The Problem of Evil - Common Sense Atheism

The Global Argument Continued 83
this way. If it is possible, metaphysically or intrinsically possible, for
God, to know the truth-value of every proposition, the two definitions
will coincide. If it is not, God will be omniscient (given the Thomist
account of omnipotence) by the weaker definition, and not omniscient
by the stronger. But even in the latter case, he will possess knowledge
in the highest degree that is metaphysically possible, and will therefore
not be debarred from the office ‘‘greatest possible being’’.
I must admit that this solution to the problem of free will and divine
foreknowledge raises a further problem for theists: Are not most theists
committed (for example, in virtue of the stories told about God’s actions
in the Bible) to the proposition that God at least sometimes foreknows
the free actions of creatures? This is a very important question. In my
view, the answer is No, at least as regards the Bible. 9 But a discussion of
this important question is not possible within the scope of these lectures.
I conclude that neither an appeal to the supposed compatibility of free
will and determinism, nor an appeal to the supposed existence of true
counterfactuals of creaturely freedom, nor an appeal to the supposed
incompatibility of free will and divine foreknowledge can undermine
the free-will defense.
Let us return to Atheist, who, as I said, has better arguments than these
at her disposal. What shall she say in response to the free-will defense?
Her most promising course of action, I think, is to concede a certain
limited power to the free-will defense and go on to argue that this power
is essentially limited. Her best course is to admit that the free-will defense
shows that there might, for all anyone can say, be a certain amount of
evil, a certain amount of pain and suffering, in a world created by an
all-powerful and morally perfect being, and to conduct her argument
in terms of the amounts and the kinds of evil that we actually observe.
Her best course is to argue for the conclusion that neither the simple
version of the free-will defense that I have had Theist present nor any
elaboration of it can constitute a plausible account of the evil, the bad
things, that actually exist. In the previous lecture I mentioned two facts
about the evils we actually observe that, I said, would probably occur
to anyone who heard Theist’s preliminary statement of the free-will
defense: that the amount of suffering (and other evils) is enormous, and
that some evils are not caused by human beings and cannot therefore
be ascribed to the abuse of free will by creatures. If they would occur
to anyone, they would occur to Atheist. Let us imagine that she takes
them up in the following speech to the audience of agnostics: