The Problem of Evil - Common Sense Atheism

More documents

Recommendations

Info

The Global Argument Continued 79 God and free will. The first rests on a philosophical theory that, unlike compatibilism, has been very popular among theists. This is the theory that there are ‘‘true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom’’—and in fact so many of them that an omniscient being would know what a creature with free will would freely do in any circumstance. 2 That there are true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom—for example, ‘If there had been a peal of thunder at the moment Eve was trying to decide whether to eat the apple, she would freely have decided not to eat it’—has been accepted by a wide range of theists, among them most (if not all) Dominicans and Thomists, the sixteenth-century Spanish Jesuits, and Alvin Plantinga. 3 An atheist might try to make use of the thesis that such propositions exist to refute the free-will defense, to exhibit it as an impossible story. The argument would be a generalization of this example: Suppose the conditional proposition I just now used as an example—‘If there had been a peal of thunder at the moment Eve was trying to decide whether to eat the apple, she would freely have decided not to eat it’—is true. Then God could have brought it about that Eve freely decided not to eat the apple. Being omniscient, he would have known that the conditional was true; all he would then have had to do to bring it about that she freely decided not to eat the apple would have been to cause its antecedent to be true—that is, to produce a peal of thunder at the crucial moment. By adopting as a general strategy the technique illustrated in this example, he could 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. Plantinga has an enormously elaborate response to this argument, a response that depends on a Molinist, rather than a Thomist, view of the relation between God’s power and the true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. 4 (Thomists have generally held that each counterfactual of creaturely freedom had the truth-value it did because God decreed that it should have that truth-value; Luis de Molina and his followers held that, as a matter of contingent fact, certain members of the set of counterfactuals of freedom were true and the others false, and that God was just stuck with a certain distribution of truth-values over the members of this set, the distribution that happened to obtain, by chance
80 The Global Argument Continued and independently of his will. As for the Thomist view, I do not see any way for theists to respond to the argument we are considering if it is supposed that God has decided the truth-value of every counterfactual of freedom.) To make a very long story very short, Plantinga suggests that, for all we know, for all anyone can say, it may be that the distribution of truth-values on the set of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom that God is stuck with is, from his, God’s, point of view, a particularly unfortunate one: the true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom happen to be ones with antecedents and consequents such that no matter which of their antecedents God caused to be true, there would be some evilproducing free actions on the part of some creatures—provided only that God created any free beings at all. For my part, I would simply deny the common premise of the Thomists and Molinists; I would deny, that is, that there are any true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. The thesis that no counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are true has been defended by several philosophers, among them Robert Adams, William Hasker, and myself. 5 I will say no more about the subject here—largely because I find the idea of there being true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom just enormously implausible. I will leave further exploration of the problems related to them to philosophers who take their possibility seriously (and there are very able ones—Plantinga and Flint, for example). The argument we are considering can be met by separation of cases: either there are true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom or there are not. If there are not, the argument has a false premise; in the other case, since ‘‘Plantinga’s hypothesis’’ is true for all anyone knows, if the set of true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom is non-empty—if there are some true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom—it does not follow that this set has the right members for God to be able to create a world containing free creatures who never cause any bad things. Now for the third of the three arguments against the free-will defense that I have promised to discuss. (Doubly promised, in this case, for in the second lecture I briefly mentioned the philosophical problem on which this argument is based and said I would discuss it in connection with the free-will defense.) The free-will defense, of course, entails that at least some human beings have free will. But the existence of a being whoknowsthefutureisincompatiblewithfreewill,andanomniscient being knows the future, and omniscience belongs to the concept of God. Hence, the so called free-will defense is not a possible story, and hence is not a defense at all. Most theists, I think, would reply to this
Page 4:
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
Page 7 and 8:
1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX
Page 10 and 11:
Preface These lectures were deliver
Page 12:
Outline Contents Detailed Contents
Page 15 and 16:
xii Detailed Contents agnostics’
Page 17 and 18:
xiv Detailed Contents he is ‘‘h
Page 19 and 20:
2 The Problem and Argument from Evi
Page 21 and 22:
Page 23 and 24:
Page 25 and 26:
Page 27 and 28:
10 The Problem and Argument from Ev
Page 29 and 30:
Page 31 and 32:
Page 33 and 34:
Page 35 and 36:
Lecture 2 The Idea of God I said th
Page 37 and 38:
20 The Idea of God unifying princip
Page 39 and 40:
22 The Idea of God ‘‘God was in
Page 41 and 42:
24 The Idea of God And Demiourgos i
Page 43 and 44:
26 The Idea of God evil. When we fi
Page 45 and 46: 28 The Idea of God —immutable. Th
Page 47 and 48: 30 The Idea of God worlds: those in
Page 49 and 50: 32 The Idea of God (it would certai
Page 51 and 52: 34 The Idea of God Now why do I dra
Page 53 and 54: 36 The Idea of God not a possible p
Page 55 and 56: 38 Philosophical Failure Note the w
Page 57 and 58: 40 Philosophical Failure proved by
Page 59 and 60: 42 Philosophical Failure which prem
Page 61 and 62: 44 Philosophical Failure thesis. Al
Page 63 and 64: 46 Philosophical Failure realist in
Page 65 and 66: 48 Philosophical Failure of our con
Page 67 and 68: 50 Philosophical Failure mere agnos
Page 69 and 70: 52 Philosophical Failure representa
Page 71 and 72: 54 Philosophical Failure minds, say
Page 73 and 74: Lecture 4 The Global Argument from
Page 75 and 76: 58 The Global Argument from Evil I
Page 77 and 78: 60 The Global Argument from Evil ca
Page 79 and 80: 62 The Global Argument from Evil to
Page 81 and 82: 64 The Global Argument from Evil We
Page 83 and 84: 66 The Global Argument from Evil Yo
Page 85 and 86: 68 The Global Argument from Evil Si
Page 87 and 88: 70 The Global Argument from Evil th
Page 89 and 90: 72 The Global Argument from Evil ot
Page 91 and 92: 74 The Global Argument from Evil ha
Page 93 and 94: 76 The Global Argument Continued of
Page 95: 78 The Global Argument Continued di
Page 99 and 100: 82 The Global Argument Continued bo
Page 101 and 102: 84 The Global Argument Continued I
Page 103 and 104: 86 The Global Argument Continued wi
Page 105 and 106: 88 The Global Argument Continued wi
Page 107 and 108: 90 The Global Argument Continued He
Page 109 and 110: 92 The Global Argument Continued fr
Page 111 and 112: 94 The Global Argument Continued Th
Page 113 and 114: 96 The Local Argument from Evil tha
Page 115 and 116: 98 The Local Argument from Evil (3)
Page 117 and 118: 100 The Local Argument from Evil [T
Page 119 and 120: 102 The Local Argument from Evil yo
Page 121 and 122: 104 The Local Argument from Evil ha
Page 123 and 124: 106 The Local Argument from Evil Bu
Page 125 and 126: 108 The Local Argument from Evil In
Page 127 and 128: 110 The Local Argument from Evil If
Page 129 and 130: 112 The Local Argument from Evil ca
Page 131 and 132: 114 The Sufferings of Beasts the ac
Page 133 and 134: 116 The Sufferings of Beasts balls
Page 135 and 136: 118 The Sufferings of Beasts state
Page 137 and 138: 120 The Sufferings of Beasts Let us
Page 139 and 140: 122 The Sufferings of Beasts gift f
Page 141 and 142: 124 The Sufferings of Beasts What I
Page 143 and 144: 126 The Sufferings of Beasts on the
Page 145 and 146: 128 The Sufferings of Beasts a worl
Page 147 and 148:
130 The Sufferings of Beasts told t
Page 149 and 150:
132 The Sufferings of Beasts to ens
Page 151 and 152:
134 The Sufferings of Beasts warned
Page 153 and 154:
136 The Hiddenness of God hiddennes
Page 155 and 156:
138 The Hiddenness of God admiratio
Page 157 and 158:
140 The Hiddenness of God Theist. S
Page 159 and 160:
142 The Hiddenness of God about the
Page 161 and 162:
144 The Hiddenness of God If this w
Page 163 and 164:
146 The Hiddenness of God (2) Patri
Page 165 and 166:
148 The Hiddenness of God in genera
Page 167 and 168:
150 The Hiddenness of God intellect
Page 169 and 170:
Notes LECTURE 1 THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
Page 171 and 172:
154 Notes 14. But here is a defense
Page 173 and 174:
156 Notes to the metaphysical probl
Page 175 and 176:
158 Notes greatest possible being m
Page 177 and 178:
160 Notes matters was said only to
Page 179 and 180:
162 Notes I believe as strongly as
Page 181 and 182:
164 Notes 10. Note that I do not sa
Page 183 and 184:
166 Notes Christianity.) Let us say
Page 185 and 186:
168 Notes LECTURE 6 THE LOCAL ARGUM
Page 187 and 188:
170 Notes of them: all of them but
Page 189 and 190:
172 Notes 20. One might, however, w
Page 191 and 192:
174 Notes 3. Those who think that t
Page 193 and 194:
176 Notes that the first conjunct i
Page 195 and 196:
178 Works Cited Providence and Evil
Page 197 and 198:
180 Works Cited ‘‘What is the P
Page 199 and 200:
182 Index free will (free choice) 2
Page 201:
REVELATION
show all

The Problem of Evil - Common Sense Atheism

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?