GakuseiDon

Actually, that article doesn't give Plantinga's defense against natural evil. The author is giving his own hypothetical one.

A Stable Flux

You're right. I was just awaiting for the article to give Plantinga's response to natural evil, as he's usually very thorough, despite being most disagreeable.

The article only says on his response MSR2 being the Fall caused natural evilIt seems that Plantinga's credibility and argument go out the window with his response to natural evil. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy wouldn't even bother summarising them. Unfortunately, the book referenced isn't on the internet, but I could find a review which states

(Fine 1976:565).

Whatever unrespectable solution he offered to natural evil it's clear that Plantinga never conceived of some revolutionary refutation to the problem of evil.


References
Kit Fine
The Philosophical Review, Vol. 85, No. 4. (Oct., 1976), pp. 562-566.

GakuseiDon

Plantinga was offering a solution to the logical PoE with regards to natural evil, and offered two possibilities: actions by non-human moral agents, or that the suffering caused by free-will choices could be mitigated by consideration of natural evil occuring. These are given as possibilities for a solution to the logical PoE. The empirical PoE is unresolvable for us in our lifetime, AFAICS.

Steven Carr

It is possible that every time I do something bad, it is because demons have forced me to do it.

I deny that this is true, but the fact that it is possible should stop every one of you ever thinking that I am not all-good.

And I hope none of you think there are any logical reasons to believe that the Earth goes around the Sun.

It is possible that the Sun goes around the Earth.

So how can it be irrational to believe that the Sun goes around the Earth, when it is logically possible that it does?

Joan of Bark

Jeez, the 'free-will' argument will never go away, will it? Yeah, like it's free will that causes earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, malaria, cholera, smallpox, the Black Death, yellow fever, the flu, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, etc.

If God exists, he's the greatest monster humanity has ever encountered. This is what I call TEGA (The Evil God Argument). The fact that billions of people hold Him up to be the ultimate in love is truly the major paradox of human belief.

Anyway, I'll buy the book on the assumption that Ehrman covers TEGA.

GakuseiDon

What do you mean?

Joan of Bark

I thought my sarcasm was clear, but obviously not.

Free will does not cause any of the calamities I have listed. These were all created by our loving and merciful God. We are merely the victims of His horrors, not the cause.

Unless He doesn't exist, which is of course what I believe.

schilling.klaus

the proper solution is to posit an evil creator from a good redeemer deity, as figured by Giovanni di Lugio.

Klaus Schilling

Joan of Bark

Shouldn't a 'good redeemer' eliminate the horrors He has created (and issue an official apology)?

John Kesler

The fact that inhabitants of heaven can have free will and be sinless proves that the two attributes are not logically incompatible. The obvious question, then, is why God didn't make humans with these two complimentary qualities while we are still on earth.

Also, the best that theodicy can accomplish is to show that even if God existed, the universe would be no different than it is; the existence of God is a non sequitur.