Free Will Defense Insufficient?
Alvin Plantinga
Kevin's Nemesis
Kevin Kim has objected to my argument concerning a refutation of the so-called "logical problem of evil." Briefly put, I argued that there is no obvious logical contradiction between the fact of evil and God's omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence because of the possibility that God has a good reason for allowing evil even if we are unaware of this reason.
Kevin raises an objection to my refutation with respect to God's omnibenevolence, arguing that "If the term has any meaning at all, it has to mean that God desires maximal fulfillment for all his creatures . . . . [and that it] cannot mean anything less than this, for anything less would entail less-than-maximal fulfillment for at least one creature."
Kevin goes on to object that Alvin Plantinga's free will defense offers no way past this objection. We therefore ought to look at the free will defense to consider Kevin's objection, so let's borrow Tim O'Keefe's convenient version of Plantinga's free will defense:
1. Creatures who are significantly free cannot be causally determined to do only what is right.This is a strong argument, I believe, if one accepts the premise that to be "significantly free" is a great good, great enough to justify the possibility of evil arising through such significant freedom.
2. Thus, if God creates creatures who are significantly free, He cannot causally determine them to do only what is right. (from 1)
3. Thus, if God creates creatures who are significantly free, he must create creatures who are capable of moral evil. (from 2)
4. Thus, if God creates a world containing creatures who are significantly free, it will contain creatures who are capable of moral evil. (from 3)
5. If God creates a world containing creatures who are capable of moral evil, He cannot guarantee that there will not be evil in that world.
6. Thus, if God creates a world containing creatures who are significantly free, He cannot guarantee that there will not be evil in that world. (from 4 and 5)
7. A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more morally good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all.
8. Thus, God has good reason to create a world containing creatures who are significantly free. (from 7)
9. Thus, God has good reason to create a world, which He cannot guarantee will not contain evil. (from 6 and 8)
Presumably, Kevin would object that such freedom is not justified because this would violate the principle of omnibenevolence since this significant freedom would leave open the possibility that free creatures might have less-than-maximal fulfillment.
But what does Kevin mean by "maximal fulfillment"? I don't find a definition of this expression in his post. Does it entail that God create creatures that are His equal in every way? Surely not, since God must be greater than every other being. How 'maximal', then, is sufficient for maximal fulfillment? But perhaps Kevin is not speaking of a maximal degree of being but of maximal fulfillment of the potential intrinsic to each finite being created by God. This still seems to require too much, for based upon this interpretation, if even a single finite being lacks maximal fulfillment of its potential, this lack would violate God's omnibenevolence. But perhaps Kevin is also not speaking of a maximal degree of potential either.
In fact, what Kevin seems to mean in his post is not that God's omnibenevolence entails "maximal fulfillment" for each creature created but that God's omnibenevolence entails that there be no "creaturely suffering" at all among the various creatures created. But is this really entailed? What if a world in which creaturely suffering can occur offers greater fulfillment than a world in which no creaturely suffering can occur? Perhaps "significant freedom" offers the possibility of greater fulfillment than the lack of such freedom.
The difficult issue would thus be not the fact of suffering per se but an amount of suffering beyond what is necessary for the fulfillment offered by creating finite creatures with significant freedom.
Labels: Alvin Plantinga, Free Will, God, Philosophy
posted by Horace Jeffery Hodges @ 4:06 AM
16 comments
16 Comments:
I don't usually get into this but who decides what is right and what is morally evil? "Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so" What if what a person is calling 'evil' is more accurately called necessary? After all, you can't always get what you want but sometimes you find, you get what you need. :-D
"Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so."
You think so?
Jeffery Hodges
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re: "...but thinking makes it so"
Maybe Shakespeare was a closet Buddhist.
Jeff, I'll respond more fully to your post on my blog, but the short version is simply this: the standard objection to Plantinga's defense is that it takes no account of what philosophers call "natural evil," i.e., "the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to," if we continue in a Shakespearean vein (and I think we're still drawing our quotes from Hamlet). Thus, his defense is at best a woefully incomplete explanation of the existence of evil and suffering.
Plantinga's response to this claim has been, apparently, to say that it is at least logically possible that natural evil is caused by malevolent spirits. Logical possibility-- that tiny wedge that prevents the door from closing-- is all Plantinga wants to establish in constructing his defense, which is why some thinkers consider the logical problem of evil now solved: all you need is that itty-bitty possibility for the Free Will Defense to hold.
But in making this further move, this defense of his defense, Plantinga makes himself hard to take seriously since many modern folks, especially in industrialized countries, no longer believe that, say, a random rockslide can be causally traced back to demonic or satanic activity. True, we hear from the crazies whenever there's a massive natural disaster, but their cries are often more along the lines of "Why would God allow this?" than "Why did Satan do this to us?"-- thereby moving directly to godly causation and skipping the satanic part.
Obviously, I can't object to Plantinga's argument on the mere grounds that I find it ridiculous, but an exploration of what makes the argument ridiculous will reveal the argument's structural and conceptual problems.
And as a side note, yes: Plantinga is indeed my nemesis. He and his partner in crime, fellow religious exclusivist William Alston, stand shoulder to shoulder against John Hick in the field of philosophy of religion. Although I'm no longer entirely in Hick's camp, I share many of Hick's basic convictions, which pits me against Plantinga and Alston. However, Plantinga is, along with Hick, a giant in the field of philosophy of religion, so I should probably get down to reading more of his works, as opposed to the bits and pieces I've read up to now.
That might be why Plantinga sticks narrowly to a defense rather than more broadly attempting a theodicy.
I look forward to your post on this issue.
Jeffery Hodges
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It's been awhile since I opened a Bible, so please refresh my memory: How do we know that God endowed all human being with free will?
As Kevin pointed out, the free will argument does not explain natural causes of human suffering.
If free will explains why God does not stop evil, then why do theists pray for help? I've had numerous arguments with theists about the futility of praying for anything other than strength to accept God's will. You can't have it both ways. Either God does not intervene or he does only sometimes, helping some people and not others. My mom and her sisters seriously believe that God has answered their prayers and helped them solve problems. They love recounting stories of prayers being answered. And when prayers don't get answered? God's will, of course! A God who supposedly made sure our car didn't run out of gas one night, yet allows people to be tortured to death is not a God I'd want to worship.
I suspect that nearly all theologians begin with the premise that there is a God and then set out to prove his existence, so arguments like the free will defense make sense to them. Atheists and agnostics have embraced religions after powerful spiritual and emotional experiences, but I don't know of any atheists or agnostics who were logically persuaded to believe in God after listening to such arguments.
The glaring weakness of the free will defense is that free will does not preclude consequences of our choices. There are natural and imposed consequences for people's actions here on earth. The Christian God apparently imposes extreme and eternal consequences on only two choices: failure to accept Jesus as savior and blasphemy, the only unforgivable sin.
Sonagi
Sonagi, I don't think the Bible says anything about the philosophical issue of libertarian free will. I hope to remain innocent of Bibliolatry, and I see no reason to look for every answer in the Bible. I would maintain that most answers cannot be found there.
But to get to your points . . .
Plantinga argues only for a free will defense and not a theodicy. He outlines the possibility that natural evil might have arisen through moral evil. That's about as far as he's willing to go, at least from my reading, but that's all he needs for making his point.
On the possibility of petitionary prayer, one might need to get into the theology of possible worlds that God could have created. Foreknowing everything, He could have chosen to create this world in which individuals would freely pray for things that he would grant. But this gets into modal logic beyond my ken.
Similar with consequences of choices, I think.
On convincing atheists and agnostics, I'm not sure that this is Plantinga's aim. He's more interested in defending the rationality of what he calls "orthodox theism" (OT), which is not reducible to solely Christianity, so it need not entail the stark consequences that you set out.
Jeffery Hodges
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What is the logical connection between libertarian free will and God, then?
As for moral evil preceding natural evil, that does not fit the chronology of either evolution or creation.
"On the possibility of petitionary prayer, one might need to get into the theology of possible worlds that God could have created. Foreknowing everything, He could have chosen to create this world in which individuals would freely pray for things that he would grant. But this gets into modal logic beyond my ken."
Heh heh. Maybe this notion doesn't make sense to even you, a theologian (if I may call you that) because it is so convoluted. It seems that theology employs Occham's Razor only to the question of the origins of the universe.
S.
The logical connection between God and free will does not depend upon the Bible, so I don't understand the question.
On moral evil preceding natural evil . . . in Plantinga's suggestion, it does.
My remark about the complexities of modal logic was honest humility -- the stuff gets quickly beyond me, a bit as does higher mathematics.
Jeffery Hodges
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"The logical connection between God and free will does not depend upon the Bible, so I don't understand the question."
I've not been following everything Jeff (but in a few days I'll do so) but isn't this the crux? I mean insofar as "The Good Book" proclaims it, God told Abraham to cut Isaac's throat then aid, "Naw, just testing..."
Then a flood, again testing. Next He finds a good guy and turns his wife into salt just for testing then has his daughters test the "good guy" in a cave then a while later has another guy turn water into something an obviously dry county wouldn't accept as "a good thing."
And a bit later has people start writing down all the "good stuff" He planned for 'em all along so other good people could start preaching "to be good you need to" erecting stakes and knotting ropes which led to (keeping records of) ammonia and cyanide mixtures which led to the atom the nuclear stuff but constantly reminded everybody to read:
"Hey, I'm the Good Guy, actually I'm the Light. I burned a bush, wrote on stone, I've killed some enemies and will continue to do so, so long as you keep killing the the people I would otherwise have their Daddy's slit the throats of, turn their wives into salt or, when it strikes my fancy, send 'em a tsunami the day after the kids unwrap their Christmas presents.
Unless I'm a Philistine, anything I do, so long as I praise the Guy and then say I'm sorry, ain't that about it?
JK
JK, you make even a limited defense difficult, so I thank my lucky stars that I'm not into theodicy.
Jeffery Hodges
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I did read somewhere you weren't a deist?
JK
(Or did you put "idiocy" in the nicest possible way?)
Right you are (though not about the 'idiocy') -- I prefer the term "theist."
Jeffery Hodges
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@"Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so." You think so?
Yup. I am an existentialist but not like Kierkegard. The quote is from Hamlet but Shakespeare got his thoughts from Michel de Montaigne. I believe it is commonly known that he owned a copy of 'Essaies'. The chapter this statement is in is amusingly called 'That to Study Philosophy is to Learn to Die"
@How do we know that God endowed all human being with free will?
Milton said so and I believe him. He was a fierce reader. :-D
A determinist might argue that if something seems spontaneous, it is because we don't know all of the preceding causes but quantum physics have shown that spontaneity is possible on the sub atomic level. So then you get into the whole - can the flapping of a butterfly's wings on the east coast cause a tsunami on the west coast thing.
@the stuff gets quickly beyond me, a bit as does higher mathematics.
Me, too. I am not really sure that I am still in the discussion but if you decide that there is no god, then the problem of why there is evil becomes much simpler.
I think that we have to distinguish between libertarian free will and quantum randomness, for the former has intentionality but the latter not.
What does "evil" mean without God? Does the word have a similar or a very different meaning?
Jeffery Hodges
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"The logical connection between God and free will does not depend upon the Bible, so I don't understand the question."
The concepts of free will and God are independent of each other, yes? One can believe that humans are naturally equipped with free will and its consequences, free will sometimes constrained by nature or other humans. Rather than "free will," I prefer the single word "will," for volition is not free of consequences or internal or external restraints.
I do not have the background in theology, philosophy, or logic that you do, but it seems from excerpts that you've shared and commented on that theology starts with the premise that God exists and then tries to make sense of him. That is why much of what you post does not make sense to me or others who do not accept the premise that God exists. No God, no problem.
"What does "evil" mean without God? Does the word have a similar or a very different meaning?"
I see good and evil as human constructs that evaluate thoughts, actions, and events.
S.
The philosophical concept of libertarian free will entails that a decision of the will is not the consequence of a causal chain of events, either external or internal.
And, yes, this concept is independent of belief in God.
My point in a post such as this one is to show that certain theological concepts are not contradictory, a rather limited aim since I'm hardly qualified.
Jeffery Hodges
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