Thomas Metcalf

Family Man's post presented three reasons to reject the Free Will Defense to the arguments from evil. I think these following reasons are distinct, either in general form or in the details.

Introduction

The Free Will Defense (FWD) is offered to explain why there is intense suffering and premature death in the world. In its most charitable form, FWD states that if God were to reduce intense suffering and premature death from its current level, this would prevent humans from enjoying as much freedom of action (freedom for their choices to turn into results, rather than freedom to make the choices in the first place) as they ought to enjoy.

A Budget of Problems

(1) FWD doesn't explain naturally-produced suffering.
(2) FWD doesn't explain why our current limitations on freedom of action can't be extended or replaced.
(3) FWD doesn't explain why our freedom of will can't be constrained.
(4) FWD doesn't explain why freedom of evil people is so important.
(5) FWD doesn't explain why the current set of humans is better than alternative sets of humans God could have created.
(6) FWD precludes Divine foreknowledge.
(7) FWD requires that free will doesn't exist in Heaven.

Explanation and Elaboration

(1) This is the quickest and one of the most persuasive objections to FWD. No one can offer a plausible account of how our freedom of action would be reduced if certain diseases were somewhat less painful, or selected natural disasters caused somewhat less death. These situations just seem to be divorced from free-willed creatures' choices completely. Certainly, one could argue that Satan or someone else is actually the cause of these disasters, but this is a mere possibility and there is no evidence that it is in fact probable. Further, even if Satan were the cause of this suffering, it's not clear at all why Satan's freedom of action is so important; objections that use the points in (2)-(5) are relevant. I think this objection to FWD is enough to sink it, but it will also be helpful to have arguments against God permitting moral evil.

(2) I think this is the best argument against God's permission of moral evil. It is patently true that our freedom of action is somewhat constrained by natural laws as things stand now. I am unable to fly under my own power, to see through most solid objects, or to withstand gunfire. Further, our morally salient freedom of action is curtailed. I am unable to shoot bolts of electricity from my fingertips; I cannot snap my fingers and thereby cause people to stumble as they're walking down the street; I can't freely give people headaches by staring at them hard enough. It's obvious that natural laws prevent us from doing some evil. Why not prevent us from doing some more, especially because the previously mentioned natural preventions against action seem so minor compared to what God could have prevented? God has the power to create natural laws that would cause us to fail to torture babies more often than we fail now (or indeed to fail every time). More importantly, God had such a power when He was creating the universe, and yet, chose to refrain from instituting this protection. And there's no reason to think we'd somehow notice if this were the case; God could hide it from us by altering our brains a certain way. In fact, God could have arranged things this way from the beginning, so nothing would seem at all different to us. Why God has not enacted natural laws that prevent more genocide or baby-torture than are prevented now is a complete mystery.

(3) It's not even obvious that God shouldn't alter our brains so that we just can't make some choices in the first place. No one thinks that if someone implanted an electrode in my brain that prevented me from choosing vanilla ice cream, I would thereby become a soulless, mindless robot or a puppet. So why not just create humans who are incapable of choosing extreme evil as much as they do now? We would still be interesting creatures to watch, and some of us would still choose to believe in God; some of us would not. People can be prevented from making some choices and still retain their humanity.

(4) Make no mistake: FWD doesn't just require that humans' freedom of action is preserved; it also requires that evil humans' freedom of action is preserved. But this is not at all obviously important. We as humans lock up criminals all the time. We believe it's a good thing to prevent freedom of action in a lot of cases. For some reason, however, we think God would be doing something wrong by preventing our freedom of action in a similar way. We also keep dangerous chemicals away from young children -- isn't this a curtailment of their freedom of action, and for analogous reasons the wrong thing to do? It just doesn't seem that humans' freedom of action is that important in these many cases. Surely God stepping in to prevent baby-torture more often than it currently gets prevented wouldn't decrease the total goodness in the world; freedom is important, but pretty much everyone agrees that other goals might reasonably supersede it. A related problem is that often, there will be a contest of wills at which only one person's freedom can win out, so either way, the same amount of freedom will obtain. Consider the case of a murderer and her victim. The victim wills that the murderer not kill her, and the murderer wills that the victim die. If only one result of freedom of action will prevail, it's strange that God doesn't choose the better one.

(5) It's a fairly well accepted position in philosophy that our moral characters enter into whether we perform some actions, and that this influence doesn't preclude our free will. Why didn't God choose a slightly different group of humans when He was populating His world, a set that would have better moral fibre and would pass this genetically on to its offspring? It's clear that there is a great number of humans in the world who make evil choices, whose moral characters are suspect. If our own personalities can enter into our decision-making without precluding free will, God could be expected to have given us better personalities without thereby destroying our freedom. Here's a related point: It seems that if God just killed all the evil people and replaced them with good people (or even just altered their brains in the right way, which may or may not be the same thing), the same amount of freedom of action would take place; it's just that good people would be using that freedom of action.

(6) If God can see the future, and the Bible, as well as the Christian doctrines of omniscience and temporal transcendence, seem to suggest that He can, then libertarian free will must fail to obtain. We can't be free if God already correctly knows what we'll do in a given situation. We might be free in a compatibilist sense, but then we can return to the problem in (5) -- God could have given us better personalities with which to make our decisions.

(7) If the desired freedom of action entails that suffering and premature death exist, then we can take the contrapositive and notice that a lack of suffering and premature death implies a lack of freedom of action. One example of such a situation is in Heaven, where there is no suffering and premature death. We may therefore conclude that the humans in Heaven are not free.

Conclusion

I've examined FWD and found it to be lacking on seven points. I do not think these points, especially (1), (2), and (4), can be plausibly answered, and so I conclude that FWD utterly fails to explain the existence of intense suffering and premature death in the world. In my own view, the best way to answer the arguments from evil is to claim that there is evidence of God's existence, and this evidence is thus evidence that no suffering is gratuitous. Unfortunately, I can't think of any evidence for God's existence.

luvluv

Is there any reason to believe that the FWD must operate ALONE? Is there any reason that to believe that God only has ONE reason for allowing evil, or could he have many different reasons for allowing many different instances of evil?

I read an article by Tom Morris (off-line, unfortunately) which made the case for a combination theodicy including punishmnet, free will, soul-making, and the UPD. This combination theodicy, in my opinion, could be combined with certain implications of divine hiddenness to cover nearly all reasonable objections.

These theodices, combined with the fact that there is no explicit contradiction between the existence of God and the existence of evil, ought to lead intelligent people to the conclusion that the existence of evil is not sufficient grounds for doubting the existence of God.

Ab_Normal

Just as you recommend combining multiple theodicies, I have multiple reasons for rejecting the hypothesis of the existence of god(s); the POE/POP is only a small part of it.

ReasonableDoubt

This is great- could I have your permission to print out your post and use it, citing you of course?
You've said it much more articulately than I have, but I have argued that since there is no evil in heaven (the perfect state of affairs) that must mean there is no free will there either. If so how can we say that God values human free will more than any other value? Because if it is so important as to be the reason for allowance of evil, shouldn't it also be important to have it in heaven? But if we had it in heaven, then it would not be perfect, and hence, not heaven.
I've had libertarian theists counterargue that we have free will here, we don't in heaven, b/c how we use free will is a test on earth. Once we've passed the test (chosen God), and go to heaven, we no longer need free will. I don't see any evidence of this whatsoever, Biblical or otherwise.
Anyway, what are your thoughts regarding an Augustinian-Calvinist view of God, that basically is determinism? That God controls all, we have no free will, and God "allows" evil to occur b/c it is part of the grand plan. I haven't seen a satisfactory answer to what reason could justify God allowing evil under this theory.

Wiploc

And by the same token, there must have been no free will in
Eden before the fall. And further, if god does not sin, then god cannot have free will.
crc

bd-from-kg

Thomas Metcalf:

To “revise and extend” some of your remarks:

Excuse me, but didn’t God create Satan? And didn’t He do so knowing that Satan would rebel against him and wreak all kind of havoc on mankind? And doesn’t Satan play a central role in the “main plot” ? Either this was all intended and planned by God or it was un unwanted, unexpected turn of events. If the latter, God is not omnipotent and omniscient. If the former, God let this monster loose on the world intentionally, and whatever Satan does is on His head.

Indeed, why not create humans who are incapable of choosing evil at all? After all, a choice between “good” and “evil” is hardly the only kind of choice there is. One can also choose between different goods. Even a perfect altruist is faced with a great many choices: Who to help today? How to help them? And this is true even of the “ultimate” choice: the choice of serving God. Why couldn’t God create people who were certain to choose to serve Him in the end, but who were free to choose how to serve Him? How would such people be fundamentally different from people who can choose which petty crime to commit, but are incapable of, say, murdering an innocent child? They would still have free will.

In fact, for those who still think that this is an unacceptable restriction of “free will”, we can take this a step further: why not a create a world in which everyone is capable in principle of choosing evil, but is exposed to environmental conditions (a good upbringing, etc.) such that no one ever does choose evil? Being free to do X, after all, doesn’t require that one actually do X; it only requires that one would choose to do X in some possible world. To avoid creating evil, God need only create a world in which no such choices are instantiated, not one in which no such choices are possible.

Actually it’s much worse than that: In many cases (including the case of murder that you cite), allowing one person to exercise his free will once can preclude many other people from making a great number of free choices that they otherwise would have been able to make. (For example, I might choose to enslave thousands of people.) How can the desirability of free will be used to justify allowing the total amount of free will to be reduced enormously?

Let’s consider another case. Let’s say that two identical twins, Kim and Kristy, are raised in different homes. Kim’s parents provide her with a wholesome, nurturing environment, take her to church every week, etc. As a result, she very naturally and easily “chooses Christ”, is saved, and enjoys eternal bliss. Kristy is less fortunate. Her father is a drug addict, her mother a prostitute. Both of them instill in her a contempt for virtue and an admiration for vice, and introduce her to the joys of drugs and sex for money at an early age. Not surprisingly, she goes astray, rejects Christ, and suffers eternal torment.

By allowing Kristy’s parents to exercise their unrestrained free will in raising her, God has been complicit in causing a soul who was perfectly capable of being saved to spend an eternity in Hell (where, according to standard Christian doctrine) she has no free will at all. It’s true that ultimately the choice was hers, but before she made this choice the odds had been stacked against her. How can this (which involves, among other things, a radical loss of free will) be justified by appealing to the importance of free will?

Well, yes. But then libertarian free will must fail to obtain in any case, because the concept is logically incoherent. This is the ultimate refutation of the FWD. One might just as well say that God chose to make things as they are because he wanted to maximize the number of square circles.

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by luvluv :

"Is there any reason to believe that the FWD must operate ALONE? Is there any reason that to believe that God only has ONE reason for allowing evil, or could he have many different reasons for allowing many different instances of evil?"

I'm confused. Are you conceding that FWD fails? It seems you might be if you're appealing to a series of other theodicies. You do grant that if every theodicy fails, then a combination of them must fail as well, don't you?

And if you aren't conceding that FWD fails, how do you respond to my points?

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by ReasonableDoubt :

Certainly. Let me make it more citable, though.

Seven Reasons to Doubt the Free Will Defense

I might also amend it with some of bd-from-kg's suggestions.

This produces a conflict with Divine foreknowledge, as well. Also, it seems that God could allow only one free will decision on earth, then: whether or not we choose God. He could still prohibit specific choices.

This is just another theodicy, and it amounts to an abandonment of FWD which was my suggestion in the original post. I'd say right now that it's highly dubious that this much evil is required for the Divine plan of a perfectly good being.

tw1tch

Thomas...a few words.


...nor does it need to. Suffering exists...a ramification of separation from God.


While your at it...why doesn't nature prevent us from partaking in ANY evil action at all. This would be 'better' than a nature that allowed *some* evil wouldn't it?

Nor should it. Freedomless 'freedom' is a logical absurdity.

You misplace ownership of 'evil' here. Evil is a consequence of an action...not an adjective of a person. We all have equal freedom...we can use it for either good or evil.

This *assumes* that God *should* have only made people who would like Him. Which of course reduces to merely making robots. If we are making robots...why use free will at all?

Which says something about God: He values mankind more than the decisions mankind may make.

Not at all. Rather Heaven is occupied by those who have freely choosen to be with God.


Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Dr. Retard

I've seen "robots" mentioned way too many times. There are many ways of limiting or cancelling freedom. Not all of them turn people into robots (or anything tantamount to robots). Prisons and paralysis, off the top of my head.