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!
Is that the ontological argument?
Point taken. (Pun intended.)
True. But even in Leibniz it’s not 100% clear what “best” means. Sometimes he seems to me “morally best,” but he has trouble cashing that check. At times he means “intelligible”: the ‘bestness’ of the world is its balance between the diversity of phenomena and the simplicity of laws. It’s an epistemological best, rather than a moral one.
Point is, if even Leibniz has trouble figuring out what “the best” in “the best of all possible worlds” is supposed to mean, it’s not going to be too easy for the rest of us mere mortals.
Wouldn’t that work for ANY world? Any world would be the best possible world if an omni creator is defined as being able to do just what is possible.
According to Platinga a world where there’s more good than evil is better than a world where there’s no good or evil.
But I can conceive a world where there’s just one less evil action (perhaps one less even atheist?) than in this world, and therefore, a creator that is greater than the purported creator of this world.
If a world where less evil is possible doesn’t exist, then a Maximally Great Being / Omni, or whatever, doesn’t exist either
You mean it would be better if God did the impossible? “Possible is good, so impossible is even better!” Is this supposed to be a compelling argument?
Do you have answers to these questions: For anything to be possible at all, what is required? Why is there something rather than nothing?
Perhaps these questions don’t bother you, because they are philosophical. I would sort of understand, even though I don’t share your attitude.
So you want a world with choices, but every option is a good one? That’s what keiths seems to want. You agree with him?
Why bother making a choice then. Choosing nothing must also be a good choice, because everything is good in keith-world.
No. The most basic version of the ontological argument is Anselm’s–the one starting with ‘The fool sayeth in his heart…’ it’s all over the ‘net.
Well, I don’t think I’ve shown not to care about philosophy here. I’m most definitely not very good at it, but still. Also just because one has an interest for philosophy doesn’t mean one has to have an interest for all the questions, or at least not willing to waste to much time on some questions.
Well, I have made it my personal quest to answer all the philosophical questions. Why? I have hardly any other interests. I limit myself to just that which is interesting to me. Saves time, is fun, and gets things done.
Really?
At least interesting things (to me) get done. Not talking about other things.
Dazz, I feel like you’re getting a wildly weird picture of philosophy if your’re picking most of it up here. All this god stuff is fun to kick around–fun puzzles like WSJ double-crostics, but it’s all way off to the side. It’s like learning about general medicine by keeping up with the New Zealand Journal of Gout, Urine and Toe.
Agreed. What we talk about at TSZ is pretty far removed from my own interests in philosophy of mind, epistemology, philosophy of science, and socio-political philosophy.
I know, I know. And to think that I still haven’t read Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, as suggested here, or KN’s book suggestions that I bookmarked… I need to get my priorities revised
No, it doesn’t directly concern belief in God. I think I made myself clear in the last sentence that the argument applies against moral relativists rather than non-theists.
To me it’s obvious that moral good and bad for a moral relativist would be nothing but “I like” and “I don’t like”. But maybe I am mistaken and you have an argument that shows that moral relativist good and bad are something better than that.
Still, I would argue that a consistent atheist would be a moral relativist or even moral denialist. I have met a few such. In terms of consistency, they are fairly good.
Then what is the point of the commandments?
What sense does it make for a God to demand that which cannot be done without him taking control?
There might as well be an eleventh commandment….
….it’s every bit as impossible to obey as the previous ten unless God intervenes.
Just curious. Do you think these questions can only be answered in absence of any sort of bias? And can one have no bias whatsoever?
Its free as a PDF here. I strongly recommend Rorty. Dennett, among others, thought highly of him
I first met Dick Rorty in 1970 when he invited me (all the way from UC Irvine) to give a talk at Princeton—the first talk I ever gave to an audience of philosophers—and then hosted an unforgettable party at his house afterward. His two 1972 papers “Dennett on Awareness” in Phil. Studies and “Functionalism, Machines, and Incorrigibility” in J.Phil. put my work in the limelight, and he continued through the years to write with insight and appreciation about my work, so I owe a great debt to him over and above all I learned from him in his writing and in our conversations and debates. Dick was always trying to enlist me, an avowed Quinian, to his more radical brand of pragmatism, and I always resisted his inducements, feeling like a stick in the mud. But this didn’t always stop Dick from re-creating me—or others he more-or-less agreed with—in his own radical image.
Alan Fox,
Thanks, I already downloaded the pdf months ago, And have Dennett’s Elbow Room in my to-read list too
No basis whatever for that speculation, IMO. Just confusion.
One can arrive at a personally satisfactory and publicly unimpeachable answer. Both at the same time. Most people don’t arrive there. That’s a given, because philosophy is not for most people. Even plumbing is not for most people.
No, what I mean is that if we lived in a world were there was a lot more evil, you could still say that that’s the best possible world. What if the best possible world is one were there’s more evil than good? How does Platinga know that’s not the case in this world?
So the atheists who who spend volumes explaining their case for moral relativism are confused. I actually agree, but I know it’s not very easy to demonstrate.
I’ve moved a couple of posts to guano. Please avoid calling other members names and please refrain from imputing the honesty of fellow members.
Objections to moderating actions should be raised in the “moderation issues (3)” thread (see link at head of page). “Guanoed” comments can of course be re-posted minus the rule-breaking content.
dazz,
Oh great. Happy reading!
Yes, I would say that, because a world with a lot more evil would logically be a world with proportionately more free will. It figures perfectly. I personally care little for free will, but some here care a lot, so they would (perhaps grudgingly) agree that a world with more evil would be just as good.
To answer this, one must explain the nature of evil. My account of the nature of evil is negative, i.e. it’s merely lack of good, just like darkness is lack of light. Thus, logically, there cannot be more evil than good. There can only be minimally little good for anything to still have a life.
But as far as I know Plantinga, he does not share this view of evil. He would answer differently.
IMO, arguments for moral relativism are likely to be bad whoever makes them. That’s true of arguments for objectivism too, however. Most arguments people have given for this or that heavyweight thesis have been bad. The point is that god is no more relevant to any such questions than are Atlantis or the Yeti.
A lot of wild speculations there, fifth. Go back and read #11.
I’m not fifth, and #11 is just about the thinnest and least grounded post by keiths here.
ETA: A big problem with his OP is where he lays out his “big problem” for the imagined objection. His imagined objection is in fact my actual objection, and his explanation does nothing to refute it, as I explain in #21.
Not THAT #11! Fmm knows what I meant.
Btw, speaking of keiths…Alan, as you’re hanging about here, I asked for one particularly disgusting post of keiths’ to be guanoed. Could you do that please?
I encourage you to visit your closest pediatric oncology ward and to share that viewpoint with the parents sitting there with their children.
walto,
here
Most arguments are bad. Arguing well is not easy. And there are also very good arguments for moral relativism. Also very good arguments for moral objectivism (cognitivism + realism). And none of those arguments have anything at all to do with theism, atheism, naturalism, etc.
Thanks.
I think that moral relativism is almost certainly false, though maybe there are versions that are trivially true.
By contrast, moral subjectivism is not false but simply incoherent. There can’t be a “private morality” for the exact same reasons that there can’t be a “private language”.
These days I’m pretty much convinced that a broadly neo-Aristotelian account is the right way to go: virtues are part of human flourishing, and we can find out through empirical inquiry what allows humans to flourish better and worse. Nonhumans can’t be virtuous — they can’t be moral agents — but they can suffer in many ways, and so the intrinsic wrongness of unnecessary suffering applies beyond the human sphere.
Moral wrongness consists of intentionslly causing unnecessary suffering or failing to prevent unnecessary suffering caused by intentional actions.
I do think that persons have a different moral status than nonperson animals, and that there are facts of the matter as to whether an animal is a person or not.
That it is an necessary evil for the greater good might be comforting
Too true. Not only is God said to work in mysterious ways, but it ought to be apparent to all that arguments and reactions to them do as well!
Going back to the OP:
“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.”
While reading through the comments on this thread, I have not seen any mention of how Plantinga judges “valuable” in any objective sense. Can someone point me in the right direction? Other than by circularly stating that it is more valuable because He created it, I can see no sensible basis for comparing the “value” of different possible worlds.
I think Keiths’ argument is sound but it’s necessarily abstract. This gives everyone who doesnt want to accept it an excuse to willfully misunderstand it.
It seems to me this is related to an argument for why God doesn’t make his existence plain and his rules unambiguous: he wants to give us the freedom to not believe in him. This is nonsense. It assumes that the only 2 possibilities are that we believe in God based on egregiously poor philosophical arguments or that we be mindless automatons programmed to believe in him. Of course if God did exist he could just make his existence obvious….it would be as obvious that he exists as that the moon exists, but we’d still be free to not believe in him just as we’re free to not believe the moon exists.
The relevance for the OP is that if Gods existence were obvious there would be much less evil in the world.
One way of doing this would be to follow the hedonists and base value on pleasure. So, many utilitarians would just say something like the most valuable universe has the most pleasure and the least pain (with the classic Mill version) adding that each individual (human being?) is counted as one and no individual is counted as more than one. Others have either added other items as intrinsically valuable–like beauty, knowledge, justice, satisfaction of desires, etc. or have made up their own lists. Note that taking “X is valuable” as axiomatic doesn’t necessarily make anything either subjective or relativistic. We always have to start somewhere.
But does taking X as “more valuable” not make the statement at least inherently relativistic?
If the only criterion put forward for judging the value of respective worlds is the existence of Free-Will in those worlds, then the defense would seem to me to assume its conclusion at the outset.
Why? Why can’t a world of relatively good people and a bigger population (more free will), be less evil than a world where less people do more evil?
keiths is unwilling to give any details about how an evil-less world would look, and Walto has run from the problem altogether, so I am not sure they have much ground to stand on in suggesting the world could be much better.
It seems none of the skeptics here have bothered to really think about it.
Do those souls who have ascended to Heaven commit any evil deeds once they have passed through the pearly gates?
How is heaven supposed to be if this is the best possible world and in this world good people have horrible fates and bad people enjoy great lives?
Walto attributes a “messianic complex” to me, complains that fifth “can’t consistently get [his] speckish head around that concept”, and then demands that a comment of mine be guanoed because it uses the word “freak” (gasp!) to describe someone who has been maintaining for years that rape isn’t evil.
I’m not asking for his comments to be guanoed — that would be as pointless as it was to guano mine — but I am pointing out the hypocrisy.
Walto, try to cultivate at least a smidgen of self-awareness.
I don’t want to sound too Clintonian here, but this depends on what you mean by “taking X as more valuable.”
Individual assessments of value are made by individuals or groups and are, to that extent, subjective. That’s true of individual assessments of anything, however. Take being a good baseball player. If I make an assessment, it will be subjective. But if there’s significant agreement that what constitutes goodness in this realm is batting and field averages solely, then it’s odd to call determinations of who good players are subjective. There is a good deal of (though not unanimous) agreement on what is valuable in the world.
And I agree with you completely that taking the total quantity of free will as the criterion of a world’s goodness seems weird. I’ve seen no defense of it here. Even if free will is an inherent good, surely there are others.
You really think I wanted that guanoed because it uses the word “freak”? Hilarious.
Right. Plus a world where there’s lots of poverty and sickness and angst is worse than one with less, all else equal.
“Most witches don’t believe in gods. They know that the gods exist, of course. They even deal with them occasionally. But they don’t believe in them. They know them too well. It would be like believing in the postman.”
— Sir Terry Pratchett