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!
FWIW, my own favorites are Juggernaut God, Sentinel God, and Fashion God.
I see. Not relevant to the argument though.
It’s not that we can’t it’s that we won’t. We won’t because we don’t want to
quote:
Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.
(Rom 3:19)
end quote:
peace
Have you done everything you can to cure disease dazz? Have you wasted any time on the internet that you could have used working on the problem?
Was your decision to waste time rather than curing disease evil? If not why not?
peace
I’m no Maximally Great Being so you have no point. But I’m sure I’ve done more good than your invisible friend anyway
What difference does it make?
If God needs to take control of us in order to obey his commandments why issue them in the first place?
keiths,
Oh come on keiths, you started a thread about the problem of evil. You constantly rail about the problem of evil in your arguments about a God. Its practically one of your favorite talking points, other than claiming your victories.
So I am saying I don’t think its a problem in the first place, and asking you to defend why it is, and you are totally panicked by having to make a good argument for maintaining that it is a true philosophical problem to overcome.
Your so called problem has been cracked open and shown to be empty, so now of course you want to change topics and say you only want to talk about Platinga, and not really about the problem of evil, because you know you can’t.
phoodoo,
Educate yourself, and then — if you still think the problem of evil isn’t a problem — come back and make your case.
I’m not going to spoon feed you when the information is widely available.
fifthmonarchyman:
Woodbine:
Especially when according to fifth, issuing commandments just makes us sin more:
Fifth’s beliefs are an incoherent mess.
Great keiths, so if YOU think there is a problem of evil, why are you so afraid of actually defending that position?
keiths,
You argument is google the problem of evil, lots of people talk about it??
Google the”flat earth” keiths.
Erik:
I already addressed this, Erik:
By your standard, God already denies free will to the zillions of people he doesn’t create. If it’s acceptable for him to deny free will to all of them, why not to the people he filters out — those who would go on to commit evil if they were created?
phoodoo:
No.
Educate yourself, and then — if you still think the problem of evil isn’t a problem — come back and make your case.
keiths,
keiths,
Your desperate pleas to google have convinced me that you are acknowledging defeat.
phoodoo,
I’m asking you to educate yourself and then make your case, if you still think you have one.
If you can’t make your case, people will brush you aside — as they pretty much do already.
Erik:
keiths:
In my scenario, evil is prevented, everyone who is on the “to be created” list gets created, and no is denied their free will — by your own criterion.
So what’s your objection?
RoyLT:
What makes free will valuable, in Plantinga’s view, is that it makes moral goodness possible. To Plantinga, a choice has no moral significance unless it is free. Thus a world without free will can contain no moral goodness. (Or moral evil, either.)
As long as the moral good in a world outweighs the moral evil, by whatever cosmic scoring system God uses, the world in question is better than one lacking free will. Its morality score is positive, while the score of the world lacking free will is zero.
So to Plantinga, moral evil is the price God pays for moral good. He can’t have moral good without free will, and with free will inevitably comes moral evil.
My argument challenges that last clause by showing that moral evil needn’t accompany free will if God takes advantage of his omniscience. He merely needs to refrain from creating anyone who will go on to commit evil.
walto,
We do our best, based on the evidence we have, the same as we do in any other field. People who are rational pick the hypothesis that best fits the available evidence. By that criterion, the best hypothesis is that this is not the best of all possible worlds.
First of all, the number of possible worlds is vast, so even before you look at the evidence, the odds are against this being the BOAPW.
Second, this world gives no sign of being the BOAPW. What evidence is there, for instance, that the number of deaths in the 2004 tsunami — some 230,000 — was exactly the right number to achieve God’s mysterious purposes? None whatsoever. To believe that it was, with no evidence whatsoever, is the worst sort of blind faith.
It makes a mockery of evidence-based reasoning, and is in fact the opposite. A bit of dogma is assumed. Any evidence that supports the point of dogma is welcomed and trumpeted. Any that doesn’t is rationalized away. Dogma trumps evidence, when it should be the other way around.
Plantinga at least tries to offer a rationale for why some evil is necessary, though it fails. There is an alternative that achieves the desired effect — the full exercise of free will — without paying what Plantinga claims is the inevitable cost — the existence of moral evil.
1. God in his omniscience foreknows those who will go on to commit evil.
2. God refrains from creating those who will go on to commit evil.
3. There are no those who will go on to commit evil.
Your argument ends up saying that either omniscience is not omniscience or Creator is not Creator.
Just a play on the Epicurean paradox, right? I never found that paradox a paradox, once free will is allowed in the mix.
Notice how in your quote you are completely forgetting free will. Rightly so, because it cannot be there. It doesn’t work to say something like, “Let’s permit free will with only good choices.” That’s not free will.
Erik,
No to both. God takes advantage of his omniscience in order to create only those who will freely refrain from evil.
Then you’re saying that God doesn’t possess free will, since his choices are always good. You keep undermining your own position, Erik.
Looks an awful lot like yes to both. If only those are created who “freely” refrain from evil, then others are not created. And those others, omnisciently foreknown, end up not being actual, thus not really foreknown.
If we exclude “freely” here, it may work for some beginner in logic. But since you have “freely” there, it doesn’t work.
Where did I say God’s choices are always good? Maybe FFM said that. Take it up with him. I’d say that God’s creation is perfect, i.e. cannot possibly be any better than it is.
And there we have it folks.
If I’ve learned something these days, I would say this is false and doesn’t even address Keiths’ argument. First there’s the question on whether choices are needed for free will (Principle of Alternative Possibilities) and how unless one rejects that, fatalism seems unavoidable.
But it doesn’t even matter: there’s absolutely no reason to say that free will requires bad choices. On what grounds do you affirm that one wouldn’t be able to freely choose from a set of options, none of them being evil?
Are you claiming that what is evil for God is not evil for you? Why do you demand a higher ethical standard in others than you require from yourself?
quote:
Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God?
(Rom 2:3)
End quote:
peace
So that we are completely on the same page, please bring an example of options where none is evil, all of them good. Exhaustive options with no logical holes.
And for clarity: Are you presupposing compatibilism? By what mechanism?
No, exactly the opposite. If I don’t help when I can, I’m being evil. No one is as good as one can be, but also not everyone is able to help in the same way. God is supposed to be omnipotent, many believe he cured Lazarus and whatnot. So if you believe he can do that but doesn’t, then he’s being evil just like I would be evil if I walked by an injured person and didn’t stop to help him. So yeah, the same criteria applies to God and to me. And if both do the same, both of us are either evil or not perfectly good.
The free will rationalization is absurd. Would I be justified in applying the same criteria to not aid strangers because they might have freely chosen to be as evil as Hitler as Erik argues? Or because he might be sinner and deserves dying like you said?
Clearly your rationalizations force you to take the evil choice, or at least can justify it.
Irrelevant. Keith’s arguments is about god’s ability to make sure no one who will ever pick an evil choice can exist. Evil choices may exist, but the people in existence will never pick them. But they still have choices among the set of good ones.
And of course, it’s not even necessary that evil choices must exist for free will: If I can freely choose to have pancakes or fruit for breakfast, none of the options are evil. Your demand that I present an example where all the choices are good missed the point.
Again, that suggests that neither you nor god understand counterfactuals.
I completely grant that. But as a speck, I’m not ready to make judgements about the moral standing of the entire universe from my vantage in a northern Boston suburb on a little no account planet no one else probably cares about. Many theists do–they think they’re incredibly important, being in God’s image and all, which strikes me as ridiculous; I prefer not to join them in their self-aggrandizement. Enough to do here among the specks.
Suppose you were a bomb expert and encountered an injured person while on the way to diffuse a nuclear bomb set to explode in seconds.
It would not be evil to not help the injured person if doing so caused many other people to die.
What if God like the bomb expert has good reasons for not preventing all evil? What if something is going on that you don’t know about?
Is that not even logically possible to you?
That is what Plantinga’s defense is all about. To get hung up on the “free will” part of it is completely beside the point. He is simply expounding on one possible reason for God not to prevent all evil.
peace
Aren’t counterfactuals precisely meant to explain how god knows those things before they’re actualized?
Right. If we take it for granted that the universe is biggish and we’re speckish (something you ought to do a bit more often yourself, incidentally), we have to grant the possibility that this is the best of all possible worlds, even if it seems mediocre to us. The problem of evil is supposed to be a proof for the non-existence of God. It doesn’t work. Why? Because there might be a planet somewhere made of Stilton cheese where everyone would die painfully all of a sudden if things were better here. Who cares? The burden of proof is with theists anyhow.
Of course, Erik kind of goes off the rails there. He thinks he’s a 17th Century occasionalist or something and his views haven’t progressed from many of those popular at that time. That’s supposed to make him “smart.”
So I guess when Fleming invented penicillin and saved people by the millions he might have been interfering with some higher god plan… right?
In your thought experiment, I’d do my best. I might fail, I may not pick the best option. I may even be a coward and run away, doing the wrong thing. But what does God do every time there’s a case like that? Nothing. Almost as if it wouldn’t exist. If I did nothing about it you would call me evil, even though god is supposed to be infinitely more capable of doing good, he does nothing about it. Why make excuses? Should I be let off the hook for my evil deeds using the same excuse? Isn’t the same criteria of good and evil supposed to apply to both God and us?
now there is a change we can all believe in 😉
the burden of proof for what?
peace
fifthmonarchyman, For the existence of God. Atheists are under no obligation to prove that God does not exist. The problem of evil is frosting. But, IMHO, Leibniz, Plantinga and you are right that it wasn’t baked right.
nope, if he was he would not have invented it.
You are wrong, he showed Fleming how to invent penicillin didn’t he?
God is always and constantly preventing vast amounts evil at enormous cost to himself. That is what the cross was all about
peace
But you already know God exists there is no need to belabor the obvious
peace
Also many bad books and movies.
Well, I know you’re a bit nuts, if that’s the same thing.
fmm,
That might make sense were there evidence that god has prevented any evil at all. Do you have any such evidence?
Not sure why my response to @phoodoo yesterday was deleted without a trace, but I’ll try here again and see if it sticks this time.
There is no ‘evil-less’ world that @keiths is referring to. Like the rest of us pitiless atheists, he believes that the world and nature don’t give a damn about evil or suffering.
However, the devout Christian does have a supposedly evil-less world where they hope to spend eternity communing with God. The existence of Heaven is logically incompatible with the Free-Will Defense. Either (a) people sin there, in which case it is not quantifiably different from Earth, (b) they cannot sin there which means that Free-Will is not so ‘valuable’ after all, or (c) they can sin but do not which suggests that God can actualize a world where Free-Will and evil are not inextricably linked.
But for balance, you understand omniscience, right? Tell me the difference between Dharmic and Abrahamic versions of omniscience. Or between Molinist and Calvinist. Or lay out any version of your choice. I’m wildly guessing here: You can do none of these. That’s why keiths is all-cool.
What cost can be exacted on a timeless omniscient, omnipotent Creator? He cannot feel physical pain and knows and sees all. I guess that the amount of evil words and actions done in his name might sting a little bit…
keiths,
Well, you can’t win em all keiths, I understand. If you can’t defend the concept of an evil-less world, better to just throw your hands in the air and say, “go to google…”
What else can ya do.
I wonder if you will still keep complaining about the problem of evil, even after all this. Probably I guess.
I take it from your irrelevant bluster that you really do have no idea how counterfactuals. That’s good for the rest of us to know as you carry on with your silly attempts at argument.
Irrelevant to what? To OP that mentions omniscience and Molinism? Irrelevant to keiths’ argument?
I get it: Irrelevant to counterfactuals. But from my point of view it seems that, instead of the concept of counterfactuals, it matters more what they are accomplishing. It matters if keiths’ alleged counterfactuals really address omniscience and free will. That’s what’s relevant.
Okay, another test: Give me an example of a counterfactual that breaks the rules of logic. Some other source than keiths, thanks.
RoyLT,
Who says there is free will, or any will at all in heaven? For all we know, heaven might be a place where there is no such thing as a decision, no such thing as time, no such thing as right or wrong, no such thing as want or not want…
But that’s irrelevant to the supposed problem of evil in this world. Until keiths, or you or anyone can propose how or why this would should be rather than the way it is, then there is no problem of evil on Earth. So its a made up problem, that theists need not defend.
So if keiths is not interested in talking about the problem of evil, that’s fine. I just wonder why he brings it up so often then.
How about you give some evidence that you have the slightest understanding of logic first. Producing fallacious argument after fallacious argument, year after year, doesn’t exactly inspire confidence on that front. Even when you’re right about something, you generally have no idea why.
Incidently, neither indignation nor bluster is argument.
How about you get back on topic. I can’t help you there. You have to do it yourself.