The Best Response To 'Evil Exists Because of Free Will'

[robby]

Yet in the bible, God commits actions that impede people's free will.

[brockandersen]

Theists could just reject the assumption that heaven is free of evil. After all, Lucifer’s rebellion happened in heaven. Then the atheist might counter “then how is heaven any different from earth?”. And then any delineation the theist tries to draw between heaven and earth would be counter-able with “then God is evil for not allowing that condition on earth”. So then the atheist’s argument boils down to “God should have just created us and put us in heaven, instead of putting us on earth”, which seems like a reasonable argument.

[StormShadow]

Regardless of my disagreement I really want to say thank you Alex for actually taking the questions seriously and approaching the discussion with grace and charity. Lots of Christians can learn much from the way you treat the subject...most of the time anyway, sometimes you channel your inner Hitchens, but hey, nobody is perfect, and my point still stands.

[rossheaton]

The paradox of Omniscience and Free Will, I have never seen anyone address this honestly.

[tonycallender]

This is a far more complicated subject than people expect, and the critique the video presented is a fair one. I personally believe one of the best responses to this critique is the idea that you are going through this process of sanctification, in 5 years from now (assuming an ideal linear sanctification process) the thought of sinning would have a much weaker power over me than it does now (relatively speaking); the thought of sinning right now has almost the same power as it will have tomorrow (assuming the same ideal conditions). However, think this on a span of ten thousand years, the thought of sinning will be disgusting. The thought of sinning ten thousand years from now is to the feeling of disgust, like the feeling of disgust in our time is to put something from the street in our mouth, this isn't the best example, but the point is, sinning would be something we wouldn't even consider; when we were babies we would put anything in our mouth but now we don't, we know better.

This is why I don't necessarily believe that the process of sanctification is complete at death, in fact, I believe it continues. However, the main idea in christianity is that those who are "saved" (which is another complex topic) are more likely to get to that "climax" of sanctification, to that point where your human essence will no longer desire anything but to glorify God, since that is what it means to be the image of God, darkness does not exist but is rather the absence of light, cold does not exist but is rather the absence of heat, therefore anything that is not of God and anything that your human essence grounds its identity in will inevitably destroy your soul since by definition (assuming christian theology) you are created in the image of God which means that anything that is not part of that "light" will be overcome by it; if your soul is a piece of light it will just shine even greater with a greater light (that greater light being God), on the other hand if your soul is a piece of darkness it will inevitably perish (be outshined by the light since light and darkness are not some kind of ying yang but rather one being the absence of another). People who are not "saved" (whatever that means since that's not the topic, but worth studying as well), will have a faaar less chance of reaching that climax of sanctification, in fact, if their identity is still being grounded in anything that is not of God their soul will inevitably perish since they would no longer have that "thing" (whether a material possession, lover, business or even an idea) that temporarily filled their souls, which is the most accurate description of "hell", not an actual fire like how some people think it is, but rather a spiritual fire that begins here on earth, and continues after death if you are not "saved".

That is what the whole existential crisis, or happiness crisis is all about, our sick soul or mind or whatever you want to call it has an interesting way of eternalizing a finite object or person or idea, making you think that the "thing" is all that you need to be fulfilled; when you fall in love and that person betrays you, it feels like a spiritual fire has just begun in your heart (which obviously has a scientific explanation so it's not the best example but you know what I mean).

Finally, human beings are complex, so it's obviously not going to be some linear progression toward that "climax", but something more like a complicated graph with multiple variables, and for some people that graph may be more complicated than others (all of this is speculation but a fair one due to our complex nature), but that same complex graph would eventually become linear, then eventually exponential, then eventually hyper exponential tending to infinity which would explain why a sanctified Christian in heaven 100 million years from now would not even consider sin, it would be a joke to him, it would probably not even cross their mind but rather be some tiny speck that once was, being engulfed by the infinite complexity of the cosmos waiting to be cultivated by the human race and their creator.

[ancient_music]

Here, on Earth, we decide how to use our free will, in which direction to orient it (to good or to evil), and there, in the afterlife, we live in accordance with the choice we made and the direction in which we have oriented our free will here. In a sense, there is no free will in Heaven, rather it is fixed in the direction we set it while on Earth.

[TheWaltiss]

These types of Cosmic Clips Responses are really good and helpful! THANKS! More clips like this please!

[gssbruno]

The problem gets worse if you add the omniscient quality of god to the discussion, knowing the future basically excludes the possibility of free will.

[neuronstellingstories]

Exactly my response. Glad to finally see it given on YouTube.

[Azarilh]

Whenever christians try to answer a question, they raise more questions.

[thehoogard]

Good point. Never heard this one before. Thanks for bringing it to my awareness Alex.

[josephcowan]

I guess the idea of the angel Lucifer rebelling against God kind of implies there is free will in Heaven.

[youwaisef]

A lot of people in the comments are repeating what was said and missing the point. Yes, there could be a world (Heaven) where human beings have free will and can choose evil but simply don't choose it. That doesn't solve the problem, it raises more unanswerable questions. E.g. Doesn't that mean free will doesn't need evil to be actualised at least? Or why isn't it the case that we weren't already created with free will but have no desire to choose evil? My feeling is the answer would be only God knows or something along those lines and we'd be back to ignorance.The free will 'solution' isn't a solution still.

[WickedIndigo]

Idk how I haven’t seen this clip of Alex before but I just thought of this objection at work two days ago and was having a field day. I knew, of course, than this objection wasn’t gonna be original as it’s not that profound of a thing to think of but I was still proud of myself for having the epiphany. Just weird that I happen to see the clip of Alex giving the exact same line of logic I went down just a day or two after. Perhaps my phone really is listening to me😳

[allstarwatt]

We decide what is good or bad. Evil only exists because we define it into existence.

[StormShadow]

A number of objections could be made against this argument by drawing out attention to the conception of Heaven that the argument is based on. That conception seems to be a physical location and that's a problem. Even if we say that we are thinking of Heaven as a "spiritual" place we still smuggle in so much picture thinking into the conception that it becomes false in fact. The other issue is time. The conception of heaven used here assumes the same relationship with us moving along a timeline of events, not an eternal state of being. The reason certain conditions attain on Earth and not in Heaven is that we would exist in totally different states of being. These different states and how they work are not necessarily applied to all created beings, they may work in different ways for angles, humans and lower animals.

[daviddeida]

If heaven is a place where, ones will and Gods will are the same, there is no notion of free will or the need to have such a thing.

[juliepenguin]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I'm not sure that this is a valid argument.

1) "The reason evil exists is because free will exists" is equivalent to the conditional "If evil exists, then free will exists." It is NOT equivalent to "if free will exists, then evil exists." (Right? The claim isn't that free will necessarily causes evil but that all evil is caused by free will)
2) Alex proposes that the idea of heaven being a place where evil does not exist and free will does exist is a contradiction to 1

However, this is not a contradiction. The only way to contradict that conditional would be to have a situation where evil exists and free will does not exist. Am I missing something? It seems that at first Alex is saying the theist claims "evil exists because free will exists" but at the end he says the claim is "free will requires evil." That second claim is a biconditional, so the conditional I wrote before would be true as well as "if free will exists, then evil exists." The second claim is where you would have a contradiction, but I don't think that's a position that theists hold.

Basically, the claim isn't that free will always causes evil but that all evil is caused by free will. Which leaves room for free will that doesn't cause evil, which theoretically could be the type of free will that exists in heaven.

[ComfyDents]

What comes to my mind:
I remember sitting in an auditorium waiting the last minutes before the next lecture.
There was quite a civilized atmosphere.
I would still consider that free will.

When the nicest of the nice are put together into "heaven" there is nobody interested in evil actions.

I don't see a problem in this specific argument.

[proyectocms]

There are some very obvious preliminary questions: does this paradise exist? Is it a physical place? How can so many dead human beings fit into this physical place? Do we human beings have needs in this paradise? what will we look like in that place? Will we be corporeal beings or similar to an angel (or a ghost)? will it be a historical place (with past and future)?... just to name some "obvious" questions, prior to deeper issues such as "free will".