文档介绍：: Problems of Philosophy
Prof. Sally Haslanger
September 19, 2001
Evil and the Free Will Defense
Review of the Problem
1) If God exists, she'd be OOG. [By hypothesis]
2) If an OOG being exists, there would be no evil. [from 1]
3) God exists. [Suppose]
4) There is no evil. [From 1-3]
5) There is evil. [Premise from experience.]
6) Therefore, [An OOG] God does not exist. [Because our supposition (3) leads to a contradiction (4-5), we should reject
the supposition.]
The Free Will Defense
Evil is due not to God but to human free will.
Suppose we do have free will. Why did God grant us free will if so much misery results? Answer: It is better on the whole
that people should act freely even granted the disastrous use we sometimes make of our freedom. Free will is a higher
good that more than makes up for whatever trouble it causes.
Objections:
i) Lots of evils arenít related to free will at all: earthquakes, floods, etc. Why do these exist if God is good? (Punishment?
Instruction? But what about the death of innocents?
ii) Why couldnít God have given us such excellent characters that we would freely choose good in every case? Perhaps, we
would always have the option of doing evil, but we would always prefer the other option. As Mackie puts it: God was not
faced with the choice of making either automata or free agents who sometimes go