The Evil God (?)

Many people in many cultures throughout the world and throughout history have believed in "evil spirits" and still do today -- in the United States, for example, it is not uncommon for people to believe in "Satan." But what if there is one Supreme God of the Universe and He (or It) is Evil? I mean, really evil. I mean, really: what if The Big Guy that so many believe in is really an enormous Bad Guy? How would we know? Would that make what we see as "bad" "good"? Should we puny humans even oppose such an Evil God were He to exist? Oh what to do?
Let us put to the side, first, the silly notion that God is good by definition, because that does not tell us anything.  If that's all there is, then our Evil God would be Good by definition, and I hope we do not believe that. In any regard, saying "God is good by definition therefore God is good" is merely a tautology and a non-starter. So let's start again.

Let's begin by trying to define "good" and "evil." Actually, we only need to define one of those terms and the other will simply be its opposite (perhaps leaving a broad swath of conduct that is neither good nor evil, but whatever). We'll define "evil," so then everything not evil is "good" (or at worst neutral). "Evil" we'll define as deceit. (We hesitate to say that "evil" is murder, rape, and torture, or the like because, unfortunately, there are examples in the Bible where God seems to instigate murder, rape, or torture and the like, so let's just not go there.¹) Deceit works because it's simple, and I'll further clarify that it's only deceit where there is no intent to help someone out through the deceit (again so we don't have to deal with that thorny question²).

Our question, again, was whether there could be a Supreme God of the Universe who is evil. As is the practice with a Supreme God, I'll take God as omnipotent and omniscient.³ Is it possible to know whether such an evil God exists (or to disprove His existence)? No.

If an omnipotent and omniscient Evil God exists, then all of our reasoning (whether driven by logic of any kind or not), all of our memories, all of our observations, all of everything we "feel in our hearts," may be wrong or distorted and we could not know. We may be deceived into thinking something is true which is false or something is false which is true, that we see something we don't or don;t see something we do, or get our recollection of any of that including even any assumptions or questions we may make to test things wrong. "But surely," you may ask, "I can have a primitive animal sense of some kind that such a God exists?" No you cannot. that "animal sense might be planted by the deceitful God. "Surely if He cuts off my arm I would know it?" No, you might not. You might be deceived into thinking your arm is there. "Surely, if such a God exists, I would know at least that."⁴ No: if such a God exists it might deceive you into thinking it does not exist. If such a God exists your understanding and reasoning about everything, even that God's existence, is questionable.

What this means, among other things, is that there is no statement about knowledge we can make that is definitive. There is, in short, always the possibility that the omnipotent and omniscient Evil God exists.

This does not mean that one should believe in such a God. If such a God exists, we cannot know the consequences of believing in Him, either. It could be punishment or reward or indifference or variable. One cannot assess the relative chances that such a God exists; one can make assumptions with the understanding that such assumptions could be wrong and you just do not know. But short of just giving up, one can assume that the observations, memories, and abilities to reason that seem so real to us are real; if that's true, there are real benefits to believing and following that course, but if it's wrong that might be detrimental and it might not, we can't know. So it's either logic and observation or nothing. (And if that logic is wrong, well, then, so what ...?)

This still leaves questions about a Good God. A Good God would not deceive us except with the intent to help us or others.  Logic and observation might still be meaningless: a Good God might be deceiving us into believing in a false reality for our own or the greater good. Indeed, there is nothing we could trust coming from a Good God since anything might be a lie for a greater good. Unless we can suss out the "greater good" -- and we cannot since we lack omniscience -- we can't tell the difference between a Good God who deceives for the greater good and an Evil God who deceives just to mislead or harm.

Under our paradigm we accept that observation and logic are valid as this is the best approach if God, should He exist, is either good or evil. So let us assume that, in fact, observation and logic are valid. If they are, then God cannot be omnipotent within one Universe. That is because omnipotence would require the ability to do inconsistent acts and to have some statements be true and false at the same time.
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¹ If we do "go there" and define "evil" as engaging in murder, rape, or torture, or the like, then we have a real problem because the God if the Bible, if He exists, cannot be purely good, but is either a mixture of good and evil or else is just evil.
² The thorny question -- no pun intended, I mean, Jesus, no pun -- is whether deceit to do good is still evil. We're just laying that one to the side by limiting our definition.
³  One might say an omnipotent and omniscient God is impossible since this is so if logic holds. But if the omnipotent and omniscient God is evil, we might be deceived. This being the case, our faith in logic is misplaced, and omnipotence and omniscience might be possible when God is evil.
⁴ The argument goes like this: if I see a deceitful God then I know a deceitful God must exist because if I am deceived then a deceitful God must have deceived me (and so, whether I am deceived or not, a deceitful God must exist). The problem with this argument is that one could simply be mistaken: you thought you saw a deceitful God and did not. thus, merely because you think you see a deceitful God does not mean one exists.  Likewise, merely because you do not see a deceitful God does not mean one does not exist. [And NB: a corollary to this argument that a deceitful God could not exist because the first sentence, above, in this footnote is internally inconsistent (a deceitful God tricked one into believing that the deceitful God exists ...), is wrong for a host of reasons, not the least of which are the problems with mistaken awareness and that it depends on logic the efficacy of which a deceitful God if He exists may have deceived us about.]
⁵ Of course, if God is a deceiver we might  seem to lack, which is enough)