Edit to add: If you’re interested in the concept of an evil God in the context of Christian beliefs I recommend reading “Answer to Job” by Carl Jung. He doesn’t exactly make the Christian God evil but ascribes moral failings to God and frames Jesus as the redemption of God instead of the redemption of man.
Neither of those are necessarily true. For an Abrahamic god, sure, but one can certainly conceive of a god that doesn’t define good and evil, and a god that defines good and evil and doesn’t define itself as good.
These things aren’t well-defined, so you’re certainly welcome to, but I think most people would consider an omniscient, omnipotent creator of the universe to be a god and not a spirit.
Somewhat off-topic, but there’s this line of thought, which multiple Christian thinkers have come up with throughout the centuries, called the Ontological Argument. It basically tries to prove the existence of the Christian God with only pure logic, no axioms involved.
Proofs without axioms don’t exist elsewhere, so take the following with a massive grain of salt, but basically it goes:
God is a maximally good being. Existence of a maximally good being is itself good. Therefore, God must exist.
Aside from this being circular reasoning, it also involves a massive axiom: The existence and definition of good vs. bad.
But with your point, we can advance the argument even further:
Defining what’s good is good.
That way, we get twice the circular reasoning, but no axioms anymore. 🙃
Isn’t the god supposed to define what good and evil even is, and wouldn’t therefore any monotheistic god be “good” by definition?!
Socrates answered this. If morality is objective or has an objective basis then it is necessarily independent from any God or god’s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthyphro_dilemma
Edit to add: If you’re interested in the concept of an evil God in the context of Christian beliefs I recommend reading “Answer to Job” by Carl Jung. He doesn’t exactly make the Christian God evil but ascribes moral failings to God and frames Jesus as the redemption of God instead of the redemption of man.
Neither of those are necessarily true. For an Abrahamic god, sure, but one can certainly conceive of a god that doesn’t define good and evil, and a god that defines good and evil and doesn’t define itself as good.
I don’t think I would even call a being like that “god”, more like “evil spirit” or something.
These things aren’t well-defined, so you’re certainly welcome to, but I think most people would consider an omniscient, omnipotent creator of the universe to be a god and not a spirit.
That’s what people say, but in practice people have their own ideas and just project them on to god.
Somewhat off-topic, but there’s this line of thought, which multiple Christian thinkers have come up with throughout the centuries, called the Ontological Argument. It basically tries to prove the existence of the Christian God with only pure logic, no axioms involved.
Proofs without axioms don’t exist elsewhere, so take the following with a massive grain of salt, but basically it goes:
Aside from this being circular reasoning, it also involves a massive axiom: The existence and definition of good vs. bad.
But with your point, we can advance the argument even further:
That way, we get twice the circular reasoning, but no axioms anymore. 🙃