The Problem of Evil and the Free Will Defense

[Cheerful Charlie]

on this post, I will take on a common argument made against theists (mainly Christians) and show what the free will defense is and how it successfully defends Christianity from these arguments.
Purpose: I want to be clear this is not an argument against atheism or prove theism true. this is a free will defense and thus is only meant to defend Christianity from atheist arguments.
Argument:
to start, here is a common format of an argument against God using the problem of evil:
1. if God is omniscient, he knows that there is evil in the world and knows how to prevent it.
2. if God is omnipotent, he has the ability to prevent evil.
3. if God is morally perfect, he wouldn't want evil in the world.
4. there is evil in the world.
5. therefore, 1-3 can't all simultaneously be true of God since 4 is true.
6. 1-3 are in the necessary nature of God.
conclusion: therefore the God doesn't exist.


Objection: the idea of free will is inconsistent with God's omniscience, omnipotence, and divine plan.-- this is an objection I will return to later when I cover the subject of God, the nature of his omniscience and our free will.

Plantinga's free will defense is based on strawmen. Ir claims we have free will. Mayor Curley is offered a bribe. Of his own free will he takes it or rejects it. If he accepts, moral evil is done. God cannot undo that because God supports free will.

That is why moral evil must exist.

But read Romans 11. Why do the Jews reject Jesus as messiah? Because God hardened their hearts not to.

Plantinga is a Christian, so he knows better.

God, by Plantinga's own Bible, tells us God has no real deep attachment to free will. The real question here is, why does not God make all Jews believers? Or for that fact, all men.

Plantinga calls this a defense, not a theodicy. Its a foot in the door argument to keep atheism from making the problem of evil stick. But a key element of his defense is a strawman that dooms his defense. Islam is even worse on the free will issue.

He also claims it is possible all sentient beings may suffer from transworld depravity and will always do some moral evil, so evil must exist. he declares atheists must defeat this stopper to defeat the FWD.
In the case of defenses, what he does is this.

Presents a general case. Its possible a perfectly good God exists and logically can and must coexist with evil. And then makes a Russellian teapot claim we re told we must disprovve, maybe all beings suffer from transworld depravity.

What a Plantingian defense does is shift burden of proof illicitly to atheists.
Of course we can reverse it and state our theory, evil exists, and contradicts the definition of God, and then challenge the theists to disprove our "stopper', our own Russellian Teapot statement, Maybe gods are in principle impossible.

Plantingian defenses can be easily developed to 'prove' anything at all. Especially if you allow strawmen. That Plantinga has gotten away with this for years now and not been called on it tells you a lot about the state of religious philosophy



Cheerful Charlie