The Problem of Evil - Common Sense Atheism

78 The Global Argument Continued
dialectical circumstances. Village Atheist has opened the discussion by
trying to convince the agnostics of the truth of atheism; to this end, she
employs the global argument from evil. Theist responds by producing
the free-will defense and contends that this defense shows that evil does
not prove the non-existence of God. Village Atheist’s rejoinder is that
the story called the free-will defense can be shown to be impossible by
reflection on the nature of free will. Theist replies that Village Atheist has
got the nature of free will wrong, and he offers a philosophical argument
for this conclusion, an argument that, like all philosophical arguments
falls short of being a proof, but nevertheless seems fairly plausible. If
this is the end of the exchange, it seems that Theist has got the better
of Village Atheist. When we think about it, we see that, for all Village
Atheist has said, the story called the free-will defense may well be a true
story—at least given that there is a God. One cannot show that a story
involving creatures with free will is impossible by pointing out that the
story would be impossible if a certain theory about free will were true.
To show that, one would also have to show that the theory of free will
that one has put forward was true. To show that the story was probably
impossible, one would have to show that the theory of free will that
one has put forward was probably true. And neither Village Atheist nor
anyone else has shown that the theory of free will to which her argument
appeals, the compatibilist or ‘‘no barriers’’ theory, is true or probably
true; for the objections to the ‘‘no barriers’’ theory of free will that I
have set out show that this theory faces very serious objections indeed,
objections to which no one has ever adequately replied. It is Village
Atheist, remember, and not Theist, who is trying to prove something.
She is trying to prove something to the audience of agnostics: namely,
that they should stop suspending judgment about whether there is a
God and instead believe that there is no God. Theist offers the free-will
defense only to frustrate her attempt to prove this conclusion to the
agnostics. If Village Atheist’s reply to the free-will defense is to succeed,
she must convince the agnostics that compatibilism is the correct theory
of free will, or is at least probably correct; Theist need only elicit this
response from the agnostics: ‘‘For all we know, compatibilism is not the
correct theory of free will.’’ And he has certainly made a sufficiently
strong case against the ‘‘no barriers’’ theory of free will for this to be the
reasonable response.
I will now pass on to the other two arguments for the conclusion
that any form of the free-will defense must fail that I promised to talk
about. Both these arguments turn on old philosophical disputes about