The Problem of Evil - Common Sense Atheism

76 The Global Argument Continued
of the fruit of a certain tree. Could he so arrange matters that she have
a free choice between eating of the fruit of that tree and not eating of
it—and also ensure that she not eat of it? Certainly. To provide her with
a free choice between the two alternatives, he need only see to it that
two things are true: first, that if she wanted to eat of the fruit of that
tree, no barrier (such as an unclimbable fence or paralysis of the limbs)
would stand in the way of her acting on that desire, and, secondly,
that if she wanted not to eat of the fruit, nothing would force her to
act contrary to that desire. And to ensure that she not eat of the fruit,
he need only see to it that not eating of the fruit be what she desires.
This latter end could be achieved in a variety of ways; the simplest, I
suppose, would be to tell her not to eat of it after having built into her
psychological makeup a very strong desire to do whatever he tells her
to and a horror of disobedience—a horror like that experienced by the
acrophobe who is forced to approach the edge of a cliff. An omnipotent
and omniscient being could therefore bring it about that every creature
with free will always freely did what was right; there would then be no
creaturely abuse of free will, and evil could not, therefore, have entered
the world through the creaturely abuse of free will. And that is what a
morally perfect being would, of necessity, do—at least assuming that
free will is a good that a morally perfect Creator would have wanted
to include in his creation. The so-called free-will defense is thus not a
defense at all, for it is an impossible story.
Here, then, is an argument for the conclusion that the story called the
free-will defense essentially incorporates a false proposition. But how
plausible is the account of free will on which the argument rests? Not
very, I think. It certainly yields some odd conclusions. Consider the
lower social orders in Brave New World, the ‘‘deltas’’ and ‘‘epsilons’’.
These unfortunate people have their deepest desires chosen for them
by others—by the ‘‘alphas’’ who make up the highest social stratum.
What the deltas and epsilons primarily desire is to do what the alphas
(and the beta and gamma overseers who are appointed to supervise their
labors) tell them. This is their primary desire because it is imposed on
them by pre-natal and post-natal conditioning. (If Huxley were writing
today, he would no doubt add genetic engineering to the alphas’ list of
resources for determining the desires of their willing slaves.) It would
be hard to think of beings who better fitted the description ‘lacks free
will’ than the deltas and epsilons of Brave New World. And yet, if the
compatibilist account of free will is right, the deltas and epsilons not
only have free will, but are much freer than you and I. Each of them is