Andrian wrote:Alvin Plantinga has proposed a famous solution to the Logical Problem of Evil known as the Free Will Defense. I would post a link to a relevant article explaining these things, but I am not yet allowed to post URL's.
For those of you who are unfamiliar, the Logical Problem of Evil is the argument that God's omnipotence and omnibenevolence are incompatible with the observation of evil in the world. A perfectly good God would want to eliminate evil, and an all-powerful God would be able to eliminate evil, so the fact that there is evil in the world demonstrates that no God which is both omnipotent and omnibenevolent exists.
Alvin Plantinga argues that even an omnipotent God cannot do logically impossible things, and that it is logically impossible for God to create beings with free will and yet prevent them from doing evil, should they wish to do so. He believes that free will is necessary in order to produce certain goods which God values, such as genuine love.
There are a number of possible objections to this argument, but the one I'm interested in discussing applies only to theists who believe in the existence of heaven. Heaven, for the sake of this discussion, is a perfect, evil-free afterlife guaranteed by God as a reward for those who are deemed worthy of entry, such as we find described by most sects of Christianity. I believe that the existence of such an afterlife is logically incompatible with the Free Will Defense, which would make it inaccessible to most, if not all Christian apologists.
My argument would be that, if we have free will in heaven, God has no way of guaranteeing that evil will never arise again. At any point, any one of the people in heaven might choose to do evil, destroying the evil-free paradise which the Christian God offers to believers. If we do not have free will in heaven, God could guarantee that evil will never arise again, but He would lose all the benefits of having introduced free will in the first place, which is an admission that the goods offered by free will are not worth having in the first place, given the possibility of evil arising. Remember that Plantinga has already ruled out the possibility that God could somehow create beings with free will, but still prevent them from doing evil. As such, either there is no guarantee that heaven will remain perfect throughout all eternity, or there is no free will in heaven. This means that theists who believe in heaven must reject the Free Will Defense, and that theists who accept the Free Will Defense must reject the idea of heaven.
Obviously, this is a very narrow critique, and as I have pointed out, there are ways to save the Free Will Defense from being refuted by this argument. Still, I think that the majority of people who might appeal to Plantinga's Free-Will Defense would find this critique to be rather troubling, and might make them think twice before espousing it.
Anyway, I'd love to see what others have to think of this argument. Does it hold water, or have I made a mistake somewhere?
Plantinga and theist who think like him can not know if allowing 'evil' to exist is required for free will so arguing such is merely a non sequitur. When I play a video game like Saint's Row that allows me to do car jackings, shooting bystanders, etc in the real world such actions would be a crime, however in a simulated world such actions do not really create problems. If 'God' through either magic (however that would work) or technology he could easily nullify any damage as easily as a program can fix things in a simulated world then such actions wouldn't be any more 'evil' then they are in a simulation. Perhaps there might be worlds that 'God' could not fix all problems so easily but I can't imagine why 'God' couldn't allow us to have a chance to first learn in the simulated worlds a thing or two (or get to play in the sandbox sort to speak of) before throwing us in world where we have to worry about sinning and causing unrepairable damage; and if is one of those worlds he can so easily fix, why is there sin?
Anyways, Plantinga's and any other theist's argument like his are pretty hokey and just another attempt at making an excuse for why 'God' lets evil to exist. IMHO all arguments that rely on knowing the true nature of God's nature are obvious non sequiturs and only require a little imagination to dismiss.