DarthDidious

I read somewhere an interesting angle on the Free Will defense against the Problem of Evil argument. The basic idea is that for a world to be perfect, there needs to be free will. A perfect world where there is no such thing as free will is a contradiction, ie a married bachelor. Ergo, God had no choice but to create a world where free will exists and where he cannot interfere with this free will in any way. It would have been impossible to create a "perfect world" where no evil exists because in such a world we would not have free will, and that is contradictory to what "perfection" is. Its excusing a God who is supposed to be both omnipotent and omnibenevolent from doing anything about evil in the world, and so rendering the PoE argument null.

I personally think this is horribly inadequate. If you think the absence of free will contradicts the idea of a perfect world, but then don't think that the evil that results from this free will itself contradicts that perfect world, you're a bit nuts.

EDIT

Oops, I realized halfway through writing this that it probably ought to go in the Existence of God forum instead, but then I forgot to change it. Feel free to move it there mods.

untermensche

There is no such thing as a perfect world. And we would not move any closer with free will for humans.

Philo_66

As stated it looks more like theology than philosophy. And, yes, it does seem to be designed to explain away the apparent contradiction of an all-good god creating evil.

It also makes you wonder, assuming it is correct, if the heaven such a theology promises is a place you'd want to spend eternity in...

Phil

TautologicalAxiom

Yeah, agreed. The absence of suffering would be closer to a so-called "perfect" world than the presence of "free will". Also, it isn't just that a supposedly all-perfect god failed to create something that would be considered closer to a "perfect" world, but that an all-perfect god really wouldn't experience the need to bother creating anything at all.

Wiploc

"Perfect" is undefined, so that isn't an argument.



I think it's stronger to dump the "perfect" language, and just say that a world without free will wouldn't be the best possible world. I'm not agreeing with that claim (that a world without free will wouldn't be the best possible world) but I don't dispute it either. I don't think one will win converts from the theist camp by coming out against free will.

I am, however, happy to come out against eternal torment in Hellfire. A world in which people are tortured for eternity is clearly not the best possible world. If we had to give up free will to avoid Hellfire, I'd do that in a flash.



So the bible must be wrong when it says god hardened Pharoah's heart to make him do evil?



The POE says that if god was strong enough to prevent evil if he wanted to, and wanted to, then there wouldn't be evil; so, if there is evil, it follows that god either isn't strong enough to fix it or he doesn't want to. Nothing is going to refute that.



Nicely put.

crc

Chris Porter

Moving to Existence of God(s) Forum as per request.

Cheerful Charlie

Then this is a problem for the bible that teaches predestination. (Romans 8 - 11.)

Other problems...

God has a free will.
God has a good nature incapable of doing moral evil.
God hates evil.

So to eliminate moral evil god is duty bound to give man a god-like free will and
a god-like good nature incapable of moral evil such as god enjoys.
If god can do this and refuses, god is responsible for existance of all moral evil
and is evil, not good.
Contradiction.

Since moral evil exists, god cannot.

Free will does not mean god must tolerate evil.

One could argue god having no ability to do evil means god has no free will.
If so, its not important to us either.
Theologians argue god has potential to do evil, which is good enough
to perserve god's free will. Good enough for us too.

Omnigenesis, creation of all.

God is omniscience and creator of all.

As he contemplates creating a universe, being omniscient
he will know what the universe's future will be.
If 13 billion years hence there will be a man named John Smith,
god will know that, being omniscient.

He will know if Smith is good and saved, evil and damned.
He at that point must chose which. "Do I make a damed or a saved Smith?"
"Smith wil commit a murder-rape on 15th june, 1999, doI allow this universe
to go on with Smith's rape, or to I create another universe without that Smith
or that rape?
Smith has no choice in what god choses. And only god chooses.

Each and every act of Smith will be scrutinized by God before it happens and god
will personally and purposefully allow it or disallow it.

All our acts to the smallest act our whole lives are created in toto and
to the smallest quark by god, personally, and only by god.

Omnigenesis, god creates all to the smallest details.

If god creates all, and if god is omniscient, free will is impossible to
an extreme. You can have omnigensis or free will but not both.
A god that creates al and is omniscient gives us omnigenesis.

If you say god creates all and is omnipotent, omnipotence means all powerful.
God then cannot be affected by time. Or he would be limited by time and
not all powerful as defined. Time gives us past, present, future but to god, not
affected by time, all is now.

Thus if god creates all, he creates all now, at one go, at once, in all the
universe's minutest details.

We are back then to omnigenesis and no possible free will.

To have free will, god cannot be omnipotent, onmniscieint,
create a deterministic universe, or have free will and a good nature.

God and free will simply are a contradictory set of ideas.

Other bad ideas. Adam ate the fruit and original sin came into the world.
Man has free will and is inclined to evil because of original sin.
(Calvinism, Lutheranism et al).

But does not existance of free will then remove some of man's free will?
And if god is all good and hates evil, and if orginal sin creates evil, why did
all good god tolerate evil 4,000 years?

This free will - original sin dodge has its problems.
See Calvinism's 5 points for the full spiel.

The god of bible, quran and vedas and free will are not compatible.
Omniscient or omnipotent creator of all just can't work.

These gods cannot exist.

Cheerful Charlie

Cheerful Charlie

The idea of free will is to shuffle blame for evil on our shoulder's not god's.
This "free will defense" was the creation of St. Augustine, (City of god and other
writings). It is still used today, google Alvin Plantinga, free will defence.

The claim is, free will is more important than destroying all evil.

Another twist is man is essentially like god, perfect, having free will
and being morally good, except for orginal sin which is the cause of
man's prediliction to evil.

We are back to Epicurus though, if god hates evil, and wants to eliminate
evil, why not just eliminate original sin with a wave of an omnipotent paw?
Why wait 4000 years to act?


And, why can't god just give us a god-like free will and a god-like good nature
incapable of doing evil and be done with evil? Here god gets man's free
will, and and eliminates evil. Both alledgedly good and goals of god.

Free will doesn't save god from Epicurus in the end.