The Ethical Problem of Evil

[Norseman]

The logical problem of evil states that the existence of evil is in contradiction with the existence of a God which dislikes evil (Omnibenevolent), knows about it (Omniscient), and can correct it (Omnipotent). This thread has nothing to do with that. I will warn you here that this is a fairly long post (which I wrote at 4:30 AM, so it probably rambles on, with the occasional typo or brainfart mixed in; if you notify me about something, I will correct it), so you can skip the history and go to the last argument if you wish.

My argument begins with the deterministic approach to answering the other problem of evil, which was

P1. An omniscient God knows everything.
P2. A perfect God doesn't change, without losing perfection.
C: Therefore, for an omniscient and perfect God not to change, that God must know everything, and cannot learn new things in the future, it must already know those things. (Thus, everything which will happen in the future is already known by God, even seemingly random events, because if God didn't know their outcomes, his knowledge would change and he either could not have been perfect before, or is not perfect now. Does this argue against free will? You decide. This early on, just try and follow the arguments.).

Which led to the contradiction with Christianity:

P1. There is no free will, if God is omniscient and perfect.
P2. The concept of sin requires free will.
C: There is no sin, if God is omniscient and perfect. (Uh-oh).

Determinism stepped in to save the day. It restored God's omniscience by arguing against premise 1 in the previous argument. It said:

P1. Everything is caused by laws of nature (which includes brain events, like wants, preferences, and choices).
P2. Causes force their effects.
P3. If an effect is forced is forced, it's not free.
C: No acts are free.

Okay, so there is no free will. Now what? Well, the concept of sin is gone, but on the bright side God is omniscient and perfect again. Sin though... that's pretty essential. Along came soft determinism, which retained the premise of determinism, but redefined free will:

P1. Everything is caused by laws of nature (which includes brain events, like wants, preferences, and choices).
P2. Free means voluntary.
P3. An act is free if I want to do it, and nothing prevents me.

Okay, so it's determinism, but free will is back, and in a form which gets by both issues. Now God can know everything because everything is still determined, and you can still be free. It works. This philosophical view is also called compatibilism, and it's not hard to wonder why. Now we can get to my counter-argument.

P1. Everything is caused by laws of nature (which includes brain events, like wants, preferences, and choices).
P2. God created the initial causes of nature, and the laws of nature.
C: God makes you choose to sin, want to sin, and gives you the ability to sin (for sinners).

Oh dear. With so-called compatibilism, God is making people sin and then punishing them for it. This is like placing a gun in a guy's hand, putting his finger on the trigger, aiming it at someone, pressing his finger into the trigger, and then charging the guy with murder. He had nothing to do with it, no sane person could possibly blame him for something so immensely out of his control, much less hold the real culprit without any blame. This isn't compatible at all, it makes God out to be a monster, certainly not omnibenevolent.

I doubt many Christians will argue the second premise, that God is the creator, so it had to have been the first one. Not everything is caused by laws of nature. In other words, now we have uncaused causes. We are now back to where we started. God has lost his omniscience, because uncaused causes are truly random. There are no governing laws behind them to make them anything other than random, but it's possible that somehow they enable free will, through their unintuitive weirdness, so sin is back, maybe.

Have we reached the end of possible positions here? You decide.

 

[knightlight72]

Sorry, but the argument is flawed. How does God knowing of an event in advance mean that you have no choice in your actions? After all, God knows your choice, but you still don't know your choice.

I've heard this argument before, but really it's just an idea, and not really a definition of how logic works.

In other words, if I knew what you were going to choose in advance, how does that make it any less of a coice for you, since you are choosing without any advance knowledge.

 

[Norseman]

Sorry, but the argument is flawed. How does God knowing of an event in advance mean that you have no choice in your actions? After all, God knows your choice, but you still don't know your choice.

I've heard this argument before, but really it's just an idea, and not really a definition of how logic works.

In other words, if I knew what you were going to choose in advance, how does that make it any less of a coice for you, since you are choosing without any advance knowledge.

Because the choice is predetermined. It's out of your hands. Your choice was established without your consent.

 

[Job_s_First_Son]

Knight - Just to expand on Norse's point (I think anyway).

If you know my choice before hand then there's no problem, I can have free will.

The problem is God MADE me and knew my choices ahead of time and could have made me differently to make different choices. His authorship of each human's nature is what I think throws a monkey wrench into the freewill assumption.

Basically, I have about as much freewill as a clock (simplistic but you see what I'm getting at).

 

[Norseman]

^ Exactly.

 

[Lokisdottir]

Sorry, but the argument is flawed. How does God knowing of an event in advance mean that you have no choice in your actions? After all, God knows your choice, but you still don't know your choice.

Let's say, for example, that God knows that you are going to commit a crime next month. He knows it because he knows everything that is ever going to happen.

It does not matter that you don't know yet about the crime you will "choose" to commit. If somebody knows in advance what choice you will make, you can no longer make the opposite choice -- not without proving the other person wrong. And a perfect God can never be wrong.

 

[GreenDragon]

I think your premises are not quite right here. If I travel into the future and witness my brother kill a man, and then come back to the present, have a chosen for him to pull the trigger? Regardless of my knowledge that it will happen, my brother will still be the one to choose to kill the man. In the same way, God knows all choices before they are made, but that doesn't me he makes to choices for us; he simply knows the result.

 

[Lord_Marx]

I think your premises are not quite right here. If I travel into the future and witness my brother kill a man, and then come back to the present, have a chosen for him to pull the trigger? Regardless of my knowledge that it will happen, my brother will still be the one to choose to kill the man. In the same way, God knows all choices before they are made, but that doesn't me he makes to choices for us; he simply knows the result.

But even though you were capable of saving the man your brother would have killed, you still refuse to do anything about it. Are there not times where choosing to do nothing is wrong?

 

[GreenDragon]

But even though you were capable of saving the man your brother would have killed, you still refuse to do anything about it. Are there not times where choosing to do nothing is wrong?

...what? This thread has nothing to do with that. We're talking about the omniscience of God and its effect on free will.

 

[Job_s_First_Son]

Lokisdottir, I disagree if I'm reading your post correctly.

In my view, knowing the result of someone's actions which were based on their free will does not negate their free will.

I know that John Wilkes Booth killed Lincoln. The fact that I know it happened does not negate Booth's numerous free will decisions that led up to the act. I just know the result. Whether its in the past or the future is not relevant.

Now if God was NOT the creator of all (omnipotent), but just omniscient, the fact that he knew the outcome of Booth's free will decisions, does not mean that Booth was not free to act any way he wanted to.


Greendragon -

The problem for the assumption of free will is that you can't separate God's omnipotence from this omniscience. He created Booth and therefore took away any pretense of free will. God could have made Booth a better actor or worse shot and Lincoln would have lived. But he didn't. He created Booth knowing he would kill Lincoln. (A flippant example but I think it gets to the point)

Again, this is where it all breaks down for the omnipotent/onmiscient God and the existence of free will, in my view.

 

[Code-Monkey]

Knight - Just to expand on Norse's point (I think anyway).

If you know my choice before hand then there's no problem, I can have free will.

The problem is God MADE me and knew my choices ahead of time and could have made me differently to make different choices. His authorship of each human's nature is what I think throws a monkey wrench into the freewill assumption.

Basically, I have about as much freewill as a clock (simplistic but you see what I'm getting at).

We all know that knowledge does not cause something to happen. Therefore, occam's razor requires that we ignore knowledge when determining the cause of our actions. The argument against free will falls apart right there. You might as well say God created us and wears a purple hat, therefore we don't have free will.

Also people make the mistake of thinking that God is within his own creation as if a painter is within the painting. And as such they give him sort of a human or "universe object" perspective in which God somehow knows of an event "before" it happens. Since God is not within our time, there is no valid reason in claiming that this is the only possible manner in which God knows about events. If God is outside of the universe's time, then he may very well be able to see every event in all of the universe's time, from it's beginning to it's end. So his knowledge of our future may be a direct observation, not just a perfect guess of what is yet to come.

The problem of evil falls apart because it assumes that the best thing for God to do is to make it where no evil is possible. The argument in the OP seems to imply and understand that free will allows for the ability to sin or do evil. But that doesn't seem to be (from the christian perspective) the reason for free will (ie, so that we can sin). Rather free will seems to be a necessary component so that we can love. So the christian would argue that the greatest possible thing that can be created is a world where free creatures love just like God does, so we have potentially 1 trillion loving creatures rather than just 1 loving creature. I will say that the poets seem to agree that it is better to have love than to not have love, but we can't exactly prove that to be true as we can some mathematical expression, so decide for yourself which is correct. But nevertheless, if loving is greater than not loving, and giving the ability to love to a creature is a more loving act than not giving them the ability to love, then it is fair to say that God has done the more loving thing by Giving us the ability to love than not.

 

[Norseman]

I think your premises are not quite right here. If I travel into the future and witness my brother kill a man, and then come back to the present, have a chosen for him to pull the trigger?

No. You didn't create him or the universe, what he does is not within your control, and never was.

Regardless of my knowledge that it will happen, my brother will still be the one to choose to kill the man. In the same way, God knows all choices before they are made, but that doesn't me he makes to choices for us; he simply knows the result.

Adding to the above, you can consider yourself a gear in a clock. What you do has already been established. What your brother does has already been established. Only things which aren't governed by the laws of the clock, such as the clock maker, could have any pretense of free will, since it's not known what laws they are governed by. It was God's decision to make the universe so that your brother would kill, it was God's decision to make that a sin, it was God's decision to make hell. It was God's decision to make a being with the intention of putting it into hell.

 

[Norseman]

We all know that knowledge does not cause something to happen. Therefore, occam's razor requires that we ignore knowledge when determining the cause of our actions.

Knowledge itself is not a cause, correct. Knowledge is a guarantee of something. In this case, a guarantee that the future is locked and unchanging. God's perfect knowledge of the future, and the fact that he made the universe means he intended for everything to happen as it has happened and will happen. He does not make mistakes, he is perfect. Everything, absolutely everything, from your choice of cereal in the morning, to itching your back, to some guy killing his wife were God's decisions right from the beginning.

 

[GreenDragon]

No. You didn't create him or the universe, what he does is not within your control, and never was.

What if it was my son, who isn't yet born in the present?

Adding to the above, you can consider yourself a gear in a clock. What you do has already been established. What your brother does has already been established. Only things which aren't governed by the laws of the clock, such as the clock maker, could have any pretense of free will, since it's not known what laws they are governed by. It was God's decision to make the universe so that your brother would kill, it was God's decision to make that a sin, it was God's decision to make hell. It was God's decision to make a being with the intention of putting it into hell.

It doesn't matter that he knows what choices you will make when he created the universe, he still hasn't made any choices for you.

 

[Norseman]

What if it was my son, who isn't yet born in the present?

You aren't choosing the configuration of every atom in his body, the spin of his quarks, the environment he will live in, and the laws that will govern the interactions within his body, and with his environment. Yes, ever fiber of your son's existance will be... no, has already been, determined by God.

But at 16? Wow.

It doesn't matter that he knows what choices you will make when he created the universe, he still hasn't made any choices for you.

When he created the universe, he created everything that will ever exist and began everything that will ever happen. God is ultimately responsible for everything. When a clock-maker makes a clock, do we say the clock maker isn't responsible for the clock doing perfectly what he designed it to do?

 

[Lord_Marx]

...what? This thread has nothing to do with that. We're talking about the omniscience of God and its effect on free will.

Perhaps you missed my point. God may not cause evil, but he still allows it to exist even though he has the power to stop it. How is it justifiable to choose to perserve freewill at the cost of innocent lives?

 

[Code-Monkey]

Perhaps you missed my point. God may not cause evil, but he still allows it to exist even though he has the power to stop it. How is it justifiable to choose to perserve freewill at the cost of innocent lives?

Allowing evil is a necessary side effect of allowing love. It's greater to allow love than to not allow love at all. It's nonsense to talk of free will as being the goal in mind when love is the goal in mind. Love requires free will. The greatest possible thing is God loving us and us freely loving God. That's only possible with us being free. Us being free requires that we have the ability to rebel against God's plan and murder each other. Thus, the greatest possible thing requires the possibility of some bad things, but not the necessity. God doesn't bring evil into the world, people who rebel against him do.

 

[Code-Monkey]

Knowledge itself is not a cause, correct. Knowledge is a guarantee of something. In this case, a guarantee that the future is locked and unchanging. God's perfect knowledge of the future, and the fact that he made the universe means he intended for everything to happen as it has happened and will happen. He does not make mistakes, he is perfect. Everything, absolutely everything, from your choice of cereal in the morning, to itching your back, to some guy killing his wife were God's decisions right from the beginning.

If knowledge is not a cause, then if you're being intellectually honest, you will not consider it as a cause for people's actions. This is extremely clear when you evaluate an event in the past. We know our knowledge of the past doesn't cause the past to have been that way. Rather our knowledge is only correct if the past really did happen that way. It's the same with the present and equally as easy to understand. There's no rational reason to suspect it's different with the future. Knowledge does not cause and cannot be considered.

If God sees the future as it's happening, then his looking at the future is no more a deterant against free will than his ability to look at either China or Washington.

 

[TeddyKGB]

If knowledge is not a cause, then if you're being intellectually honest, you will not consider it as a cause for people's actions. This is extremely clear when you evaluate an event in the past. We know our knowledge of the past doesn't cause the past to have been that way. Rather our knowledge is only correct if the past really did happen that way. It's the same with the present and equally as easy to understand. There's no rational reason to suspect it's different with the future. Knowledge does not cause and cannot be considered.

While foreknowledge itself is not prima facie a cause of a behavior, it is an indication that the behavior is metaphysically caused.

If God sees the future as it's happening, then his looking at the future is no more a deterant against free will than his ability to look at either China or Washington.

Meh. The 'philosophy of God' renders such discussion unintelligible. If it is possible to posit a being who "sees the future as it's happening," then we obviously don't mean that "the future" refers to events which have not yet occurred.

 

[JGG]

Allowing evil is a necessary side effect of allowing love. It's greater to allow love than to not allow love at all. It's nonsense to talk of free will as being the goal in mind when love is the goal in mind. Love requires free will. The greatest possible thing is God loving us and us freely loving God. That's only possible with us being free. Us being free requires that we have the ability to rebel against God's plan and murder each other. Thus, the greatest possible thing requires the possibility of some bad things, but not the necessity. God doesn't bring evil into the world, people who rebel against him do.

Wait this doesn't follow.

1) why is freewill a requisite of love?

2) if God is omnipotent, why did he create a system in which evil was a byproduct of freewill, or love? Why was love necessary?