God, Freedom, and Evil

[cornellengr2008]

I've recently finished an amazing philosophy book: Alvin Plantiga's God, Freedom, and Evil. It was incredible! Alvin Plantinga is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He's heralded on the back of the book as "one of the top Christian philosophers in the world today" (which, it should be noted, is different from a "Christian

Comments

[stevencarrwork]

There is suffering. Some of this suffering can be reduced. For example, if somebody is ill, curing that person will reduce his suffering

[cornellengr2008]

Hi there - thanks for commenting!

In the introduction to God, Freedom, and Evil, Plantinga makes it clear that "the natural theologian does not, typically, offer his arguments in order to convince people of God's existence; and in fact few who accept theistic belief do so because they find such an argument compelling. Instead the typical function of natural theology has been to show that religious belief is rationally acceptable" (p.2). His goal is not to evangelize Christianity to the general public, and he concedes at the start that this is not the best way to go about doing that. Like I said, the scope of his arguments very very narrom - his only aim in the part that I've discussed here is to show that Mackie has not succeeded in establishing that set A is inconsistent

[stevencarrwork]

'All argument seems to follow this sort of thrust and parry structure common to fencing or other kinds of battle. Mackie made the positive assertion that theism is irrational by presenting the "Logical Problem of Evil

[cornellengr2008]

Many ridiculous things are logically consistent. How, then, do we have the gall to call them ridiculous? Well, it pretty much just boils down to what empirical data we've gathered over the course of our lives. We think that unicorns don't exist because no one has ever seen one (that we know of). We trust that we aren't in the matrix because, well... because we want to. We get out of the way of speeding buses because we've seen that large objects hitting a small object at high-speed usually severely damage the small object. And on that same basis do we call unipedalism ridiculous - by and large, our memory serves us pretty well most of the time, and so it seems ridiculous that it could fail so catastrophically about something so basic.

However, we can have neither epistemic certainty that our memory hasn't been corrupted by demons nor any conclusive metaphysical argument that demons with that sort of capacity don't exist. We have no real way out of Descartes' Evil Genius scenario - we just trust that that isn't the case (or

[stevencarrwork]

It is Christian dogma that God can , and has, created beings with free will that he knew in advance would never choose evil.

Nor does Plantinga's Molinism work (although Molinism is trivially true, granted libertarian free will and an omniscient God)

If it is part of the essence of me, that I choose evil when placed in some situations that occur in this world, then logically God can create a near-identical twin of me.

This twin behaves just like me, except on one or two occasions when I choose evil and he chooses good.

There is nothing to prevent God creating near-identical twins.

My near-identical twin does not even have to be perfect. There could be circumstances in which I choose good and he chooses evil. Provided those circumstances are not actualised (and God doesn't have to actualise *every* circumstance I could logically find myself in), then there would be no problem.

So Plantinga's argument is shot to pieces.

[cornellengr2008]

There is no reason to believe the claim that "there is nothing to prevent God creating near-identical twins" is true, in the sense you intend. You should read up on the idea of Transworld Depravity to get a feel for what it may be impossible for an omnipotent being to do.

[stevencarrwork]

God can't create near-identical twins who behave very similarly, except on one or two occasions? What is this?

Near identical twins are definitely possible, and God can choose from any logically possible beings.