This is one of the (numerous) essays I had to do for philosophy. Written by
me, etc. Tell me if you agree or disagree?
Here goes….
How successful is the "Free Will Defence" in justifying the existence of human suffering, given that God is all-loving and all-powerful?
There are many arguments that try and justify why an omnipotent and all loving God would allow human suffering, one of the most popular being the "Free Will Defence"
This argument states that 'the evil in the universe is caused by human wickedness. Human beings are free, which means free to choose evil as well as good. Even an omnipotent being could not make human beings free and yet not free to do evil, as one cannot be free with limitations. Evil is thus an inevitable consequence of humankind's freedom.'
The biggest criticism of this argument looks at the difference between Natural and Moral evils. Natural evils are those such as earthquakes, famine, disease, volcanoes, flooding etc. Moral evils are those done by people to other people, such as murder, theft, torture, war etc. None of Natural evils are caused by human intervention, so how can man's freedom to do evil justify their existence, if man did not do these evils?
This argument is only valid when considering the existence of moral evils. However, even this has criticisms:
It says that human beings are free to choose good or evil, they cannot be free except by having choices open to them, and these choices have both good and bad consequences. So, a human may order the killing of an entire race, but this is only a consequence of them being free, and if they are granted freedom, this freedom must be followed the whole way. An argument against that is 'why couldn't their freedom be at a lesser price? Why must thousands of people die, just for one man's freedom? Aren't the thousands of dead people now not free? It's not fair for one's person freedom to be more important than others', but if there were limitations on human's freedom- you may choose whatever you like, as long as it's the good choice- it would not be true freedom.
However, my criticism to that last point is imagine someone asks you to choose a marble from a bag, consisting of blue, green and red ones. You aren't free to choose a yellow, or a black marble, because those options are not available. But you wouldn't turn around and say to the person holding the back, 'this is not a proper choice, I demand you out at least one marble of every colour in the world in the bag so I can have a proper choice.' The person has given you less marbles to choose from, but you still have the choice. It's not as if there were only red marbles in the bag. Why couldn't God have given us choices, but only good choices? So, instead of seeing a tramp and having the choices kick him, steal his box, get him food, or help him find a job, why couldn't we see the tramp and the options 'kick him' and 'steal his box' never cross our mind? We still have the option to buy him some food, or help him support himself, both of which are good options; it's just that one is slightly better than the other.
If you still argue that to be truly free, all options must be open, good and bad, then why couldn't God have given protection against these bad choices? Back to the tramp example, the passer by decides to choose the option 'kick him'. But if God had given us shells like tortoises, or no nerve endings and had placed our organs in better protection so that no matter how hard we were kicked it would do no damage, wouldn't this be better? God is all-powerful, so he was perfectly able to do that. He is all-loving, so he would want to. And he is all-knowing, so he could foresee that this difficulty would arise.
This brings up a question with two answers:
Either he didn't want to/couldn't/didn't know it would happen, which contradicts God's definition, and thus calls into question his very existence, or he knew it would happen, and chose not to for our greater good.
But what is this greater good? If it's to punish us for our sins, to teach us not to do evil for the protection of the other people in this world, then why don't all wrong-doers get punished? Why are there still lots running free, and prisons full of innocents? Why do entire nations in third world countries starve to death and suffer horrible diseases, is it because their race did something wrong? It seems to me that if suffering is a punishment, then God's justice system isn't fair.
It could be to teach us the value of the good actions in the world. If there were no danger, there would be no courage. If there were no hate, there'd be no love. It could be said that we could forfeit these good actions for a world without suffering, but that would make the world a very boring place. What would be that point in living if you lived your life, then died? I would much rather live my life, learn to love, then die. However, in criticism to this, could the evil not be toned down? Couldn't there only be a little bit of hate, instead of more hate than love?
In conclusion, I don't think this argument is particularly good on the whole, because it assumes 'evil' to mean Moral evils, and ignores all Natural evils. On the Moral evil front, it isn't particularly stable either because one theory calls into question the very existence of God, while the other still doesn't explain why there's so much evil. The Free- Will Defence explains why there could be suffering, but it only looks at it theoretically, and doesn't look at the real world, and the amount of suffering there is in the real world.
Here goes….
How successful is the "Free Will Defence" in justifying the existence of human suffering, given that God is all-loving and all-powerful?
There are many arguments that try and justify why an omnipotent and all loving God would allow human suffering, one of the most popular being the "Free Will Defence"
This argument states that 'the evil in the universe is caused by human wickedness. Human beings are free, which means free to choose evil as well as good. Even an omnipotent being could not make human beings free and yet not free to do evil, as one cannot be free with limitations. Evil is thus an inevitable consequence of humankind's freedom.'
The biggest criticism of this argument looks at the difference between Natural and Moral evils. Natural evils are those such as earthquakes, famine, disease, volcanoes, flooding etc. Moral evils are those done by people to other people, such as murder, theft, torture, war etc. None of Natural evils are caused by human intervention, so how can man's freedom to do evil justify their existence, if man did not do these evils?
This argument is only valid when considering the existence of moral evils. However, even this has criticisms:
It says that human beings are free to choose good or evil, they cannot be free except by having choices open to them, and these choices have both good and bad consequences. So, a human may order the killing of an entire race, but this is only a consequence of them being free, and if they are granted freedom, this freedom must be followed the whole way. An argument against that is 'why couldn't their freedom be at a lesser price? Why must thousands of people die, just for one man's freedom? Aren't the thousands of dead people now not free? It's not fair for one's person freedom to be more important than others', but if there were limitations on human's freedom- you may choose whatever you like, as long as it's the good choice- it would not be true freedom.
However, my criticism to that last point is imagine someone asks you to choose a marble from a bag, consisting of blue, green and red ones. You aren't free to choose a yellow, or a black marble, because those options are not available. But you wouldn't turn around and say to the person holding the back, 'this is not a proper choice, I demand you out at least one marble of every colour in the world in the bag so I can have a proper choice.' The person has given you less marbles to choose from, but you still have the choice. It's not as if there were only red marbles in the bag. Why couldn't God have given us choices, but only good choices? So, instead of seeing a tramp and having the choices kick him, steal his box, get him food, or help him find a job, why couldn't we see the tramp and the options 'kick him' and 'steal his box' never cross our mind? We still have the option to buy him some food, or help him support himself, both of which are good options; it's just that one is slightly better than the other.
If you still argue that to be truly free, all options must be open, good and bad, then why couldn't God have given protection against these bad choices? Back to the tramp example, the passer by decides to choose the option 'kick him'. But if God had given us shells like tortoises, or no nerve endings and had placed our organs in better protection so that no matter how hard we were kicked it would do no damage, wouldn't this be better? God is all-powerful, so he was perfectly able to do that. He is all-loving, so he would want to. And he is all-knowing, so he could foresee that this difficulty would arise.
This brings up a question with two answers:
Either he didn't want to/couldn't/didn't know it would happen, which contradicts God's definition, and thus calls into question his very existence, or he knew it would happen, and chose not to for our greater good.
But what is this greater good? If it's to punish us for our sins, to teach us not to do evil for the protection of the other people in this world, then why don't all wrong-doers get punished? Why are there still lots running free, and prisons full of innocents? Why do entire nations in third world countries starve to death and suffer horrible diseases, is it because their race did something wrong? It seems to me that if suffering is a punishment, then God's justice system isn't fair.
It could be to teach us the value of the good actions in the world. If there were no danger, there would be no courage. If there were no hate, there'd be no love. It could be said that we could forfeit these good actions for a world without suffering, but that would make the world a very boring place. What would be that point in living if you lived your life, then died? I would much rather live my life, learn to love, then die. However, in criticism to this, could the evil not be toned down? Couldn't there only be a little bit of hate, instead of more hate than love?
In conclusion, I don't think this argument is particularly good on the whole, because it assumes 'evil' to mean Moral evils, and ignores all Natural evils. On the Moral evil front, it isn't particularly stable either because one theory calls into question the very existence of God, while the other still doesn't explain why there's so much evil. The Free- Will Defence explains why there could be suffering, but it only looks at it theoretically, and doesn't look at the real world, and the amount of suffering there is in the real world.