No Problem with Evil: Part 2

Does God exist? If so, is there evidence that provides good reason that a belief in God is rationally acceptable? The typical road of which natural theology has traversed seeks to affirm that a belief in God is reasonable. At the same time, antithetical to the work of natural theology stands its opponent, natural atheology. As each participant stands in the ring of philosophy of religion, the prize of proving or disproving the rationality of theistic belief eagerly awaits to be announced in the winner’s circle.

Alvin Plantinga’s book, God, Freedom, and Evil serves as an arena for debate, displaying natural theology and natural atheology and the major points of each. Regarding natural theology, Plantinga employs the ontological argument and for natural atheology, the author presents the problem of evil as its choice representative. Within natural atheology, the problem of evil presupposes that a belief in God is unreasonable and rationally unacceptable. John Mackie suggests the following set of propositions (A), charging the theistic belief with accepting a contradiction: (1) God is omnipotent; (2) God is wholly good; (3) yet evil exists.

The existence of evil is prevalent throughout the world. Its evidence is witnessed in the disease and poverty of a third world country, the white-collar crimes of suburban Americans, worn torn countries in Eastern Europe, and the natural disasters across the globe. The evidence of evil begs the atheological question, “Why does God permit it?” While the question awaits an answer explicating God’s reason for permitting evil in the world, Plantinga avoids providing a reason via theodicy, but rather a Free Will Theodicy or Free Will Defense suggesting at most what God’s reason might possibly be. Prior to launching his defense, Plantinga forms a necessary foundation concerning sets and propositions to depose Mackie’s claim that religious beliefs are “positively irrational.”

Irrationality according to Plantinga is defined by the denial or negation of members within a set resulting in an explicit contradiction that forms a contradictory set. His examples are beneficial in helping the novice philosopher understand formal contradictory sets by employing the simple laws of logic and adding new propositions to Mackie’s set (A) in an attempt to form a set of propositions that are contradictory or inconsistent.

Another building block of Plantinga’s defense demonstrates how a set can be inconsistent or contradictory apart from using the laws of logic when the propositions in such a set are necessarily true. Moreover, he suggests that neither truths of logic nor truths of mathematics encompass every contradiction; therefore, he advances causal and natural necessity and possibility propositions to further exhaust all avenues to understanding Mackie’s set (A) as an explicit contradiction. Plantinga determines that Mackie’s need to insert “additional premises” in order to make the contradiction more apparent requires two necessary truths that formulate an implicit rather than an explicit contradiction. The quandary in formulating a new set of propositions with necessary truths is that it forces Mackie to defend new propositions which attribute “goodness” to “a thing” that is “all knowing.” The problem here is obvious. If it were necessary that “a good thing” be omniscient then no humans would ever be considered “a good thing.” Further revisions to set (A) force humans to be omnipresent or wholly good in order to eliminate evil; things of which Mackie would concede are impossible for humans to do.

Plantinga’s conclusion proves that there are no necessarily true propositions that yield a formally contradictory set when added to Mackie’s set (A). Moreover, it appears that Plantinga has shifted the burden of eliminating evil from God to humans. If the atheolgian believes that God does not exist because of the existence of evil in the world, then who does the atheologian credit for the existence of goodness into the world? He cannot credit himself for the goodness that exists apart from personally accepting the responsibility for the problem of evil. His finitude forces him to look outside himself to a being that is omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good, but does such a being exist? The answer is yes. Such a being is necessary to the existence of goodness.

Plantinga’s Free Will Defense advocates that freedom is expressed by a person in so far as an individual has the freedom to choose or not to choose a certain thing. The actions by an individual are morally significant when defined by absolute moral truth, meaning a particular action may be right to abstain from and the same action wrong to indulge in. Significantly free individuals are those who are free with respect to morally significant action. A world apart from significantly free individuals is not better than a world with significantly free individuals. Significantly free people are created by God and God can not cause or determine them to make right choices. God can not create creatures who choose moral goodness apart from creating creatures who choose moral evil as expressed in Plantinga’s proposition (1) God is omniscient, omnipotent, and wholly good. This leads to the heart of the Free Will Defense, that it is not possible for God to not have created a universe containing moral good without also creating one that contained moral evil. If this is true, does God have a good reason for permitting evil into the world?

Although Plantinga forgoes providing a theodicy, a personal observation may be duly noted here. Perhaps the existence of moral evil is an act of God’s judgment against sin. That is, the existence of evil in the world is caused by man and not God. Concomitant to God permitting sin to enter into the world is the option to choose what is morally good. This allowance of free will by God is not an act of evil, but an act of love and goodness that gives support to Plantinga’s Free Will Defense. The presence of free will and evil constitutes the best possible world that God could have created, but such a statement is not appeasing to the atheologian. How can Mackie apart from presenting a formal contradictory set determine that God could have created another world, making it the best possible world void of evil? Surely Mackie doesn’t presume to be omniscient. He need not be, but only realize that the presence of evil allowed by God gives man good reason to believe that God is calling his creation to the best possible world (heaven) where neither moral or natural evil exists. Be that as it may, the central focus of Plantinga’s defense is the claim that an omnipotent God could not have actualized any possible world that he pleased apart from allowing humans to exist in a world that contained both good and evil. A world created absent of free will could never be the best. Perhaps for automatons, but not humans.

While other philosophers such as George Botterill agree with Mackie concerning this point, I believe the laws of logic prove otherwise. Botterill proposes that only an awareness of the possibility of evil constitute the best possible world apart from the existence of evil. How can one know what is morally right apart from the presence of moral evil? Suppose there was only moral evil in the best possible world and persons who abide in this world continue to commit morally evil acts thinking they were actually promoting a better good. One need only to look at Uganda were the pandemic of AIDS has given way to a belief that sex with a virgin child can cure a man from AIDS. Regardless of the world, the depravity of man will always render wrong actions.

Plantinga asserts the idea of transworld depravity where every significantly free individual would perform some wrong action if any world in which that person was morally free were actualized. For the theist, this view is palpable; however, the atheolgian begs to differ. Josh Rasmussen argues that given an infinite number of possible persons, the probability that everyone is transworld depraved is exceedingly low and if the total number of persons exceeds the total number of personal moral choices, God could indeed create a world void of evil. This argument seems to be far reaching and impossible considering the need to traverse infinity in order to calculate all possible persons and moral choices. Moreover, the mere existence of one evil choice is sufficient regardless the infinite number of persons in order for evil to exist. The existence of a choice only exists because it has been exercised and therefore has made itself known.

Whether or not the probability of all persons being transworld depraved is exceedingly low, Plantinga needs only to prove the possibility of its existence. Plantinga’s work is invaluable to the philosophy of religion. It spurs debate within the field of apologetics that casts doubt for the atheolgian, allowing his evidence via the laws of logic to show that the existence of God is compatible with the existence of evil.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alvin Plantinga. God, Freedom, & Evil. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdman's, 1977.

George Botterill. "Falsification and the Existence of God: A Discussion of Plantinga's Free Will Defence." Review of The Nature of Necessity,Philosophical Quarterly 27, no. 107 (April 1977): 114-134.

Josh Rasmussen. "On creating worlds without evil - given divine counterfactual knowledge." Review of God, Freedom, and Evil, Cambridge Journal 40, no. 4 (December 2004): 457-470.

Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, & Evil (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdman's, 1977), 12.

Ibid, 28

Ibid, 12

Ibid, 16

Ibid, 23

Ibid, 30

Ibid, 31

George Botterill, "Falsification and the Existence of God: A Discussion of Plantinga's Free Will Defence," review of The Nature of Necessity, Philosophical Quarterly 27, no. 107 (April 1977): 122.

Josh Rasmussen, "On creating worlds without evil - given divine counterfactual knowledge," review of God, Freedom, and Evil, Cambridge Journal 40, no. 4 (December 2004): Abstract.