how much evil can the world afford?

In a recent post, blog-neighbor Mark Olson turns the Problem of Evil around.

The claim is that theodicy is an intractable problem for the believer given the evil in the world. I think that this is not necessarily the case, but that those who object to the current state of affairs have failed to provide examples of a reasonable alternative world. Failing to do that means their theodicy objections lack force, that is they object to a state of affairs which may actually be exactly what is prescribed.

The quantified theodicist, in essence, claims that this is the best of all possible worlds. And, as Olson points out, imagining a better one leads to epistemic difficulties.

1. Some of them involve a failure of imagination. Imagine a world, for instance, in which humans can regrow limbs, or don't ever have to sleep, or are born with built-in iPods. Now imagine a world that you can't imagine. Which is the best world? How do you quantify the answer?

2. Besides, any rigorously logical attempt will be confounded by the Butterfly Effect.

3. Perhaps a probabilistic argument is more likely to succeed:

1. If at least one instance of evil is gratuitous, then this is not "the best of all possible worlds."
2. It is highly likely that at least one instance of evil is gratuitous.
3. Therefore, it is highly likely that this is not "the best of all possible worlds."

4. Of course, the definition of "gratuitous" might just be a form of question-begging.

5. Returning to #1 above, perhaps the answer involves an inversion the Ontological Argument. Although I cannot yet conceive how.

6. Ultimately, the problem of the imbalance in perspectives is a form of self-directed ad hominem. It may be logically defensible that every instance of evil is somehow necessary for a greater good, but it's difficult to argue the point without seeming damned callous.

too long for Twitter

1. If you tell a class full of skeptical students that MGM once produced a movie about killer rabbits, few will believe you. When you tell them it was titled "Night of the Lepus," no one will.

2. The hitter in the 4th spot should never, ever try to bunt for a base hit with no outs in any inning ever. Especially if that hitter is slow as a refund check. (And especially if that hitter has homered in a previous inning.)

3. I like Sprint's "What if film crews ran the world?" commercial. Favorite part: when the bride nixes the rain and the F/X guy says, sadly, "No rain, no rainbows..." It's the world's shortest theodicy.

4. If you wake up to a clock radio dialed into NPR's Morning Edition, don't be surprised if your dreams in the wee hours of the next morning are a social commentary on the problems of homelessness.

Bio-Dome evangelism

Bio-Dome. For most of us, it's a scarring experience, an inextricable, unforgettable trauma.

For Stephen Baldwin, it was part of God's plan.

I didn't know it ten years ago when I agreed to become Doyle Johnson, but God had already called me both to know Him personally and to impact the youth culture in America with the Good News of Jesus Christ. I didn't know it because I didn't know Jesus at the time. One of the reasons kids will listen to me today is because they recognize me from the movies. But not just any movie. One movie: Bio-Dome.

God had me make this film to give me the platform that would later become my life's work. At the time I just wanted to goof off with Pauly Shore for a couple of months. God knew that, and He also knew the plans He had for my life, plans He made sure came to pass.

I suppose the ultimate conundrum of theodicy, the Problem of Evil Movies, has been cracked right in half.

aim your prayers higher next time

A little while ago, there was a mild flurry over the Focus on the Family goof who half-jokingly suggested that folks pray for rain during the Democratic National Convention. You know, to dampen enthusiasm for a certain prominent candidate.

Turns out it worked. Sort of.

[via Crooks and Liars via PZ]

virtual morality, virtual ontology

I've been thinking about theodicy lately--a summer habit--and so I've noticed an intersection between the problem of evil and Nick Bostrom's simulation argument. As I've summarized it:

If we grant that a sufficiently advanced civilization could create a workable simulation of existence, we have every right to suspect we inhabit that simulation.

Brent Silby, in his critique of Bostrom's reasoning, raises the moral issue:

But morality, like all cultural phenomena, evolves. It is a conceit to assume that our current state of moral reasoning will remain unchanged. Highly advanced civilizations may find it morally abhorrent to create a universe and populate it with living beings. Consider life on Earth. We live on a planet full of creatures that have to destroy each other to survive. Humans, who have arguably the highest level of intelligence on Earth, kill animals, pollute the environment, torture children, tell lies, commit crimes, and kill each other for greed. Would an advanced species think it is a good thing to create another universe that could possibly contain this level of pain and suffering? Its possible that a future species would choose not to create a simulated universe because doing so would increase pain and suffering in the world.

The assumption that an advanced species will want to create a simulated universe relies too heavily on the idea that they will share our moral standards. We cannot make such an assumption, so the likelihood that we exist in a simulated universe may be a great deal lower than originally thought. I am not saying that it is impossible. All I am suggesting is that more thought needs to be put into the look of future moral reasoning

I agree that we have to be careful when assigning probabilities to the purported actions of civilizations that could conceivably will us into existence--but I have two in-principle objections to the objection.

First, though morality may evolve, it doesn't prohibit people, ultimately, from acting immorally. Silby's list of human ills is proof enough. A rogue simulation technician might be running our universe as a screensaver, in defiance of The Future's norms.

Second, a simulation is not real. No one at present mourns the death of digital characters, at least not seriously--I hope. We view their suffering as only apparent. Perhaps the simulation engineers of The Future are unaware that their characters have a subjective existence (assuming, of course, that I am not the only character in a solipsist simulation). Since our suffering and pain aren't "real," there is no perceived moral risk in programming us to suffer.

Silby makes an interesting comparison:

Supporters of the Simulated Universe argument may complain here, and state that there is a fundamental difference between their view and the Cosmological argument. They may suggest that their argument is different because it is based on the existence of real creatures that have a biology and use technology, while the Cosmological argument is based on a supernatural God. But I am not sure the there is a difference. From our perspective there is no difference between a supernatural God and a super intelligent species from another universe. Both entities are equally difficult to describe. We can never know the nature of a parent universe. We cannot know about how their biology works because we are unable to visit and have a look. Creatures in the parent universe are unknowable, and from our perspective they are all-powerful.

There is a high epistemic barrier to the Simulation Argument, to be sure. But extrapolating from known technological processes isn't just making stuff up.

I'll admit I had a similarly Clarkesque thought after mulling over Bostrom's argument: the better humans get at creating technology, the less we are "wowed" by omnipotence. In fact, the unintended consequence of the Intelligent Design movement could be that it succeeds--by deflating our view of the divine. Maybe that's the Canny Valley of I.D.

[Shamelessly borrowed from the Uncanny Valley pictured here.]

LaFollette on Plantinga on free will and evil

I always graze through the offerings at Online Papers in Philosophy, which links to some wonderfully obscure work that professional philosophers post on their personal websites. It surprised and delighted me, then, to see that back in 1980, philosopher Hugh LaFollette subjected Alvin Plantinga's God, Freedom and Evil to the same scrutiny [pdf] I would give it a mere 14 years later--only in a less rigorous, less philosopherish way.

In fact, I'll show where LaFollette's thinking parallels mine, despite our utter intellectual independence.

LaFollette:

Thus, it would appear that Plantinga is guilty of an inconsistency here unless he can produce some general and relevant reason why God would have the ability to act morally without ever acting immorally, while humans can only produce moral good if they also produce moral evil. Now Plantinga might want to try to identify such a difference by appealing to the human 'essence'. But even if that response would allay this criticism, it would produce additional questions, namely, Plantinga would need to explain why it isn't possible that there are other, non-human possible creatures who are both rational and significantly free and always choose to do what is morally right. To avoid this criticism he would, it seems, be committed to arguing that:

16) It is necessarily true that: no significantly free possible creatures except God can produce moral good without also producing moral evil.

And such a claim seems clearly undemonstrable (if not preposterous).

Yours truly:

Even if we grant that truly free will exists, though, we must ask: if free will is inviolable, yet humans, thanks to transworld depravity, are continually prone to abuse it, how is heaven, a place free of pain, suffering and sin, logically possible?

Furthermore, if God is both morally good and sinless, and (presumably) the most "valuable" being in all possible worlds (since He is the object of reverence and worship), did He create beings greater than himself with respect to moral freedom? Remember, Plantinga claims that transworld depravity precludes an actual world where free beings always choose the good. There is but one way to exclude God from this without declaring His nonexistence: by removing God's moral freedom. To recap: if God freely always does the right thing, Plantinga's argument implodes. If God has freely chosen the wrong thing, He is not wholly good. If God cannot help but always do the right thing, then humans are more "valuable" than God.

some people: or, while we're on the subject of eternal life

Some people read the comics... religiously.

Some people just aren't twisted enough. I mean, is being eternally deprived of five senses really the worst kind of hell imaginable?

Hmm... maybe we should ask William Dembski. When it comes to twisted, he never disappoints.

too sophist....icated?

I see now that I've made some arguments that are simultaneously misunderstood and misrefuted by my sometime sparring partner Mark Olson (link via my brother), who describes my take on Benedict's Paleologus quote as "silly."

It's not, and I'll explain why before sleep deprivation gets the best of me.

First, Olson criticizes me for decontextualizing Paleologus' assertion that "God is not pleased by blood." I note the irony that God is indeed "pleased" by the sacrifice of blood--human blood, if Jesus is/was fully human--even requiring it for the cleansing of sin. This is not, as a philosopher might describe it, a defeater--or even an argument. It is an irony observed. Which is why I immediately address the context of Paleologus's claim, violence for the sake of conversion.

My point here is that Paleologus states unequivocally that it is unreasonable to convert others by actual or threatened violence. Is a preacher who points out the "overwhelming" threat of damnation therefore unreasonable? Is any theology that threatens nonbelievers with hellfire unreasonable? Can Christianity claim to be all carrot and no stick?

I'll ignore Olson's charge of context-ripping because blogging is all about rashness and subsequent refinement. I would enjoy learning why my reading of Paul's (clear, I think) argument is wrong.

Finally, my last point stands after a missed opportunity for refutation. Pope Benedict warns us that the Islamic God could be a devil in disguise, and if so, we might commit evil acts, thinking them good. In my response, I claim that this applies equally to the Christian God, pointing to three passages in which God commands immoral acts, and his followers obey.

Mark claims the Hosea passage is figurative without providing a reason; it's an awfully literal-sounding text. I'd be willing to grant Abraham a pass for his extreme faith in God's crazy-sounding order to sacrifice Isaac, yet it still proves that a good God might ask something we'd expect from a devil-God.

Regardless, the final example is the most damning. In the passage from Joshua (and throughout the text, and elsewhere), God orders the destruction of entire cities, down to the last infant. Olson says I conflate general proscriptions with specific commands--but does not admit that this puts him in the awkward moral position of justifying infanticide. Again, my point: God commands an act that would seem outrageously immoral to anyone reasonable.

Olson's last rhetorical questions are haunting: "Was Carthage wrong? Was God?" If we are to answer the question in the affirmative or negative, we must judge His character, His motivation, His reasonableness. If we are unable to answer, we have no grounds for assuming He is reasonable.

is God reasonable?

My brother approvingly links to a post by Keith Plummer, who writes,

Does the Islamic doctrine of Allah preclude reasonable dialogue? Please note, this is not to inquire whether adherents to the Islamic faith are capable of being reasonable. Obviously, many are. But when they are, are they being consistent with the nature and character of Allah as they conceive of him?

Benedict's oration, the one that set afire the radical factions of Islam, answers the question.

In the seventh conversation edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the jihad (holy war). The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: There is no compulsion in religion. It is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat.

But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur’an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the “Book” and the “infidels,” he turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words:

Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.

The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul.

God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death....

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: "For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality." Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practice idolatry.

The Pope then describes a "rapprochement" between Greek rationalism and classic theism, a tenuous and tense rapprochement at best, given the Crusades, the Reformation, the Inquisition, Vatican II, and a thousand other sticking points in Catholic history. But every ideology has its sticking points.

Observe several ironies in Manuel II Paleologus's description of God's nature. God is not pleased by blood, he states, and yet God demands sacrifice for atonement. "Without the shedding of blood," after all, "there is no forgiveness." It is certainly not beneath God to inflict pain and suffering for the sake of justice, even unto death, even upon His own son.

Ah, but for the sake of conversion? The emperor claims, To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death.... And yet, as Pascal reminds us, any reasonable conversion calculus must include the overwhelming weight of the threat of hellfire and damnation.

On a good day, the apostle Paul writes, "God's kindness leads you toward repentance." On a bad day, he theodicizes,

18 Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.

19 One of you will say to me: "Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?" 20 But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?' "[a] 21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?

22 What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath--prepared for destruction? 23 What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory— 24 even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?

We are a hairsbreadth from the transcendent God of Islam, bound only by His own whims, answering to no one but Himself. We are allowed to speculate--and, paradoxically, forced to judge.

There is also a deep irony in Benedict's note that "Were it [the Islamic] God's will, we would even have to practice idolatry." Yet the Christian God has, at various points it time, commanded His followers to commit adultery, sacrifice a child, and wipe out entire ethnic groups (and even their livestock). Even in the New Testament, the meekness of martyrdom is temporary, a speed bump on the road to Revelation.

If Keith Plummer is right, and "theological convictions have undeniable practical outworkings," then let us be glad that, at least at present, the Greeks are winning.

judge God, lest ye be judged

This post by Jason Rosenhouse got me thinking.

Debates about theodicy may begin in different places, but, eventually, all end up where the Book of Job ends, with an unanswerable question, "Who are you to judge God?"

Yet the apostle Paul claims that we can observe nature, and from its mere existence not only determine that God exists, but is worthy of obedience, making humanity therefore "without excuse" for rejecting Him. We are not only able to judge God, but obliged to. Our soul's fate may depend on it.

So, which is it? If we are able to judge God's goodness, why are we not also able to judge His badness?

wish me back from the cornfield

The Onion AV Club's "Inventory" is my new favorite feature. This week, Chris Dahlen covers 11 of Video Gaming's Strangest Moments. The last:

11. Second Life (2004)

The moment: Getting banished to "the cornfield"

In the largely player-made online world of Second Life, you can find no end of surreal behavior. But one of the game's strangest features comes when you misbehave—by cheating other players, hacking the server, or whatever—and the administrators decide to punish you. When that happens, your avatar has to spend time in "the cornfield"—a kind of limbo where the player wanders through endless rows of corn, while a 1940 film about juvenile delinquency plays on a nearby television set. But this surreal penalty hasn't deterred the hackers who keep crashing the game's server; maybe it's time for Linden Labs to skip to capital punishment.

Remarkably, Dahlen misses the obvious pop-culture reference. Banishment to the cornfield comes straight out of The Twilight Zone, episode 73, "It's a Good Life."

Six-year-old Anthony Fremont (Billy Mumy) is a monster. He has eliminated the rest of the world, or has whisked Peaksville, Ohio into its own dimension. He creates, mutates, and kills animals for his pleasure. He's eliminated electricity, grocery supplies, and television signals. He controls the weather. He terrorizes and controls the people of Peaksville by disfiguring them wishing them away, forever into "the cornfield" if they don’t think happy thoughts or otherwise act according to his wishes.

The adults in the episode kowtow to Anthony--a "very good boy"--in a way that suggests religious obeisance and fear of divine wrath, making "It's a Good Life" one of the most theologically subversive of all the Zones.

That's all for this weekend. In a frightening coincidence, I'm headed back to the farm 'til Monday. I'll be back if Anthony wants me back.

transcending infinite loops: theodical musings

William Dembski, in the latest of a long line of theodicies, appeals to Newcomb's Paradox [pdf] to "justify the ways of God to men."

For beings like us embedded in the causal nexus of nature, the logic of cause and effect is inviolable. In contrast, God, as an omnipotent and omniscient being, transcends the physical world and therefore is not bound by this causal-temporal logic. This is not to say that in acting in the world God violates this logic. To violate it, he would need to be under its jurisdiction. But as the creator of nature’s causal nexus and therefore as the originator of its causal-temporal logic, God perforce acts in ways that this logic cannot circumscribe. Indeed, if this logic did circumscribe divine action, then God would be part of nature and creation would be other than ex nihilo.

Dembski is fond of (mis)using the "NFL theorems" to whack at evolution. But "transcendence," like "emergence," is its own form of ontological free lunch, raising far more questions than answers. How does a being "transcend?" If God so neatly avoids the pitfalls of causal-temporal logic by transcending the physical world, how can we refer to this sort of God as "good?" Why limit God's transcendence to only one domain--the causal? Why does not God "transcend" morality as well, eradicating the need for theodicy?

Dembski's explanation of the "infinite dialectic" (BS-ometer spiking) doesn't fare much better.

Think of the infinite dialectic in this way: Suppose God acts to anticipate certain events. So long as divine action is not a hollow concept, God’s actions make a difference in the world and therefore must induce novel events (all change in the physical world being mediated through events). But this requires that God act preemptively to anticipate the novel events induced by God’s prior actions (priority here being conceived not temporally or causally [chronos] but in terms of the teleological-semantic logic [kairos] by which God orders the creation). And yet, such actions by God now induce still further novel events. And so on. This up and back between divine action and creaturely causation proceeds indefinitely. It constitutes an infinite dialectic. Because of the fragility of the world’s causal nexus, the infinite dialectic is ever in danger of spinning out of control, degenerating into a positive feedback loop in which divine preemption needs to rectify difficulties raised by prior acts of divine preemption.

And the way out of the infinite loop?

Consequently, only an infinitely powerful and infinitely wise God can pull off the infinite dialectic. The infinite dialectic renders divine action at once real-time and eternal. It bridges the immanent with the transcendent. In the infinite dialectic, God acts on the whole of creation at all times and in all places, acting not as a cause among other causes (God does not moonlight as a physical cause) but as a cause of causes (God causes physical causes to fulfill his purposes). As a cause of causes, God’s action in the infinite dialectic is not merely ontological, in the sense of giving being to the world (cf. Paul Tillich’s “ground of being”). Nor is it merely providential in some general sense, as might be subsumed under the regularities of nature (cf. God maintaining seasonal weather patterns).

Again, more questions: how is a cause of a cause efficacious? Can causes cross ontological "levels?" Can a non-physical entity cause physical actions? Is Dembski backing away from his "expanded ontology," and subscribing to a more standard form of dualism?

Dembski closes with two poor analogies.

In the infinite dialectic, God acts providentially to guide the world in its particulars, taking an active interest in the details of this world and making a difference at all levels of the created order. This is not to say that God is a micromanager. Good managers know the precise details of the system they are managing but intervene sparingly, giving the system as much autonomy as it needs to flourish. God is a good manager. In particular, he has not created a world that is his prosthesis or puppet.

Ah, but the very question is a matter of degree: just how much "micromanagement" is enough? Let's analogize right back at Dembski. The floor is littered with wrappers and french fries. The toilet is backed up and the toilet paper nowhere to be found. A fire rages in the kitchen. Meanwhile, the staff are too busy fighting with ketchup packets to notice. The manager hasn't been seen or heard from in hours. Now what?

At the same time, even though God has granted the world a measure of autonomy, the world’s autonomy is not absolute. Just as an orchestra cannot make do without the conductor’s continual guidance, so too does the world require God’s continual guidance. That guidance is neither oppressive nor coercive. It is real and powerful, and it takes the form of an infinite dialectic. Because of the infinite dialectic, Jesus can say that God knows our name, numbers the hairs on our head, and monitors the sparrow that falls to the ground.

Minor quibble: perhaps Dembski has never heard of the "conductorless orchestra," the kind that used to dazzle Soviet audiences back in the heyday of early Communism. But the weakness of argument from analogy becomes apparent here. If the universe isn't an orchestra, but is more like a machine... or an organism... then all the talk of continuous guidance is rigmarole.

Any potential problem can be solved by omnipotence when omnipotence is defined as infinite power. Yet other Christian thinkers are a little uncomfortable purporting the existence of "actual infinities."

But then, they're not mathematicians.

of mice and design

Dembski points to this article to ask, "How much intelligence is required to build self-repairing systems?" (An interesting, albeit loaded, question.) The exciting discovery:

Scientists have created "miracle mice" that can regenerate amputated limbs or damaged vital organs, making them able to recover from injuries that would kill or permanently disable normal animals.

The experimental animals are unique among mammals in their ability to regrow their heart, toes, joints and tail.

Since Dembski hasn't, I'll consider the metaphysical implications. Let's assume that self-repair is, in fact, designed. Some immediate questions, then. Why can fish and amphibians regrow organs and limbs, while mammals--never mind humans--can't? Is it an inscrutable whim, a design constraint, a purposeful omission?

To press the theodicy question, what might be the motives of an omnibenevolent designer to deny such radical self-healing capabilities to otherwise favored beings?

Some potential answers. First, if the designer's motives are entirely inscrutable, inquiry stops there. Second, self-repair isn't an obvious design constraint; witness the healthy functioning of the amped-up mice. Third, I can imagine a creationist response to the third possibility--self-repair is a postlapsarian loss--but if so, again, why fish and amphibians weren't affected is a mystery.

As to the theodicy question (which I grant is packed with certain assumptions), I leave that to the theodicists.

evil and free will: an exploration

First off, an admission: Plantinga's God, Freedom, and Evil isn't as bad as I remembered. I enjoyed his discussion of possible worlds, and found his logic compelling--at least, for one version of theism (see below), although it rests on undefended suppositions (again, see below). Second, the logical argument from evil is on life support. In one of his contributory essays in The Evidential Argument From Evil, William Alston writes, "It is now acknowledged on (almost) all sides that the logical argument is bankrupt (p. 285). Richard Gale, though, disagrees: "In my book, On the Nature and Existence of God, I argued that no version of [the free will defense] works, and thereby the logical problem posed by moral evil is still with us" (p. 206). (I have another book to add to my reading list.)

Third, a caveat: this essay is a work in progress, and also quite long for a decorabilia post*. Feel free to comment; it will not appear in final form until I've sharpened my arguments and read a lot more. And, given my voracious reading habits, that may not be until some time long into the future.

So, to the issue.

In the central argument of the book, Plantinga adds up the premises which (as far has he can tell) are the only way to find a contradiction between the existence of God and the continuance of evil. They are:

(1) God is omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good.
(2) Evil exists [more precisely, "evil states of affairs exist"]
(3) There are no nonlogical limits to what an omnipotent being can do
(4) An omniscient and omnipotent good being eliminates every evil it can properly eliminate, ergo
(5) If God is omnipotent and omniscient, He can properly eliminate every evil state of affairs

Plantinga posits that these statements entail no contradiction in the light of human free will: "To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can't give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so" (p. 30).

Notice that (4) is framed positively, ignoring a different slant on the argument. If, as Plantinga has claimed elsewhere, God is involved in every action in creation, "from the Big Bang to the sparrow's fall," does that not change the argument? Now a "good being" is not only not eliminating evil, but actively perpetrating and sustaining it. While a God who lets the universe (mostly) run on its own can sidestep the blame for evil's persistence, in the world of "serious theism," God is "actively and intimately involved" in it. Therefore, a "natural atheologist" would frame (4) as "An omniscient and omnipotent good being does not perpetrate or sustain evil." Broadly speaking, the logical "problem of evil" is a problem only for the serious theist.

Furthermore, Plantinga declares (5) impossible, because eliminating evil state E would necessarily eliminate good state G, which outweighs and depends on E's existence. His example is that of courage, a moral good that not only outweighs the evil it strives against, but could not exist without it. "It is a necessary truth that if someone bears pain magnificently, then someone is in pain" (p. 23).

However, there are many kinds of good which do not depend on any sort of evil for their existence--generosity, creativity, kindness, patience, and so forth. Perhaps God could have created a world in which only those sorts of good existed.

Furthermore, God could also have created a world in which morally significant action was possible--stealing, for example--but humans were limited, physically, in their ability to wreak havoc. (Imagine skin that doesn't so easily puncture, tear, and bleed; imagine a brain packed in a thicker skull; imagine a genetic inheritance that makes people all about the same height and weight.) Plantinga claims that God couldn't have done these things for some unknown (and, ultimately, unknowable) reason. Furthermore, Plantinga wonders if there are transactions between spiritual beings we know nothing of--like the frame story in Job, where God settles a wager with Satan by torturing his faithful servant. In short, defenses against this evidentiary argument from evil rely on ineffable, inscrutable reasons and unobservable, immeasurable entities. All well and good for the person of faith; hardly convincing to the skeptic.

Let us look deeper, though.

To accept Plantinga's Free Will Defense, we must accept two concepts: real (not just apparent) human freedom, and transworld depravity. The first goes assumed by Plantinga; the second is declared "possible," though it seems entirely ad hoc, contrived for the purpose of showing how God might be unable to actuate a world that includes morally free creatures who always choose rightly. So, Plantinga's argument shows that it is possible that there is no logical inconsistency; it does not show that such is obviously or necessarily true.

What sort of freedom (leaving aside such issues as predestination, foreknowledge, and the like) does Plantinga assume?

If a person is free with respect to a given action, then he is free to perform that action and free to refrain from performing it; no antecedent conditions and / or causal laws determine that he will perform the action, or that he won't.... Freedom so conceived is not to be confused with unpredictability. You might be able to predict what you will do in a given situation even if you are free, in that situation, to do something else (pp. 29-30).

Note that this sort of freedom lacks explanatory power, and is likely wrong, since it entirely removes human choice from the sphere of cause and effect--and, in doing so, makes humans into little Gods, able to effect uncaused actions.

Even if we grant that truly free will exists, though, we must ask: if free will is inviolable, yet humans, thanks to transworld depravity, are continually prone to abuse it, how is heaven, a place free of pain, suffering and sin, logically possible?

Furthermore, if God is both morally good and sinless, and (presumably) the most "valuable" being in all possible worlds (since He is the object of reverence and worship), did He create beings greater than himself with respect to moral freedom? Remember, Plantinga claims that transworld depravity precludes an actual world where free beings always choose the good. There is but one way to exclude God from this without declaring His nonexistence: by removing God's moral freedom. To recap: if God freely always does the right thing, Plantinga's argument implodes. If God has freely chosen the wrong thing, He is not wholly good. If God cannot help but always do the right thing, then humans are more "valuable" than God.

Again, Plantinga assumes--as do most Free Will Defenders--that free will is "valuable". From a human perspective, perhaps this is true. But from God's? If Plantinga's possible world scenario is correct, then God cannot actualize a world without depending on the undetermined choices of human (and other?) free agents. No wonder theistic worldviews are often apocalyptic. The Director's instructions go unheeded. In corners of the set, flats have been torn down. In others, self-styled artistes tack on shambling additions. Prima donnas extemporize their lines, affect stupid accents, shout down other characters. Yet, thanks to vaunted Free Will, "the show must go on," until the Director, no longer able to contain a few millennia's worth of festering fury, burns down the stage, sweeping up a few chosen actors and leaving the rest to perish in flames.

There's much more I could say, but won't; this post is long enough. Take a serious look at The Evidential Argument From Evil, though, if you want a much more in-depth discussion.



*And here are all the other tangential musings I would have included:

For all the value assigned to Free Will in theodicies, it seems to bear much less importance in theologies. Submission to the will of God is paramount; paradise is paradise due to the utter absence of contrarians.

What would the world look like if humans operated on moral principles derived from God's conduct?

I can imagine a possible world in which one free creature (call him Adam) exists, surrounded by unfree beings. (In fact, this is nothing more than the original creation story in Genesis, in classic Christian understanding.) My deity, though, goes one better than Yahweh. When Adam becomes distressed and bored after a day of doling out names to koalas and mantises, he complains to God; the deity, rather than creating Eve (and all the attendant problems to follow), decides to wipe Adam's memory clean as he sleeps. Adam wakes up to a new world with all its glorious possibilities. His free will has not been tampered with, and evil is nowhere in sight.

In a strange inversion of value, a world of full sinless automatons (devoid of evil) is worth less than a world full of evil, sinful humans; however, a heaven scattered with a few saved souls is worth more than a hell full of the lost.

And now, for the kicker. Epistemologically, how would it be possible to tell the difference between a world of clever automatons and a world of "free" beings, without resort to tautology?

monday weirdness

The caption of this blog is "trolling the bright waters of the internet." But sometimes we have to navigate through shoals of sloppy reasoning, unspoken assumptions, or circular arguments.

And then we have articles like this.

Freethinker Horia George Plugaru attacks the Free Will (henceforth FW) Defense, the classic theodicy that claims, in Plugaru's words,

God, although [he] wants to eradicate or at least greatly reduce the evil caused by humans, cannot interfere with the free will (FW) human beings have. According to this theist response, FW has enormous value (at least from God's point of view), since God protects it at the cost of indefinitely numerous atrocious acts.

Plugaru, building on the work of Theodore Drange, posits a new argument against free will's "enormous" value: the survival requirement of sleep. Since humans surrender their free will during sleep, for an average of 7-8 hours per night, or up to a third of their lives, Plugaru asks, is free will really so valuable?

Obviously, while we are asleep we do not and cannot make conscious choices, which means that we don't use our FW.

And so the question arises: if God values our FW so very much, why did he create us in such a way that for an important period of our lives we are forced to abandon our FW? In other words, if FW is so important from God's point of view, then why didn't he create us so that we would use our FW non-stop during our lives? It is obviously absurd to believe, on one hand, that for God our FW has an extraordinary importance, but on the other that he is ready to give up FW during a long period of time--in which one could have otherwise perform hundreds or thousands of free choices--without a serious reason.

There are a number of unwarranted claims, whose lack of a warrant undermines Plugaru's syllogism. First is the claim that free will is equated with conscious will, a category error. To claim that the decisions I make that I am not aware of--for example, the decision to breathe in and out continuously--are not an exercise of free will, is to beg the question.

Second, what are God's limitations on "interfering" with free will? Here the problem is not so much Plugaru's, but rather belongs to any advocate of the FW theodicy. If God is limited in his interference, how does this correspond to his omniscient omnibenevolence? If God does interfere, how?

Third, does having FW mean that all my actions are completely free? I am free to change my disposition, but am not free to change myself into a strand of limp spaghetti, at least not using current technology. Does this mean that my moral free will is no longer "valuable," because I have to surrender it, to some degree, to the dictates of biology? (And, furthermore, does God share human values, or rank-order them in a human fashion? Is there a divine "Hierarchy of Needs?")

Fourth, Plugaru's claim, at the bottom, is an argument from ignorance. "However, my criticism does not face such a problem because it is extremely hard to see what possible high priority God couldtry [sic] to achieve by requiring us to sleep." What is extremely hard for Plugaru to see may be quite obvious to a harder-thinking philosopher. Perhaps sleep is God's way of keeping humans from being too uppity--a biological Tower of Babel, of sorts.

Plugaru claims that his argument strengthens, and is also "stronger," than Drange's assertions. But compare Drange's concluding remarks on FW:

Finally, the claim that God has non-interference with human free will as a very high priority is not well supported in Scripture. According to the Bible, God killed millions of people. Surely that interfered with their free will, considering that they did not want to die. Furthermore, the Bible suggests that God knows the future and predestines people's fates. That, too, may interfere with human free will. In addition, there are many obstacles to free will in our present world (famine, mental retardation, grave diseases, premature death, etc.) and God does little or nothing to prevent them. This is not conclusive proof that God does not have human free will as a high priority, but it does count against it. It is at least another difficulty for the Free-Will Defense.

In short, it is already obvious that, for God, FW is not of "enormous" consequence, sleep or no sleep.

Oh, and it's nap time.