The ‘problem of evil’ is a perpetual thorn in the side of the omnitheist — that is, someone who believes in an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God. For if God is perfectly good and all-powerful, why does he allow so much evil in the world? He’s powerful enough to eradicate it; and if he’s perfectly good, he should want to eradicate it. So why doesn’t he?
One response, known as the ‘Free Will Defense’, comes from Alvin Plantinga:
A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all. Now God can create free creatures, but He can’t cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if He does so, then they aren’t significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can’t give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so. As it turned out, sadly enough, some of the free creatures God created went wrong in the exercise of their freedom; this is the source of moral evil. The fact that free creatures sometimes go wrong, however, counts neither against God’s omnipotence nor against his goodness: for He could have forestalled the occurrence of moral evil only by removing the possibility of moral good.
Plantinga’s position has multiple problems and shortcomings, which we’ll no doubt end up discussing in the comment thread, but for now I want to present an argument against the Free Will Defense that is similar to an argument I’ve been making in the purpose of theistic evolution thread.
Let’s assume for the purposes of this OP that libertarian free will exists and that humans possess it. (It’s actually incoherent and therefore impossible, but that’s a separate topic.)
Here’s how I presented the argument back in 2012, in a comment addressed to Mung:
You haven’t thought this through. An omniscient and omnipotent God could prevent rapes from happening, and he could even prevent the desire to rape from happening, all without controlling anyone’s thoughts and desires.
Here’s how it would work. Suppose God creates each person with free will, so that everything he or she does during life is freely chosen. If God is omniscient, he knows what all of those choices will be before the person is even created. If God simply chooses not to create the people who will go on to commit rape (or even experience the desire to commit rape), then he has prevented those things from happening without depriving anyone of their free will.
If you object that selective creation would deprive the uncreated people of their free will, then you run into a big problem: There are already zillions of uncreated people for every person who is actually born. If leaving a person uncreated violates his or her free will, then God is already massively guilty of denying free will to zillions of uncreated people. The objection thus undermines the assumption that free will is important to God, which is the basis for the whole argument in the first place!
Oh come on, what person has an estimation of how much evil and how much good should be in the world, based on evolution? That is so totally absurd.
They did the math? Yep, turns out its exactly what the theory predicts! What do you know.
Maybe Joe can write an algorithm to tell us what the estimates would be if it was NOT evolution that caused the evil vs. good ratio.
I think you’re the one equivocating here: depriving is not the same thing as preventing
What ontologically occurs in either case?
ETA: What keiths is saying is that by way of not creating evil people, their free will is not being deprived, but their evildoings are being prevented. Yet since we are talking about uncreated people, both their free will and their evildoings are also uncreated. So how come that non-creation has no consequences on the first, but has a consequence on the second? Help him out here.
Erik,
I think keiths argument is more silly than that. What is an evil person? I guy who stole things, is he evil? The drunk guy who hits his wife? The gang member, the con artist, the crooked politician, the lying cigarette executive?
Which ones should God not create so keiths can have his evil-less world?
I agree
I don’t have any revelatory powers that you don’t have. I will continue to check what I claim to know against what has been revealed. Since I’m a fallen sinful “speck” I get things wrong much more than I should.
Feel free to point out where you think I’m mistaken preferably with evidence and reason and not with snark.
Part of the reason I post here is to validate what I think I know against you all.
I do think we should try and keep what we say as topical as possible but that is just a subjective preference on my part.
Peace
Again, the whole idea that there can be true counterfactuals seems completely beyond Erik.
Counterfactuals or logical fallacies? Are counterfactuals only contrary to fact or can they be contrary to logic too?
ETA: It somewhat matters when an argument is invalid. It needs to be fixed. I noticed quite well how you put forward allegedly the same argument. It was not the same argument.
That IS pretty funny.
Everybody here, convinced? Cool, now we just have to convince FMM!
Now I know that’s the truth. 😉
what I don’t know is which are true and which are not. I can’t unless you or someone else reveals where I am mistaken.
The problem is it’s just those opinions that I have the most revelatory warrant for that you seem to dispute. You will need to offer a lot more evidence if you want me to doubt those things.
That is what I think about you all. However I happen to serve a God who is omnipotent and likes to do things that people think can’t be done so there is always hope. 😉
peace
No because it’s part of a specific argument about epistemology not about my faith in general. I could abandon my belief about total depravity when it comes to knowledge and still be a Christian.
There are lots of Christians who don’t hold to it.
On the other hand I could hold that folks are totally depraved and revelation is necessary for knowledge acquisition and not be a Christian at all. Perhaps I could hold to some kind of radical skepticism.
In summery the fact that my inability to convince you supports my argument in this case does not amount to “blocking the exits” at all AFAICT
peace
I like reason and evidence
Your beliefs seem pretty self reinforcing , I am surprised they would need any validation from the unregenerate
My point was you seem a bit inconsistent with that preference, but like I said it doesn’t matter either way. Sometimes tangents lead to interesting places
Just contrary to fact, not logic. You really should learn something about them before making claims regarding them. You’d say fewer obviously false things.
FWIW, that response isn’t actually relevant to what keiths was asking.
Erik:
That’s inane, Erik. It’s like saying that a vaccination program doesn’t prevent any deaths, because each of the deaths has to exist before it can be prevented.
There’s some room for allowing that English is not Erik’s first language. It’s easy for you or I to think that’s obvious that counterfactuals are not contradictions. Not so easy for others.
It’s not Keiths* problem.
God can best determine for himself who is evil and who is not.
Those that would, if they were created, freely choose to do evil.
* no real idea where the fuck the apostrophe is supposed to go.
Fine. But then he should stop accusing people of errors when he really doesn’t know what he’s talking about, no?
I know what I am talking about. Namely, about equivocation. Probably also called ambiguity. It concerns the word “create” .in keiths’ argument.
Maybe if you knew what validation means…
Glen Davidson
That’s the easy part. Even without any language skills I can guess that counterfactuals, if an element of a valid argument, must not be contradictions. I am talking about logical contradiction only. I pointed it out. Nobody proved me wrong. Walto is just repeating an irrelevant word like a broken record.
ETA: Can somebody trained in formal logic please formulate keiths’ argument so that he can claim it’s valid. Walto failed. He omitted the central term. Thanks for the try anyway and thanks in advance for a next attempt.
Erik:
I’m not using the word ‘create’ in two different senses, Erik. I’m using it to mean ‘bring into existence’. When God creates a person, he brings that person into existence. If he doesn’t create that person, then he doesn’t bring that person into existence.
It isn’t complicated.
As I already explained, the ambiguity concerns the consequences of not creating the person. Are there any or are there none? When it comes to an uncreated person’s free will, you say there are none, it’s totally cool, nothing bad happens. When it comes to their evil deeds, you say that those are being prevented, i.e. there is a good outcome. Which way is it?
ETA:
And I would not be the one saying this.
In contrast, you say that when an evil person is left uncreated, his free will is not being deprived.
This is what you said:
Can uncreated people commit evil deeds?
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want you think that I (think that I) have delivered a death blow to your argument. The way I see it, I am giving you an opportunity to do better. Walto formulated a valid argument, but it was easy to see that it was totally irrelevant to Plantinga. You are passionately engaging with Plantinga. Maybe you two can meet over tomato juice or something.
Erik,
No, which is precisely the point. By declining to create them, God has forestalled — prevented — the evil that they would commit if they actually existed.
…while not depriving them of their free will they would have and choices they would make if they actually existed?
ETA: I’m certain that language barrier is not in the way anymore.
No. No. No.
You should be hoping it’s the language barrier, btw. Otherwise your ability handle quantification looks very poor.
Quantify it for us. Thanks. Hopefully you’ll do better than when you tried to validate it.
ETA: You see, I say the argument is invalid. I showed how. Why not simply prove that I have not made my case, instead of trying to salvage keiths’ argument with words it doesn’t deserve? When you said it’s valid and tried to prove your claim, it turned out not to be so. Now I am double justified to see proof.
I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. The argument I said was valid WAS valid. Keiths’ argument in the OP, which I don’t remember and don’t feel like looking up, may well have been different. He can defend that himself.
And to be fairer to you with respect to the counterfactual issues here, I will admit that quantifying into modal contexts is, if not nonsense-making, at least problematic. You should, at any rate, drop the cocksure attitude, because many of your posts on this matter don’t themselves make sense.
You’re not convinced of the validity of Keiths’ argument. Fine. However, you have not shown it to be invalid. In fact, you have mostly made posts on it that are very confused.
Erik,
Here’s what’s puzzling about your position. You’re arguing that if God doesn’t create someone, he has deprived them* of their* free will.
But then this paragraph from the OP applies:
You’re backing yourself into the same corner again.
*The singular ‘they’ has been declared Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society.
Let’s remember that you are the one arguing here and I only analyze your argument. Still puzzling?
Erik,
You are arguing that my argument is invalid. That is, you are making a counterargument (more than one, actually, since your attempts are failing individually).
Part of your argument is that if God declines to create someone, he has deprived them of their free will.
The problem is that if your objection were correct, it would actually hurt your case:
Another failed objection you raised was this:
But as I pointed out:
There was also your attempt to argue that the key question was whether someone was on God’s “to be created” list, and that the answer to that question determined whether they were being deprived of their free will if God declined to create them.
If you’re going to argue that leaving someone uncreated deprives them of free will, that should apply to everyone who is uncreated — not just those on some supposed list.
Second, even if you were right about that, God could easily deal with the problem by simply filtering out the evildoers before placing them on the list.
What’s left? Can you find something that is actually wrong with my argument, or do you concede its correctness?
Woodbine:
Feel free to call me ‘Keith’. Then it’s easy.
So said I. Yours. Not keiths’.
I realize that. Yours was so much different than his. And irrelevant to Plantinga.
However, more things follow here. It follows that your defense of keiths is indefensible. Now you say you don’t know what you have been talking about, because you haven’t even read keiths’ argument. This explains a lot.
Just a little hint: The title here is – A critique of Plantinga’s ‘Free Will Defense’
Thanks for being fairer to me. As to my cocksurety (if this is a word), look at the positive side. Keiths’ is getting a chance to iron out wrinkles from his argument before presenting it to Plantinga.
And yours have been ignorant, now self-admittedly so.
Here’s keiths’ *entire* argument again (without the latter paragraph that presents an imaginary objection and a counter-objection to it. I tackled the latter paragraph first, because the imaginary objection it raised was exactly mine and keiths’ counter-objection to it was false and ineffective. The latter paragraph was also instructive to me what’s wrong about the entire argument.).
Isn’t it obvious? For clarity, let’s emphasize.
Suppose God creates each person with free will, so that everything he or she does during life is freely chosen.
Looks like keiths is assuming free will only after creation, in actual life. Therefore, when God (of his argument) leaves people uncreated, the emphasized part of his conclusion self-evidently follows.
[God] has prevented those [evil] things from happening without depriving anyone of their free will.
Therefore in the same argument, the evil things in keiths’ argument must also be assumed as existing only after creation, in actual life. They do not exist before creation. And thus by leaving evil people uncreated, God (of keiths’ argument) is not preventing any evil things. The unemphasized part of keiths’ conclusion does not follow. If keiths’ wants to insist that God positively prevents evil by not creating people, then he must at the same time admit that God (of his argument) positively deprives people of free will by not creating them.
One more thing is clear. The theist camp has some common clue that free will and evil are related. There may be some disagreement how exactly and in what proportions, but the connection is there for everyone. The atheist camp has no clue about it and thus fails to address Plantinga’s point.
The bottom line: Epicurus’ original argument is still the best presentation of the problem of evil. It plays with perfect clarity on the point that matters for theists. Except that it doesn’t mention free will – just like your argument, walto. Doesn’t free will matter?
keiths, to fifth:
Judging from his response, fifth doesn’t get it.
Let me spell it out.
If we aren’t convinced, you will take that as evidence that you are right. If we are convinced, you will take that as evidence that you are right — not because you have convinced us, but because God has worked his magic on us.
The exits are blocked. You refuse to consider the obvious alternative, which is that you can’t convince us because we can see your mistakes and don’t wish to emulate them.
keiths,
Your argument is invalid.
If free will and evil things in your argument are both uncreated, their metaphysical weight must be the same. If evil things are being prevented, then so is free will being deprived. The other option: If free will is not being deprived, then evil things are not being prevented.
The task you have is to explain why free will and evil things behave differently when not created. Until you have not done that, you are equivocating in the way you use the concept of creation. Your latter paragraph does not help here.
ETA: It’s like a Epicurean paradox. Non-creation either makes a difference or it doesn’t. In one case you say it does. In the other case, in the same argument, you say it doesn’t.
Erik,
I don’t think you’re straining to find a difficulty where none exists (i.e. doing a Mung) but rather something is getting lost in translation.
I’ve replaced a few words in Keiths argument – perhaps it will help?
Woodbine,
By now, it’s hardly reasonable to say something is getting lost in translation. I have this request,
You know walto’s argument? It was as follows,
ETA: In this argument, everything depends on #3. Can anyone provide a mechanism how to diminish evil without diminishing the good? Keiths’ claim is that by leaving evil people uncreated, God would do away with evil while leaving free will (which is good) untouched. Anybody up for a valid argument to show how the claim could work?
Erik,
That’s right. Uncreated people don’t choose anything, freely or otherwise. How could they? They don’t exist.
I already explained your mistake: You’re assuming that in order for something to be prevented, it must exist first. That’s obviously false, as my death example shows:
If you prevent X, X doesn’t happen. You’re arguing instead that X has to happen first in order to be prevented later. That makes no sense, as is obvious from my example.
Earlier, you wrote:
Might I suggest a different hobby, like gardening?
1: God can create people with the freedom to choose good or evil.
2: Before they are even created God can foresee which people will choose to do good, and which will choose evil.
3: God can decide not to create people who choose evil.
4: God can create a world in which everyone freely chooses the good.
If God chose to create all of the leading members of the Nazi party in different eras and/or geographical locations such that the Holocaust could have been prevented, would he be infringing on the Free-Will of any individual souls?
If they were still each given the chance to exist and given the full faculty of Free-Will but under circumstances not quite so conducive to genocide, wouldn’t that be a net reduction of evil without impacting Free-Will?
Sorry to be so cliche by going straight to Nazis, but it’s actually an innocent thought experiment on my part.
As earlier indicated, I’m not convinced by the arguments I’ve heard for #3. I think, if fleshed out, they assume a libertarian position I don’t buy. Ironically, I agree with the libertarian free-williist here [ETA: i.e. phoodoo–dunno mung’s position or erik’s] that 3 is doubtful. I think, though, that if libertarian free will were correct, maybe one could make a case for #3 along the lines keiths has suggested. I’m not sure about any of this, though. It’s complicated, and I don’t care enough about the issue to spend much energy on it.
By the same logic, uncreated people don’t do anything, good or evil. How could they? They don’t exist.
Yet you say evil things are being prevented by leaving them uncreated.
First, let’s be clear, you are the only one assuming here. I am not assuming anything. I only follow your argument closely. Which you should be thankful for. Nobody else follows it as closely as I do.
Second, granted your assumption (currently – things don’t have to exist for them to be prevented), it’s also the case that things do not have to exist for them to be deprived. For example, when population is much bigger than available living space to accommodate them, then there are people deprived of living space (homes), even when the homes have not been built yet.
So, if evil deeds (which don’t exist) can be prevented by not creating people who would do them, then also free will or choices (which do not exist) can be deprived by not creating people who would have them.
You are the only one assuming here. The problem is that you are assuming two contrary things at the same time. When it comes to evil deeds, you think that non-creation of people who would commit them has good consequences. When it comes to free will and choices, you think that non-creation of people who would have them has no consequences. Which way is it?
walto,
I’m not a libertarian, either, but I accepted libertarian free will arguendo for the sake of this thread:
My argument is actually easier if we stipulate compatibilism, because then God doesn’t violate anyone’s free will even if their behavior is deterministically good.
There are too many prior conditions that have to be in precisely the right places with determinism for me to be confident everything can be worked out in the way of ‘all good.’ With a libertarian picture the decisons are basically willy-nilly, so we can just stipulate that X chooses this nice thing and Y that one.
ETA: I should say ‘all good with no reduction in aggregate good.’ That’s basically been phoodoo’s sole point in this thread–though I’m not sure that’s as sigificant a problem with a libertarian picture. I honestly don’t know though, and I’m not sure how anybody could.
I like to think my beliefs are not self reinforcing as much as reinforced by revelation.
and It’s not that I need validation for my core beliefs it’s just that a good way to see if you are correct about what folks think is to talk to them and see if what they reveal to you.
peace
Pretty much everybody has revealed that they disagree with you. As you say you’re not interested in convincing anybody, could it be that you’re fond of irritating?
Exactly,
And if there is even the tiniest logically possibility that God has a reason for allowing evil then keith’s argument fails.
There is just no way that I can see him ever getting over the incredibly high bar of confidence that is necessary to defeat this defense.
peace
Agree.
I would say that the “anti-theists” disagree but isn’t that exactly what we would expect from folks who have so much at stake if I’m correct?
It would be interesting if a committed Christian would disagree here so I could toss that one around for a while.
Regardless It’s the reasons and arguments that you all offer that interest me not so much “convincing” or “irritating” anyone.
peace
Like what, for instance?
And I’m not interested in your prejudices (“revelations” and other tripe) about such folk, rather the truth if you can ever trouble to deal in it.
Glen Davidson
Basically everything you value in life. The most important thing you have at stake I would guess is your supposed autonomy.
peace