ZhunTzu asked:

My question is about the Philosophy of Religion: The foundations of some philosophical arguments
start with a premise of an all knowing, all powerful, and all good God. Did anyone ever think of a
different foundation perhaps consisting of a negative God? A all non-knowing, all non-powerful, all
non-good god. What if the powers and attributes of God are like Nelson Goodman's 'grue' and
'bleen'?

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The idea of constructing a negative god is termed 'cacodaemony.' This notion of god has been used
to explore the famous 'problem of evil,' which is to show how an all good, omnipotent and omniscient
god could have created a world that contains moral and natural evil. By changing the idea of god to
one in which he is all evil, we find that we come up against the 'problem of goodness.' How could an
all evil, all powerful and all knowing god have created a world which contains moral and natural
goodness? The result of this thought experiment is a challenge that exactly parallels the traditional
problem of evil.

An article regarding this is by Steven Cahn, Analysis37, 2, 1977. In the cacodaemony, this god is 'all
evil' (not good), but the attributes of omnipotence and omniscience remain the same. This is because
if we went so far as to attribute a god with not knowing anything, and/or no power, we have stopped
speaking of anything like the Judeo-Christian god. My nasty uncle Charlie, for instance, is completely
ignorant, utterly powerless, and pretty much wills evil all around, yet he poses no issues for us
whatsoever, given that this combination of attributes renders him a completely non-effective being in
every respect. A god with virtually no powers and knowledge, who wills evil, is no god at all. It is
possible to contemplate a god that is all powerful, but is not good or all-knowing. Likewise, we can
contemplate a god that is all knowing, but not all good and all-powerful, but under these permutations
of attributes, the god we are considering does not resemble the traditional Judeo-Christian deity.
Under polytheism, gods have significantly different attributes. Hera, for instance, from the Ancient
Greek pantheon, is not all powerful: other gods are also powerful. She is not all good, and expresses
jealousy and other flaws, nor is she all knowing as other gods have their plans and spheres of
influence independent from hers. However, under polytheism the problems that beset philosophers
and theologians, like the problem of evil, do not arise (or, at least, do not arise in the same way).

The issue of whether or not god's properties are entrenched and gerrymandered, such as
Goodman's predicates 'grue' and 'bleen,' is a different sort of issue. The new riddle of induction shows
that these sorts of predicates cannot be distinguished between ordinary predicates like 'blue' or
'green' induction does not permit it. Both 'green' and 'grue' [= 'green up to, and including today, blue
afterwards'] apply to all samples of emeralds until today (now). Goodman's point is that our
conceptual scheme in general is entrenched, and there is no way to tell "well-behaved" predicates
like 'green' from the ill-behaved ones like 'grue.' All of the predicates we use, no matter what they
apply to, be it copper, emeralds or god, are so entrenched. If you accept Goodman's argument
regarding grue/ bleen and induction, you must accept the entire argument and what it implies, and
cannot separate out a piece of it and apply it only to god's predicates. Empiricists have worse
problems (or better ones, depending on perspective), than figuring out god's attributes.

Maureen Eckert