In section 3.3.2 it was mentioned that there is no standard evaluative meaning of the word god in the tradition of the present language. Because the word god has hardly any universally accepted conceptual meaning either, the crucial thing is that god and God have a strong positive connotation for theists. Perhaps, a theist is not primarily someone who believes in one or more gods, but someone for whom the morpheme god has a positive evaluative meaning in this language. Nevertheless, besides its rather strong evaluative meaning, which is negative for atheists, god does have some standard conceptual meaning for theists and nontheists alike. Every 'god' is at least an unusual being in a denominational doctrine, and if it is a principal being in that doctrine, the doctrine is theistic. Moreover, it is worshiped or requires (some) people's worship according to such a doctrine. It often is also believed to have more than natural powers or attributes and to control the world or a particular aspect of it, but that belief is the supernaturalist part of the ideology in question and does not constitute its theist nature in the strict sense. Tho a belief in supernatural 'gods' which are in need of the same enlightenment as every mortal, human being may be supernaturalistic, we shall not call it "theistic", because such supernatural unusual beings do not play a principal role in such a belief.

Not only may a god be believed to rule the universe but also to have created it, and to provide factual, modal and normative information about it. What is theistic about this belief (rather than supernaturalistic) is the worship, or purported worship, of such a being and the assertion or suggestion that it is of superior value or --in the event that there is only one such specimen-- of supreme value. But obviously, a god must be believed to deserve worship because of some quality it or 'e 'has' (which is short for is believed to have). Such a quality may be that it is more powerful than usual, or all-powerful in the extremist conception; that 'e knows more than usual, or is omniscient in the extremist conception. (Extremist in the literal, catenical sense of the word, referring to the obsession with one or both of the catena's extremities.) The god's superior value is therefore a function of its power, its wisdom, its goodness, and so on. Conversely, by making power, wisdom, goodness and suchlike, attributes of the principal beings worshiped, power, wisdom and goodness themselves become ultimate objects of worship.

But, it might be rejoined, it is not power besides goodness which is, or should be, worshiped; it is the power to do good. This sounds plausible. The plausibility of this argument evaporates, however, in extremist monotheist thought in which one personal god, named "God", is claimed to be at once omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good. What develops is a problem which in philosophy of religion is called "the problem of evil". Since it is a god which plays a leading part in this drama, we will briefly discuss it here, altho the problem is basically supernaturalistic. We shall dub the god in question "Mono", and to refer to 'im we shall --in the monosexualist fashion of the major monotheist traditions-- use the masculine pronoun. As Mono, the leading lord, is all-powerful, and as he is conscious that he is all-powerful, for he is at once omniscient, he lacks all courage (but without necessarily being a coward). Courageous are only those of Mono's opponents who do not believe that they have supernatural power, or who do not believe that they are protected by a supernatural being. Yet, we are asked to ignore this, as this would detract from the luster of the play long before its termination.

In its simplest form the plot is this: Mono, who remains invisible during every act of the play, is omnipotent, and knows this; he is wholly good, and knows what is good or just; yet, evil exists, and has been proved to exist. What ensues is an intellectual battle between, on the one side, the defenders of Mono who profess that he does exist and that he is both all-powerful and wholly good nevertheless, and on the other side, his opponents who argue that he cannot be all-powerful and wholly good at the same time, even if he exists. First, several of the defense's pleas are refuted one by one. For example, the argument that 'good cannot exist without evil' or that 'evil is necessary as a counterpart to good'. We have already disposed of this sort of argument ourselves as sheer nonsense in section 2.2.1. Another argument adduced is that 'evil is due to human free will'. This leads to what has been called "the paradox of omnipotence". How could Mono, being omnipotent, have created things or people he subsequently cannot control? To solve this paradox one of the players suggests that a distinction must be made between first- and second-order omnipotence. (It has now become a game of two balls, so to say.) The right horn (or ball) of omnipotence is, then, defined as unlimited power to act and the left one as unlimited power to determine what power to act things will have. What is then demonstrated is that Mono could not in the course of history be all-powerful in both senses at once. As we haven't got enough time to seriously consider the rejoinder that Mono would be a wholly nontemporal being as well, we shall listen a moment now to a more sophisticated version of the so-called 'free-will defense'.

The latter-day free-will defender in question starts with arguing that one must differentiate moral and physical evil and that Mono could not create the possibility of moral evil committed by free creatures while simultaneously 'prohibiting its actuality'. According to the free-will theodecy a world containing free persons and moral evil is superior to one lacking free persons and both moral good and evil, so long as that world contains more moral good than moral evil. (It will require quite a few paradisiacal serpent-windings to combine this persuasion with the usual monotheist eschatology that teaches that the present world is imperfect, while forecasting and idealizing a perfect, ultimate world without any evil.) The notion of an omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good god would therefore not be inconsistent, because a world with 'free possible persons such that there is a balance of moral good over moral evil' is logically possible. Of course, the argument does not prove Mono's actual existence, for, among others, it hinges on the 'empirical' assumption that all people in the universe do on average show significantly more benevolence than malevolence. (An assumption which, altho not extreme, is positively unneutral.) Moreover, even if this is the case, it does not guarantee that it will remain the case.

So much for the moral evil which the ubiquitous Mono is supposed to logically allow. Now, what about physical evil, and what is this? The apologist of Mono-theism defines physical evil as evil which cannot be ascribed to the free actions of human beings, but here lies the flaw in 'er apologetics. If 'moral evil' is the 'evil of doing something morally wrong', then 'physical evil' does not only concern the evil of natural disasters and suchlike things but also the bad, physical consequences of morally evil deeds. (Whether they are morally evil solely because of their bad consequences, or bad consequences which were intended, does not matter here.) If Mono really were wholly good and all-powerful, he might be expected to help anyone and everyone who is the victim of someone else's wicked behavior. This would not infringe upon the free will of the person committing evil, as Mono did not have to make the act of free will itself impossible. He would merely take care that no-one or no innocent sentient being suffered from such an act in the end. It is then that he would be good.

Some theists in the play may indeed claim that Mono does actually compensate for all suffering which is the physically evil result of other people's morally evil behavior, something which amounts to saying that this kind of physical evil does, on balance, not exist. Other theists may point out that Mono cannot compensate for all suffering as everyone would then know that nothing could, on balance, hurt one's neighbor or enemy, and moral evil itself would become impossible, something which Mono's creation does not allow for. (We shall skip the question why and how someone would know that Mono compensates for all suffering. Game-theoretic theology teaches that an omnipotent or omniscient being should, in certain situations, keep its opponent in the dark about its omnipotence or omniscience in order to guarantee the best outcome for itself.) The rejoinder is, first of all, based on the view that the moral evil would solely lie in its physical consequences, because it would merely be these physical consequences, bad and good, which even out in the end; the evil, intentional act of wanting something wicked is still possible. And not only is this moral evil still possible, what could be more morally wicked in this terrific world than doing something which not only hits another mortal being, but which is bound to provoke the intervention of Mono in his very own person? The evil is then not committed against just another mortal being but against the Master of the Universe Himself. Every monotheist must admit that this is the most perfect of all sins. The free-will argument that an omnipotent, omniscient god could be wholly good, altho 'e would not take away all bad effects of morally evil acts, therefore fails.

Apart from this digression the free-will defender has still to account for all physical evil which does not result from morally evil acts. At least, this is what we would expect, but physical evil like natural disasters is --as claimed by one of Mono's advocates-- also the product of moral evil. This evil must not be attributed to human spirits however, but to one or more mighty supernatural spirits. In other words: one or more demons which, altho created by Mono himself long before he created man, have decided to rebel against their master-maker. In a daring attempt to justify this belief in one devil and perhaps other demons, it is even related to us that it is 'an important part of traditional theist belief to attribute a good deal of the evil found to Satan or his cohorts'. (Satan is the name given to the sole or principal demon, and as the struggle between this principal being and Mono is a vulgar struggle for power, both must be male in the style of reasoning concerned.) The proper name we shall give to this being playing a second principal role in the Universal Theater of supernaturalist ideology is Demono.

While naive spectators may first have thought that there was only one great invisible being in this fantastic play, the dramatic disclosure is that there have been two invisible protagonists from the beginning on: Mono and Demono. We should bear in mind tho that the hypostatization of both Mono and Demono is a logical prerequisite of only extremist monotheist religion. It is not necessarily true of all religion, not even of all monotheist religion. Nonetheless, what it does illustrate is that religion is often theistic and demonistic at the same time. Its theism and its demonism are hand in glove as it were, seem to imply each other, need each other, like yin and yang, if not logically, then at least psychologically. That is why it is not so much the belief in one or more gods which counts but the belief in one or more gods and/or demons. This is what aptly may be called "theodemonism". (Since demonism is a good word which parallels theism it is to be preferred to demonology when talking about the belief in demons.) As the deeds of the divine 'supreme being' in monotheist scriptures but too often veer between the creation and the destruction of life, between beneficence and maleficence, a religion founded upon such scriptures is also 'theodemonical' in the full sense of the word when it does not explicitly allow for a separate, independent demon.