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!
But you accepted some broad claims as a theist. Were you accepting them for no reason whatsoever? And how about reasons to reject them? Are there any good ones?
If you accept it you are condemned, if you don’t you are condemned therefore catch 22. You realize that Catch 22 is not a good thing.
To be clear, you are saying that Adam is not an allegorical character.
I was 11 years old at the time. I tentatively accepted them on the say-so of my pastor.
But I guess I’m a natural skeptic. I soon began questioning and reading, and doubt slowly grew.
I have rejected the evidence that is supposed to support the theist claims (but really doesn’t).
I’m otherwise uncommitted. I do not take a position on whether there is a creator god.
So there was no good reason in the first place. You were basically uncommitted then, and uncommitted now. No difference.
About as good as any you’ve got, anyhow.
I converted at adult age after careful consideration. No contact with believers in childhood whatsoever, no religious indoctrination.
So making a two year suffer is payment for being born, God as a Divine Bookkeeper.
You are making your God look worse and worse.
FMM, re Molinism, Arianism and worthiness of worship, the stuff I’ve read on the web has been pretty muddy. My first inclination is to say that the Arianist conception produces a gentler, less obnoxious god, but it may be that it is also either less powerful, less knowing or both, than the Molinist conception.
But I’m really just “spit-balling” as they say. As you have a better understanding of these positions, maybe you should write an OP on Calvinism, Arianism, Molinism, Synergism and Monergism, and, after your (hopefully) clear descriptions of the positions, we can discuss it further there.
As I said.
You said an 11-year-old indoctrinated kid has as good reasons as a grownup.
Noted.
No, I said they have as good reasons as YOU have or have ever had.
walto,
As I said.
Which particular version of God did reason lead you to, if I might ask?
What more absurd conjecture could be made than that an omniscient being depended on beta testing to determine the nature of human beings.
You have an extremely defective concept of proof.
Which second law is that?
The second one, obviously. 🙂
2LOT doesn’t require eternal damnation for my daughter or anybody else in anything I’ve read about thermodynamics. (I admit I haven’t read a lot, but still.)
Thanks for the clarification
It’s what I do.
Do you mean you are actually able to distinguish between them? More often atheists take all gods to be the same Zeus with different names. Or a teapot.
I don’t think I’ll be writing any OPs here.
This is just not a good place to have any kind of in-depth conversation. The best we can hope for is to fly beneath the radar and learn a little about each other from time to time before the rabble rousers make it to difficult to be civil .
Thanks for the response though I appreciate you taking the time to look at it. These are the kinds of intramural things that Christians talk about when we are not plotting secretly to take over the public school system.
peace
suffering is just what it feels like to die and we are all dying from the minute we are born,.
peace
No if you accept it you have some beneficial knowledge about yourself and the world whether you are condemned depends on what you do with that knowledge.
if you reject it you were condemned already
peace
I don’t think you and I have the same understanding of what eternal damnation is.
I would say it involves being eternally excluded from the source of life when that happens you will eventually fall apart and die according to the 2LOT. (if my limited understanding is correct).
peace
It’s not that God needs the test it’s that we did. It’s the only way we can know we don’t measure up. God of course already knew that to be the case.
Adam is an allegorical character.
Allegorical is not synonymous with fictional.
peace
I don’t think so. The syllogism looks something like this
Premise 1) When you reject God’s actions as silly you are doing exactly what Adam did.
Premise 2) God’s “actions” in this case were to assume that you would do exactly what Adam did
Conclusion) God was right to assume you would do what Adam did
Adam’s sin was that he did not trust that God was good and wise because at the time it did not appear to be the case. You are doing exactly the same thing.
Seems obvious
peace
Even theists sometimes have that difficulty with other versions of God.
When you reject every post that disagrees with any Bible story as wrong you are doing exactly what I expect of you.
Etc.
So you think you’re your body? That’s not a very Christian conception, I’d have thought.
Sure. And what follows from this? That you were really not interested in the answer?
I’m not sure how you came to that conclusion? I’m not my body but my body definitely is part of me.
In the the decision thread I advocated the following
Brain plus consciousness equals mind.
The equivalent in this case might be
Body plus spirit equals soul(person).
That is pretty much the orthodox Christian understanding AFAIK
quote:
then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the [spirit] breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
(Gen 2:7)
and
Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth?
(Ecc 3:21)
and
and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
(Ecc 12:7)
and
And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
(Mat 10:28)
end quote:
etc
For Christians the ultimate destination is not a immaterial existence but a glorified body and a renewed creation at the resurrection.
peace
Heh, fairy tales for children.
I came to it by what you wrote–that without assistance from above, entropy will cause my daughters to disperse, deteriorate and die. We know that bodies do that, so I infer from your remark that you think my daughters are their bodies.
Doesn’t The 2LOT hold that everything does that?
quote:
The second law of thermodynamics states that the total entropy of an isolated system always increases over time, or remains constant in ideal cases where the system is in a steady state or undergoing a reversible process.
end quote:
from here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
I think they mean physical systems, not, e.g., the integers.
It followed from your response, it seemed generalization was more to your interest than my request. I figured if you wanted to answer you would.
Life is just another word for dying, nice view
certainly it can be, could you elaborate?
Actually life is the opposite of dying.
peace
The system that is me has a large physical component (my body).
The integers are unchanging and I am the opposite of that, fickle and fleeting.
peace
So the second law is result of Adam disobedience?
I’m not sure what you are asking could you ask specific questions?
Certainly you would agree that there was a first member of our species. Don’t you? We Christians call that guy Adam.
Scientists often borrow from that train of thought.
check it out
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam
peace
Do you believe in the reincarnation of the body?
No, the second law is a law of nature
No our isolation from the source of life is result of our disobedience
peace
I believe in resurrection of the body. That is the orthodox Christian position AFAIK
peace
Gee fifth decide,”suffering is just what it feels like to die and we are all dying from the minute we are born,”
So living is the opposite of what we are all doing from the minute we are born till we are mostly dead.
Life is necessary to reach the goal of dying, maybe?
Why bring up the second law?
How do you know it was not a female child? In which case Adam would be fictional.
revelation
peace