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!
walto,
Then why did you? Here’s your comment:
keiths,
If you can convince me that mung actually doesn’t believe that rape is evil, I’ll request reinstatement for your post. I think you’re either making that up, or that he’s pranking you.
ETA: by “pranking you” I mean he’s actually been trying to show that on YOUR view rape isn’t evil.
Free will is really a quality, not quantity. But if it be treated as a quantity, it is non-linear. Let’s illustrate it to you as concretely as possible.
A dog is on a leash. The extent of the leash is the extent of liberty of the dog. Now, you may think that you just extend the leash indefinitely, and thus you are extending the liberty of the dog. True so far.
Now add another dog. If you extend the leashes of both indefinitely, the two dogs are going to meet. Now, the leash is not in the way of liberty anymore. The other dog is. Their respective liberties clash. The more dogs, the more clashes.
Thus you won’t get more free will by simply adding more people. Instead, you will get more conflicts of free will.
In one aspect, evil is a conflict of free will, certainly when overly liberal, overly libertarian, or overly wilful people meet.
WTF?
keiths:
Erik:
Come on, Erik. If failing to create one person infringes on their free will, then failing to create another person does likewise. Whether they’re on the “to be created” list makes no difference.
Besides, in my scenario everyone on the “to be created” list gets created. The ones who have evil in their futures never make it onto the list.
So what’s your objection?
And I, on my part, understand that neo-Aristotelian account of morality is quite compatible with some random theism, deism, pantheism, and thin atheism. However, neo-Aristotelian account of morality is not widespread among common people, particularly among common atheists.
Creator does not fail to create. Creator assigns a certain time for creation and then creates unfailingly. If not, then he is not Creator. He is not the omni-God that you seek to overthrow, but a strawman. Strawmen are easy to overthrow.
I’m a common atheist myself, and I admit that my morals are probably not neo-Aristotelian. I’ve heard that Aristotle was an exponent of “virtue ethics”–which, as I’ve mentioned before, is kind of Greek to me.
Where’d you get this idea that whatever is possible is necessary? Spinoza?
What is free will? I know, or at least I have a theory. Do you?
walto,
Mung, 2012:
I can see the suggestion, but it’s unclear enough for me not to be convinced. How about we just ask him?
Mung, do you think rape is morally acceptable behavior?
Doing what what one wants because one wants to.
What’s your theory?
And it stops there? How about getting what one wants? Never thought that far? Or is that irrelevant, so that we can leave it out of consideration and your theory is exhaustive and complete?
Yeah, of course that’s irrelevant. And what’s your awesome theory?
Dogs on leashes.
I’d say they’re free up to a point–the end of their leashes.
Yes, and if the leash is long enough, so they can meet each other, they’re free up to that point. Multiply them and freedom will actually diminish. That’s what human freedom is like.
walto,
The topic has come up many times since 2012, so he’s had plenty of opportunities to state that he thinks rape is evil. He never does.
Yeah, I think I became converted to a kind of neo-Aristotelianism when I read After Virtue way back in college. It helped me understand why I had such a strong aversive reaction to both Kantian ethics and utilitarianism — an aversion that has strengthened considerably since then. Reading feminist ethics, the Frankfurt School, and lots of Nietzsche and Foucault made me even more convinced that neither utilitarianism nor Kantian ethics were at all salvageable. Then I discovered Dewey and some contemporary Marxist Aristotelians, and I began to think that a neo-Aristotelian approach could work if put on a solidly Darwinian foundation. And that’s what Tomasello provides, though his way of putting it needs some philosophical cleaning-up. That’s where I come in.
keiths,
What about it keiths, is anything bad allowed to happen in your evil-less world? Are all decisions good ones? Is there heartache in your evil-less world?
Do people need to work in keith-world? You said scraped knees don’t hurt, will it hurt someone if I hit them a bat?
Can we get ANY clues about your world keiths?
Let’s see. I predict he will. If he doesn’t, I’ll retract.
walto,
You should retract anyway. Even if Mung actually does state that he thinks rape is evil, it won’t retroactively justify your guano whining.
My statement was based on what he wrote in 2012 and what he didn’t write for the next four years.
He wrote…
…and hasn’t stated otherwise for four years, despite the topic coming up repeatedly.
My statement was justified. Your complaint was off base.
phoodoo:
phoodoo,
Please focus. Really concentrate this time. Hold onto something and squeeze, if necessary. Now read the following sentence slowly:
My argument has nothing to do with what I, personally, would want in a world, nor with what I personally consider to be moral and immoral.
Now read that again, and think about it. When you’ve absorbed it, please read the following, from earlier in the thread:
Erik,
We can do things that apparently are impossible for God, like helping cure diseases. And how do you explain to a child with no health care that he is dying of cancer, that he’s going to die in extreme pain because that’s the best God can do?
Erik,
It makes no difference whether you call it “failing to create a person” or “refraining from creating a person”. Either way, that person doesn’t get created and therefore, according to you, is deprived of his or her free will.
It makes all the difference theologically. You have a certain omni-God in mind whom you want to refute, right? Then follow the proper procedure. ETA: Make sure you outline your target right. Otherwise you will not succeed.
Can we? So, every time we don’t cure a disease, we are to blame?
If we can do it and we don’t (free will!) then yes, that’s evil. Don’t you agree?.
Unless (a) Hitler is ill with the disease… Don’t you agree?
Yes, and that’s what I’ll be telling the parents of those dying children.
Don’t you see, your child had to get cancer because otherwise some theist trying to justify my non-interventionist stance would not be able to make a point about Hitler.
Actually I don’t agree, but what OMagain said. Just like FFM, your efforts trying to solve these problems make you guys say and believe the most obnoxious things.
When and where? Maybe I should be there with you, so you can point at me and blame me for every instance you fail to cure and console? Are you even a doctor or a nurse? Are you a mindreader so you can detect future Hitlers?
You see, people have their roles, duties. God has his role and duty. And it so happens that God’s duty is not to please atheists. It’s not even God’s duty to please theists. God is quite exacting on theists. Less exacting on atheists, seems to me. So calm down.
So because God created beings who don’t always do all they can to help others, then God also doesn’t have to? For pete’s sake, he’s supposed to be an Omni being, remember? The fact is that those that do go out of their way to help others do a lot better than God. Heck, even those who’ve just helped once do. So much for a MGB
Which is it, know or have a theory?
“Obnoxious” is not an argument. Just like keiths “rape” is not an argument. Keiths thought everybody automatically understands that when he says “rape” then it means “unnecessary evil”. It doesn’t. And that when he says “God is already massively guilty of denying free will to zillions of uncreated people” then this convinces theists that the omni-God is in a big problem and needs saving. It’s actually Keiths argument that needs saving. So, shall we try together? Cooperation and sharing and altruism and all that?
Not really. That remark is pretty ambiguous to be calling someone a rapist sympathist, if you ask me. If he says you’ve been off the wall all this time, as I believe, YOU should retract.
Really. What an incredibly lame and unsympathetic response Erik has given here. So many of his posts on this thread have had both of those characteristics, IMO.
If God has to, then what does it say of your respect towards free will? It says that you don’t value it. Without free will, nothing is left of either Plantinga’s argument or Keiths’ argument, and we have evidently moved on to some other topic.
What part of god’s plan or duty is enabled by the deaths of children, out of interest?
Would you kill baby Hitler, Erik?
Believing that God can’t help cure a disease because someone “bad” might benefit from it, killing millions of innocent people in the process is obnoxious anyway you look at it. So much free will wasted to kill someone who he could have not created in the first place!
Or do you think that curing diseases is a bad thing to do?
Right, because look at all the theists he can make happy when he does that!
I expect God’s role is to be God, but what is God’s duty?
Well, unless God is basically a magical Hitler.
Glen Davidson
Or he doesn’t exist.
keiths,
Please discuss in the appropriate thread.
walto,
Please discuss in the appropriate thread.
If it’s Creator God,* then the duty is to create. Keiths says (outright insisting even) that God fails to create. So keiths is not really even attempting to mount a proper argument.
* God has different roles. Creator God is a role relevant to keiths’ argument.
As requested, I have responded in the Moderation thread.