Papers by Stephen Cahn,[1] Peter Millican,[2] Edward Stein,[3] Christopher New,[4] and Charles B Daniels,[5] explored the notion of an "anti-God"—an omnipotent, omniscient and all evil God.
[6][7] Supporting the greater likeliness of an omnimalevolent creator, in 2015, John Zande published an extended argument for the evil God thesis,[8] arguing that the irresistible, self-complicating nature of this universe[9] not only resolves the problem of good, but establishes unignorable theological evidence for the wicked disposition of the Creator.
William Lane Craig, Steve Wykstra, Dan Howard-Snyder, and Mike Rea have all suggested that the evident presence of good in the world makes impossible the notion of an all-evil, omnipotent God.
Rebutting Andrews's characterization of evil as presented in his "A Response to the Problem of an 'Evil God' as Raised by Stephen Law",[14] John Zande argued[8] that maximum evil (identified as The Owner of All Infernal Names:[15] a metaphysically necessary, maximally powerful being who does not share his creation with any other comparable spirit) is not, as Andrews proposes, "maximally selfish", hateful, vengeful, or even hostile, rather best described as intensely pragmatic and thoroughly observant of his needs; promoting, defending, and even admiring life in its struggle to persist and self-adorn.
As presented, maximum evil is not, therefore, an Ouroboros on a colossal scale, hopelessly given over to self-indulgence and destined to defile itself and anything it imagined into being, for a world driven only by impetuous brutality would resemble more a raging, super-heated, short-lived bonfire than a secure, creative, and ultimately profitable marketplace desired by a creator who, above all other things, seeks to maximize his own pleasure over time.
Hence, belief in an evil God is not unreasonable, at least on account of the existence of good, and the symmetry thesis is irrelevant.