scholarly journals Let's Play GOLF!

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven B. Cowan
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Moral Evil ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Moral Good ◽  
Libertarian Freedom ◽  
Free Will Defense

A central feature of the “free will defense” as developed by Alvin Plantinga is his response to the claim that God can create a world containing creatures with libertarian freedom that contains no moral evil. Plantinga’s response appeals to the notion of “morally significant freedom” according to which free creatures, in order to do moral good, must be capable of moral evil. In this paper, I argue, first, that morally significant freedom is not required for free creatures to do moral good and, second, that other recent attempts to necessitate a creaturely capability for evil likewise fail. The upshot of my paper is that the free will defense simply won’t work because it is possible and feasible for God to create a world containing libertarianly free creatures capable of moral good and yet containing no moral 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.

scholarly journals God and the Playpen: On the Feasibility of Morally Better Worlds

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 266
Author(s):  
Cheryl K. Chen
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Actual World ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Moral Good ◽  
Moral Goodness ◽  
Divine Intervention ◽  
Horrendous Evil ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
Free Will Defense ◽  
Better Than

According to the free will defense, God cannot create a world with free creatures, and hence a world with moral goodness, without allowing for the possibility of evil. David Lewis points out that any free will defense must address the “playpen problem”: why didn’t God allow creatures the freedom required for moral goodness, while intervening to ensure that all evil-doing is victimless? More recently, James Sterba has revived the playpen problem by arguing that an omnipotent and benevolent God would have intervened to prevent significant and especially horrendous evil. I argue that it is possible, at least, that such divine intervention would have backfired, and that any attempt to create a world that is morally better than this one would have resulted in a world that is morally worse. I conclude that the atheologian should instead attack the free will defense at its roots: either by denying that the predetermination of our actions is incompatible with our freely per-forming them, or by denying that the actual world—a world with both moral good and evil—is more valuable than a world without any freedom at all.

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

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.

Augustine on Evil

Evil ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 155-193
Author(s):  
Peter King
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Moral Evil ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
Western Tradition ◽  
Full Generality ◽  
Natural Processes ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
Positive Feature ◽  
To Come ◽  
Free Will Defense

Augustine’s account of evil has influenced most later thinkers in the western tradition. He argues for three central theses: (a) evil is the lack of some positive feature that ought to be present, a “privation”; (b) moral evil comes about solely from the less-than-perfect free choices of rational beings; and (c) all suffering—which need not be the result of moral evil but perhaps of natural processes or events—is morally justified. As part of his defense of (b), Augustine states in full generality the problem of evil (namely, how can there be any genuine evil in a world presided over by an omnipotent and benevolent deity?), and articulates in reply the free will defense. The arguments Augustine offers in support of the free will defense, and in favor of (a)–(c), are set forth and their implications assessed. The upshot is a coherent account of evil that dominated the debates for many centuries to come.

Augustine's rejection of the free-will defence: an overview of the late Augustine's theodicy

2007 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 279-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
JESSE COUENHOVEN
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Alvin Plantinga

AbstractAugustine is commonly considered the greatest early proponent of what we call the free-will defence, but this idea is deeply misleading, as Augustine grew increasingly dissatisfied with the view from an early point in his career, and his later explorations of the implications of his doctrines of sin and grace led him to reject free-will theodicies altogether. As a compatibilist, however, he continued to reject the idea that God is responsible for the advent of evil. His alternative was his often misunderstood claim that the primal sin had a ‘deficient’ cause, together with a version of what Alvin Plantinga has nominated the ‘felix culpa’ approach. Thus, Augustine was actually the free-will defence's first major Christian detractor, and by the end of his career he had become its greatest critic.

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