Free Will Response

In his essay, "The Magnitude, Duration, and Distribution of Evil: a Theodicy," Peter van Inwagen alleges a set of reasons that God may have for allowing evil to exist on earth. Inwagen proposes the following story – throughout which there is an implicit assumption that God is all-good (perfectly benevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient) and deserving of all our love. God created humans in his own likeness and fit for His love. In order to enable humans to return this love, He had to give them the ability to freely choose. That is, Inwagen holds that the ability to love implies free will. By giving humans free will, God was taking a risk.

If we humans are responsible for “human evil”, then surely, only God can be responsible for “natural evil”. Yet if we apply God’s benevolent feature, the fact that natural evil exist would be contradictory, unless we alter the meaning and definition of natural evil. Either natural evil is not really evil or there is a good purpose behind the natural evils. Though free will defense does not answer these two questions, or at least not directly. We can also assume God cannot create this world without including said natural evil, but then that would, per

The two solutions to what we call the problem of evil are: the free will defense and the Supralapsarian theodicy. The free will defense argues that evil and God are not incompatible because God didn’t create evil. According to this defense, human beings create evil with the free will that God given them. Since free will must be totally free, God cannot guide us to do what is good only since he wants his creatures to have complete freedom over their lives and what they do. So, by proving that God and evil can coexist logically, the free will defense is a path out of the problem of evil.

If that premise is true, and we recall that God being omnipotent can do anything that is possible, it must follow that God could have and would have made humans without the ability to cause evil if he

Why does an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God allow natural and moral evil to happen without any restrictions? John Hick, a proponent of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s theodicy defense, answered: “in order that human beings, as free responsible agents, may use this world as a place of “soul making,” which involves the spiritual perfection of our character and persons” (Pojman 74). According to Hick, creation has not been finished its work, it is still undergoing a process, that is, the lives of individual human beings. Hick believed that God is omnibenevolent because he is allowing us to learn how to be perfect on our own.

Out of all the different choices human’s have to make not all of them are made using freewill, for example someone’s choice may me chosen by something or someone else and thus any evil that is caused from that choice was not chosen via freewill. If evil is created this way then it is not supporting the existence of god. There are many examples of this like how suffering (evil) may be created from a natural disaster, which was not an option someone had chosen via freewill, this creates a problem for the free will defence. Not all evil is due to choices human’s have made. In response to this problem for the free will defence, if god was all good, powerful and knowing then he would have been able to prevent and stop natural disasters as the evil they create is not due to freewill. However, this is evidently not true as natural disasters have

The problem of evil questions the nature of God and threatens his status as a figure worthy of worship. Surely human beings would not wish to worship a God that is neither all good nor all-powerful? The figure we call God is seen to be entirely perfect and flawless in every way. The problem of evil also questions God’s omniscience, in respects that he is all knowing. If God is omniscient then he must know the harm that evil does and the suffering it will cause. The attributes in question are the essence of the nature of God and without them he becomes more like a human than a God. If any of God’s characteristics are omitted, he

Now that’s all well and good, except for the fact that the logical problem of evil spends so much time focused on the omnipotent and the omnibenevolent aspects of God that is all together neglects the fact that God is also omniscient. He knows everything, past, present, and future. Therefore, it is only logical to assume that God also knows the best way to achieve the greatest good, which as established is the singular goal of an omnibenevolent being. If such knowledge is true, as it must be according to the laws of Omni-three, then it is possible that God has determined that the greatest good can only come by human-choice, also known as freewill, not by His force. In a bit, I will attempt to explain just

William Rowe defines gratuitous evil as an instance of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.(Rowe 335) In a world with so much evil it raises the questions If God is all powerful, all knowing and all good, how can he allow bad things to happen to good people? Can God even exist in a world with so such gratuitous evil? These are questions that has afflicted humanity for a very long time and has been the question to engross theologians for centuries. The existence of evil has been the most influential and powerful reason to disprove the existence of God. It is believed among many theist that God is the creator and caretaker

Nature and humans often bring about very bad things. The natural world, operating in accordance with its own impersonal laws, produces diseases, birth defects, parasites, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, explosive volcanic eruptions, asteroid impacts, and the system of "nature red in tooth and claw" whereby creatures survive only by painfully destroying other living, feeling creatures. Human beings misuse their free will to do terrible things to one another and to other creatures. They commit massacres, genocides, and acts of terrorism; they torture, abuse, rape, swindle, steal, cheat, oppress, exploit, lie, and deceive. Following scholarly precedent, let us call the bad things brought about by nature "natural evil," and the bad things brought about by humans' free actions "moral evil." Since God created nature and human beings, it must follow that God, at least indirectly, is the creator of both natural and moral evil. Perhaps it is offensive to speak of God as the creator of evil. Nevertheless, we must at least say that God does not prevent evil though, being all-powerful, he

God cannot determine the outcome of our free choice. So either there is no omniscient god or we are created without free will and therefore are forced/unable to avoid doing evil. Again this shows that god is not benevolent, nor omniscient, therefore he is non-existent. Theists may argue the following reason for god to have granted humans free will. It is possible that god raised homo sapiens to rationality giving the gift of abstract thought, language and disinterested love. And so it is arguable that god gave us free will to allow for love, as free will is necessary for love. Although this may be one of many reasons that god granted us free will, it is one that we may understand. Free will is necessary for both erotic and platonic love. One may argue that evil is only trumped by love. And that the existence of evil, although in its masses is worth it for the sake of

Casual determinism put simply, is the theory that all things happen for a particular reason and everything is predetermined. It is the idea all the events in one’s life can be explained, and each event has a particular reason for being. If everything is predetermined, then this therefore suggests that the future is fixed which further suggests that we can possibly predict the behavior of things. The theory of determinism ultimately suggests that we don’t the capacity to have free will because all future events are destined to occur, and furthermore we do not posses the knowledge to figure out whether it can be proved true or false (Hoefer). There has been three positions that have developed concerning the theory of causal determinism: hard determinist, compatibilist or soft determinist, and compatibilist.

In Christianity evil came as a result of the selfishness of man. The Bible says that God desired to create people who would eventually come to love him. As genuine love cannot exist unless freely given through free choice, God gave man free will with the option to accept God’s love or to reject it.

Some people believe that no matter what a person does in their life, it will ultimately have no effect on the outcome ofa it. Existentialists find this to be true because they believe that no matter what they ever do, they will always die. Existentialists link the inevitability of death to the idea that there is no higher power. Additionally, existentialists hold the belief that no one should allow society to control how they live their life. Writer Albert Camus uses many existentialist themes his works like The Stranger and “The Guest”. The protagonists in both stories demonstrate existentialist beliefs in their actions. As a result, many existentialist ideas can be seen throughout out both novels. Camus uses the paradox of free will in order to illustrate the inevitability of death for everyone as well as the idea that in order to obtain free will, a person must reject society and face exile.

Therefore, we might best respond by saying that God does not Will "bad" things to happen in life. Rather, "bad"