these answers backwards, because they can just as likely prove an evil god as a good one. An evil god would give us free will so that we could freely choose to do terrible and cruel things. An evil god would give us beauty so that it hurts when we lose it. An evil god would give us children to love so that we are terrified for them at night and we are ripped apart by grief. Law calls these reverse theodicies, and he thinks they work as well as the original. Because if nobody thinks an evil god can exist, why do people think a good one can? One answer goes back to Augustine, who thinks that evil isn't a thing in itself but rather the absence of good, a bit like a hole in a sock. And so to imagine an evil god is to imagine a god of holes, which is nothing, and so it cannot actually exist. But Augustine's reply only works if you accept his definition of evil. So what do you think, if we assume that there is a god and we look at the world? Do you think it's more likely that that god is evil or good? — @philosophyminis TikTok