The Free-Will Defence and worlds without moral evil

1990 ◽  
Vol 27 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank B. Dilley
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Moral Evil

Providence, Freedom, and Human Destiny

1990 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Talbott
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Moral Evil ◽  
Specific Region ◽  
Universal Love ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Good For ◽  
Love Of God ◽  
Libertarian Free Will ◽  
Traditional Doctrine ◽  
Human Destiny

According to some theists, God will never completely destroy moral evil or banish it from his creation entirely; instead, he will eventually confine moral evil to a specific region of his creation, a region known as hell, and those condemned to hell, having no hope of escape from it, will live out eternity in a state of estrangement from God as well as from each other. Let us call that the traditional doctrine of hell. Elsewhere I have argued that any form of theism which includes such a doctrine, even one that tries to preserve consistency by denying the universal love of God, is in fact logically inconsistent. But moderately conservative theists, as I have called them, have an argument for the traditional doctrine that some have found convincing, one that emphasizes libertarian free will. The argument is this. Because God is perfectly loving, he wills the good for every created person and wills the redemption of all who have fallen into evil; but because he has also given his loved ones the gift of freedom and some of them in fact exercise their freedom to reject him forever, it is simply not within his power, even as an omnipotent being, to redeem all of those who fall into evil. According to moderately conservative theists, therefore, the following hypothesis, which I shall call the Rejection Hypothesis (RH), is at least possibly true:(RH) Some persons will, despite God's best efforts to save them, freely and irrevocably reject God and thus separate themselves from God forever.

A new free-will defence

2003 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEXANDER R. PRUSS
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Moral Evil ◽  
Subjunctive Conditionals

This paper argues that if creatures are to have significant free will, then God's essential omni-benevolence and essential omnipotence cannot logically preclude Him from creating a world containing a moral evil. The paper maintains that this traditional conclusion does not need to rest on reliance on subjunctive conditionals of free will. It can be grounded in several independent ways based on premises that many will accept.

scholarly journals Non-Moral Evil and the Free Will Defense

2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 371-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Boyce ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Moral Evil ◽  
Free Will Defense

Is the Free Will Defence Irrelevant?

1982 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank B. Dilley
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Moral Evil ◽  
Real Value

Recently Steven E. Boër gave another turn to the discussion of the free will defence by claiming that the free will defence is irrelevant to the justification of moral evil. Conceding that free will may be of real value, Boër claims that free will could have been allowed creatures without that leading to any moral evil at all. What I shall hereafter refer to as the ‘Boër reform’ is the suggestion that God could have allowed creatures to exercise free choices but have intervened with ‘coincidence miracles’ to prevent all the intended evil from actually occurring. What is important to the free will defence, according to Boër, is the ability to choose freely and not the ability to succeed in effecting what we have intended to accomplish. It is no intrusion on the freedom of our wills for God to prevent us from accomplishing what we tried to do with our free wills as long as we were free to try.

scholarly journals The possibility of a free-will defence for the problem of natural evil

2004 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. J. MAWSON
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Moral Evil ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Natural Evil ◽  
Possible World ◽  
Natural Means ◽  
The Way

In this paper, I consider various arguments to the effect that natural evils are necessary for there to be created agents with free will of the sort that the traditional free-will defence for the problem of moral evil suggests we enjoy – arguments based on the idea that evil-doing requires the doer to use natural means in their agency. I conclude that, despite prima facie plausibility, these arguments do not, in fact, work. I provide my own argument for there being no possible world in which creatures enjoying this sort of freedom exist yet suffer no natural evil, and conclude that the way is thus open for extending the free-will defence to the problem of natural evil.

Depravity, Divine Responsibility and Moral Evil: A Critique of a New Free Will Defence

1995 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. M. Weisberger
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Moral Evil ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Possible World ◽  
Strong Connection ◽  
Moral Good ◽  
Argument From Evil

One of the most vexing problems in the philosophy of religion is the existence of moral evil in light of an omnipotent and wholly good deity. A popular mode of diffusing the argument from evil lies in the appeal to free will. Traditionally it is argued that there is a strong connection, even a necessary one, between the ability to exercise free will and the occurrence of wrong-doing. Transworld depravity, as characterized by Alvin Plantinga, is a concept which has gone far to explain this relationship. Essentially, the notion of transworld depravity involves the claim that in any world where a person is significantly free that person would, on some occasion, act morally wrongly, or as Plantinga phrases it: ‘If S' were actual, P would go wrong with respect to A’ (where S' is a possible world, P is a person and A is an action). Not only, Plantinga claims, is it possible that there are persons who suffer from transworld depravity, but ‘it is possible that everybody suffers from it’. If transworld depravity obtains, Plantinga notes, God ‘might have been able to create worlds in which moral evil is very considerably outweighed by moral good; but it was not within His power to create worlds containing moral good but no moral evil – and this despite the fact that He is omnipotent’. On this view, God could not instantiate perfect-person essences who would not ever sin. Although Plantinga argues that these instantiated beings are significantly free in that they could have done otherwise (i.e. not sinned), it does seem that his claim about transworld depravity amounts to a claim about transworld depravity amounts to a claim about the existence of a necessary connection obtaining between freedom and evil. For even though it makes sense to claim that an individual may have unactualized dispositions, to claim that everyone, past, present and future, has unactualized dispositions seems to be a significantly different claim. It is therefore difficult to see how this latter claim differs in substance from the claim of a necessary connection obtaining between the capacity for free will and the commission of evil acts.

scholarly journals God, Evil, and Alvin Plantinga on the Free-Will Defense

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 75-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ciro De Florio ◽  
Aldo Frigerio
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Moral Evil ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Divine Omniscience ◽  
Divine Knowledge ◽  
Critical Account ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Free Will Defense

In this paper we will give a critical account of Plantinga’s well-known argument to the effect that the existence of an omnipotent and morally perfect God is consistent with the actual presence of evil. After presenting Plantinga’s view, we critically discuss both the idea of divine knowledge of conditionals of freedom and the concept of transworld depravity. Then, we will sketch our own version of the Free-Will Defence, which maintains that moral evil depends on the misuse of human freedom. However, our argument does not hinge on problematic metaphysical assumptions, but depends only on a certain definition of a free act and a particular interpretation of divine omniscience.

There is no Free-Will Defense

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James P. Sterba
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Moral Evil ◽  
Free Will Defense

This paper argues that there is no Free-Will Defense for the degree and amount of moral evil in our world. It denies that God’s creating our world with the degree and amount of moral evil that exists, or has existed, in it could be defended in terms of the freedom that it provides, or has provided, to its members. It takes no stand on whether the problem could be solved by arguing that the securing of some other good, or goods in an afterlife is the justification for the degree and amount of moral evil in our world. This paper simply attempts to demonstrate the need for just such further work by showing that the freedom that exists, or has existed, in our world could not constitute a justification for the moral evil that exists, or has existed, in it.

Ideal worlds and the transworld untrustworthy

2004 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-123
Author(s):  
MICHAEL J. ALMEIDA
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Moral Evil ◽  
Two Stage ◽  
Moral Good ◽  
Ideal World ◽  
Michael Bergmann ◽  
The Ideal

The celebrated free-will defence was designed to show that the ideal-world thesis presents no challenge to theism. The ideal-world thesis states that, in any world in which God exists, He can actualize a world containing moral good and no moral evil. I consider an intriguing two-stage argument that Michael Bergmann advances for the free-will defence, and show that the argument provides atheologians with no reason to abandon the ideal-world thesis. I show next that the existence of worlds in which every essence is transworld untrustworthy provides atheologians with no better reason to abandon the ideal-world thesis. I conclude that neither the free-will defence nor Bergmann's revised free-will defence is a convincing response to the atheological challenge.

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