*OOPS: I didn't see your last post before I started writing this. I'll leave it here anyways, I'm familiar with all the counter-arguments and arguments for the Epicurean Paradox, so I'll just argue off of this, and you can quote me to an individual post, if you like*
Will wrote:
There are two basic versions of the problem of evil: deductive and probalistic (aka inductive). The propontent of the deductive problem of evil attempts to show that the existence of Deductive looks like this:
1. If a God exists who is omnipotent (all powerful) and omnibenevolent (all loving),
2. and evil exists,
3. then God cannot be omnipotent or omnibenevolent.
This version of the argument has been almost completely abandoned by professional philosophers today. It lives on in its popular level form and is made immortal by producing this corpse of an argument between non-philosopher friends. Alvin Plantinga (a preeminent Christian philosopher at Notre Dame and past president of the Amer. Philosophical Assoc., which is the main association of professional philosophers) showed that this version of the problem of evil is logically untenable.
Alvin Plantinga presented a "defense" as opposed to a theodicy. A theodicy is an effort to explain why God would allow evil to exist. A defense, however, merely seeks to show that the atheist has failed to carry their case that evil is incompatible with God's existence. In other words, a sucessful defense with show that the atheist has failed to show that evil is logically incompatible with God's existence, while leaving us in the dark as to why God allows evil.
For the record, I'm not a fan of people who use Christian sources as a means of an appeal to authority for why an atheistic/deistic argument is poor... So, I'll skip to the core of this argument.
Will wrote:
The deductive argument was destroyed because, in short, the atheist has assumed an overwhelming burden. Premises (1) and (2), above, are at not explicitly, logically inconsistent. An explicit, logically inconsistent statement would be that "God is blue, but God is not blue."
If the atheist thinks that premises (1) and (2) are implicitly inconsistent, then he or she must be assuming some hidden premise(s) that would make the inconsistency explicit. Those premises seem to be these:
(3) If God is omnipotent, then God can create any world that God desires.
(4) If God is omnibenevolent, then God prefers a world without evil over a world with evil.
This is hardly a list of smuggled premises.
If something is good, the word "good" or "benevolent" has connotations and, for that matter, expectations. As does omni-potent.
Omni-potent literally means "all powerful" --or, "capable of doing anything". It is simply botched logic to state that we cannot compare the natural extensions of these statements (because 'good' and 'powerful' come with other constraints) and say that they cannot be
reductio ad absurdum.
A and B imply several things. It is neither irrational nor fallacious to take two specific, implied cases and argue the absurdity of the conclusion.
This is much like having two balls. One is green, one is colorless. Now there's a boy who has both balls, and his shirt color is both of the colors at the same time. It's logically impossible, however, to have that happen. We can mix red and green, but not to both have color and be without color.
One assumption usually comes with a list of other assumptions; therefore I see this as semantic nitpicking. If we were to desist from comparing the natural extensions of two arguments to see if they have the
reductio ad absurdum process applied to them, then philosophy would have few uses, and mathematics would be greatly hindered.
Will wrote:
Hidden premise (3) then is the view that if God is omnipotent, he could create a world that were all humans freely choose to do the right thing. This world would then be free of all moral evil: no lying, no cheating, no murder etc. So, because we can conceive of a world in which everyone freely chooses every time to do the right thing, and God is all-powerful, then God must be able to create it.
This links with hidden premise (4) because if God was powerful enough to create this type of world, then he certaintly would because he is all-loving. In other words, if God had the choice between creating a flawed, evil world like this one and creating one w/o any evil, then God would most certainly chose the latter. Otherwise, God would be evil to prefer that people experience pain and suffering when God could have given them happiness and prosperity.
Yes, that's not an added premise, actually. It's taking one thing and another thing, and employing logic on it.
Will wrote:
In David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, he summarized this last point when he asked: "Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?"
Plantinga and others object to hidden premise (3) with what he calls the free will defense. It goes like this: if it is possible that humans have complete freedom to make choices, then (3) and (4) are not necessarily true. If humans have freedom to make choices, then it is not necessarily true that God could have created another world in which no evil exists but people have complete freedom of choice. This is because God's omnipotence doesn't imply that God can do logical impossibilities like create a round triangle or make a married bachelor, or make someone freely chose to do something.
All God can really do is create a world in which a person may freely chose to act and then allow that person to make the free choice. This implies that there are possible worlds that are not feasible for God to create. Just like its not "feasible" for God to create a round triangle or a married bachelor. This does not impinge on God's omnipotence though, because God cannot be impinged for not being able to do a logical impossibility. Another example how how non-sensical this is, is for someone to say that God is not all-powerful because he cannot exist and non exist at the same time.
So, suppose that in every feasible world that God could create, free creatures sometimes choice evil. Here it is us, the creature, not God that is responsible for evil and God can do nothing to prevent their ability to choose the evil, apart from refusing to create such a world at all. Therefore it is at least possible that feasible world that God could create that contains free human beings is a world that has evil in it.
I'm about to say something that will seem crazy and you might be tempted to label be a total fundamentalist and crazy, but please keep reading past the next few sentences. As for natural evils (i.e. earthquakes, tornadoes, etc.) it is possible that these evils could result from demonic activity. Demons could have freedom just like humans and it is possible that God could not preclude natural evil w/o removing demons' free will. You might be thinking, "That is ridiculous!" and you might even think that it is a spurious, frivolous argument. But only let this thought last a few moments lest you confuse the deductive argument with the probabilistic arguments. I admit, ascribing all evil to demonic beings is improbable, but that is completely irrevelant to the deductive version of this argument. Probability only enters the calculus in the probalistic argument. All I must do here is show that such an explanation (both for the moral evil and natural evil) is merely possible.
I will first address the last part of this argument, and then move to the initial portion; seems odd, but it'll make sense after you see it.
Of course, in order to finish your proof, you have to address the problem of evils that humans are not, feasibly, responsible for. However, you've one something special which is, in and of itself, poor logic. First off, you just made a claim about the physical universe; thus, you're making a claim that pertains to science. Which means that, as per Occam's Razor, you're adding unnecessary assumptions. What is the simpler assumption, there are demons creating all the problems in the universe and altering how the universe works, or that the universe is just acting on all the principles that we have observed it to? The simpler assumption is merely that the universe is what we observe it to be; least ways, it seems to me to be.
Now, let us address the "problem of free will" if you will, as a counter argument to the Epicurean paradox. So, in order to excuse God from his responsibilities of creating evil, we state that God did not create evil. There's this nature of humans that gives them the ability to decide to do right or wrong.
Here's where the theory of free will ends as logically consistent or as an actual means of excusing God from his responsibilities of creation.
Free will smuggles these premises in order for it to work:
1. Though God created everything, there's this ability created by God, for humans to commit "sin."
2. Even though God created this aspect, he still is not responsible for the consequences of creating this aspect of humans.
This is what I like to call the Bomb Maker's Fallacy; it shows that free will is not an actual answer to the problem of evil:
"Dr. Madthink creates and programs a robot that has a nuclear bomb inside of it. This robot has the property of wanting to blow up the nuclear bomb in him; in fact, Dr. Madthink made the will to blow up so strong in his robots, that no test robot before this one has ever been able to resist wanting to blow up. Dr. Madthink then procedes to place the robot into a park in Manhattan. The robot, as expected, blows up. Is Dr. Madthink responsible for the murder that the robot did?"
Obviously, if I make a robot --I program it, I make it, and I give it the bomb-- then I am responsible for what it does.
And there's why free will fails. One, the reason we have a desire to sin is because god, hypothetically, had to have put it into us in the first place. Even though we act on our nature, humans still have no control over that nature, nor are we capable of actually stopping ourselves from acting in a proper manner. As the Bible notes, Jesus (who is God) is the only human being capable of not sinning.
If God really wanted us to make the choice between him and sin, he would have given us all the knowledge about the nature of sin, all the knowledge about him, and then give us the rationalizing ability to make the best choice.
Free will does not explain anything. God still made our nature; God is omniscient, and knew there was no way that we could not sin given our nature. God made us anyways, even though he was --given that he's omnipotent-- afforded other options.
The tri-omni God cannot exist. QED.
(Note that theoretical creator gods can still exist)
