Evil God and anti-theodicy

[FrustratedFool]

I don't think there's any conceptual issue, in that they seem equivalent. And there's certainly no problem explaining fun with an anti-theodicy in the same way that theists would explain evil.  And also, the issue about substitution seems moot since in both cases we'd argue it was only an analogous good/evil based on human perception.

I think your strongest (only?) argument would be whether a maximally evil being is as coherent as a maximally good being (if we pull the Augustinian trick of defining evil in terms of an absence of good then doubly so).  Should we examine this point in more detail?  I think it the most profitable avenue to explore.

There were like three arguments (or key points) in my post, though admittedly not very well thought out, since I just only thought about this a short while ago after reading your OP, so all the points I'm making here are on the spot and liable to contain a few fallacies, I'm sure.

Ok, think of it like this: if the theist says God is good (or the standard of good or whatever), then you come along and suggest God is evil (or the standard of evil or whatever), what did that accomplish exactly? As far as I can see, it didn't really change anything about God's nature, all what changed were words. And so the theist is just going to shrug this one off (if that's all that is really happening).

As for what you consider to be my strongest argument, I actually consider to be quite weak compared to the point made in my previous paragraph. And not really sure how to pursue this one further.

I guess the outworked consequences of that language change are what changes.

When theists say God is good they mean not just the tautology that God has the nature that He has, but that His nature is in some meaningful way analogous to the way humans intuit goodness - that in the same way we value courage, self-sacrifice, self-discipline, fairness, justice, kindness, etc God exemplifies those and has them in perfect or infinite measure. Thus they seek to explain evil and suffering and don't explain goodness and pleasure, and they trust that God desires to answer prayers that ask for such things and hope for an afterlife where there is an abundance of good and a lack of evil.

And evil God would flip that.