Free Will Doesn't Solve the Problem of Evil

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[PhilosophyTube]

In addition, God could have created a world in which everyone had free will but also coincidentally chose to do good all the time.

[Ichabodcrane]

If I create a robot with the ability to do evil or do good would I be held responsible for it if it killed someone.

[feydrautha]

In addition to the issues you bring up with Plantiga's argument, there is the assumption that free will exists, which hasn't been demonstrated.

[soylentgreen]

Theist:  Evil is a product of Free Will
Atheist: Is there Evil in Heaven ?
Theist: No, of course not.
Atheist:  Then is there Free Will in Heaven ?
Theist: Yes...No...err...
Atheist: Q.E.D.

I am not claiming credit for this, just relaying it.

[bliss]

Couldn't God just make us with free will, but better decision-making and more overall happiness? Seem pretty straightforward to me.

[markedfang]

So we can't praise god for doing good then. 
As it is merely his nature. The irony.

[ozogg]

Another approach to "The Problem of Evil" ... could be this argument :

If some entity "created" humans, - also possessing an imperfect moral calculator,
But punishes them for making bad decisions with this imperfect tool (not of their own making) when added to free will,
Then humans ARE NOT GUILTY, but the maker of the (imperfect tool + free will) is guilty!
-

[TheCookiezPlz]

The free will argument doesn't solve it at all. If free will makes perfect goodness logically impossible, then god has no free will and is hence not omnipotent. If it isn't logically impossible, then god should be able to make humans with free will and perfect goodness. If he can't, then he's not omnipotent. That leaves theists with the position that he can, but choses not to. Because reasons, that's why.

[TMMx]

"that would limit my ability to combat said evil"

I would think it would enhance it. Combating evil would be good, and you'd be more motivated than ever to do that good. You would still be perfectly motivated to do things that result in a net increase in goodness.

[fiskefyren]

What you said at the ending is pretty much this “If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.”-Albert Einstein

[maswinkels]

Christians when defending Pascal's Wager: ”Infinite suffering trumps everything else".
Christians when defending God permitting evil: Millions will suffer infinite torture, but that's a price worth paying for the freedom to do nasty stuff."

[alanw]

When this all powerful creator deity not only invents the rules he knows we are going to violate while seeing the outcome from the start, it is 100% his fault the moment he sets it all into motion. In what other scenario could this be seen any other way?

[Chidds]

This is a subject that I've been doing some looking into recently. There are so many terrible apologetic attempts to answer the problem. It's contradictions like these that put the nail in the coffin of Christianity and other religions with similar deities.

[Daniel-czgt]

There are still some things that I don't get about those justifications. Oftentimes apologists state that if people couldn't do evil things it would be a detriment to our free will, remove our agency, or that it would make us robots. But I don't see why that has to be the case if the way you curtail evil is by means that don't alter the mental state of the person doing the aggression.

There also some other problems:

1) Why is removing the possibility of doing some set of actions (like rape or murder) more of an impediment to our free will or agency than the existence of the huge set of actions that humans cannot perform?

2) People already have different capacities to do evil apart from their psychology or values. For example, I could do more evil things now than If I suffered from complete paralysis and could do more evil things if I was in a position of high power.

3) Evil things are generally done against someone’s will. If someone is trying to kill me he would be supposedly exercising his free will and I would also exercise mine by trying to fight him off to the best of my abilities. Is thwarting his efforts more of a violation of his free will than it is a violation of mine if he succeeds?

[chastitywhiterose]

Absolutely wonderful video! Aside from the fact that free will doesn't exist, there are tons of other problems with Plantiga's argument. It would be great if we were all programmed to do only good! We'd have no complaints whatsoever.

And ironically, we would still believe we had free will in that world too. As long as no one is being hurt, who would care?

[FelixNielsen]

I've never cared for the terminology of good and evil, and furthermore, people tend to throw them around without thinking.

It is perfectly possible to imagine "evil" intentions resulting in good, like say a kid getting run down by a car intentionally. This kid is rushed to the hospital, where they find that no significant damage has been dealt. However, in the process they also discover a life threatening condition, which left untreated would certainly have resulted in the death of said child, and would likely not have been discovered in time, had it not been for this particular "evil" driver.

Likewise it is also possible to imagine the reverse, though of course we don't have to imagine it, as we have religion, where people end up causing untold horrors with the best intentions, like promoting the view that condoms cause AIDS. This of course is a bad example, as many will claim that these people aren't actually evil. So, let's say that some other sick fucker slits the throat of an innocent kid, because he firmly believe this kid in possessed by a demon, and that all he is doing is releasing said demon, thus saving the child.

I think perhaps I'm not far of in my assumption that the majority of people will label both these acts as evil, which firmly distorts the definitions, as of course we now know that intentions has nothing to do with it, and the same apparently goes for the act, and the end result certainly has no bearing.

So what is evil? I don't know, and thus cannot know what good is either.

Of course there are those who'd say that these terms are simply synonyms for right and wrong, but of course the previously arguments still apply, apart from some specific areas, like math, where right and wrong is actually a clearly defined concepts, though of course some have said that the square root of 2, the number 13 and zero is evil, but I should hope that most mathematicians has gotten past that.


Best regards and sorry for the rant.

[kgdblade]

You nailed it and came straight to the fatal flaw, which like most creatard arguments starts with an initial premise that makes no sense and then rushes along to try and prove some point using the false initial premise as its foundation. By nixing their initial assertion, that 'the capacity to do evil' is necessary to value the choice to do good gets right at the heart of the matter. Nice coup de grace!

[plasmaballin]

When I took theology class, "free will" was always used as the explanation for all evil (even in situations when it clearly doesn't work). Then, when asked whether people have free will in heaven, the teachers would answer, "Yes, but they have a perfect will, so they never do evil." No one seemed to recognize the blatant contradiction there.

[cmatrix]

The problem I face in these kinds of arguments is that there is evidence that bad things need to happen for a species to progress.
Setting aside the anecdotal evidence that we as people tend to learn more from our failures than our successes, if you look at AI programming you'll learn that no matter how complex a system you build, it can't learn from success - it has to learn from both success and failure (positive feedback and negative feedback) - and almost always learns more from failure than success (when there's proportionally greater or equal positive feedback to negative feedback, the neural network usually requires much more training to learn than when there's proportionally more negative feedback).
I'm not supporting theist positions here, but pointing out potential problems with the counterargument.

[mugiwaraboshi]

Another problem with this model: Even if you accept this argument and say that yes, a world with free will that allows people to do evil is more valuable, that doesn't solve everything. That world (the one we live in) still violates people of their free will all the time. A person could do evil to another person, practicing their free will, but the person being acted upon has no choice in that. There is simply no divine fairness in that.