problem of evil - free will defence

relationship with God

• God created humans so they could respond in love, faithfulness or obedience to him.

• humans must be genuinely free to choose how they want to respond to god. and therefore humans must have genuine FREE WILL.

• the consequence of this is a world with Good and Evil.

Richard Swinburne

• in order for free will to be genuine god cannot place limits or intervene

• if god intervened to prevent evil this would restrict our freedom.

• for humans to show the characteristics that God wants such as courage, fairness and mercy, they must also be equally cowardly, unfair and cruel.

explanation to natural evil

• a world where death is found in nature is world which is better to bring out God’s purposes.

• a world without death a person cannot make the ultimate sacrifice

• a limited life focuses the attention on how they should live.

• it stops the old dominating the young.

• death limits the suffering one person can take.

how could god allow so much suffering?

• when he ask for less suffering we are asking that god should make a toy world - where things matter but not very much.

• if some evils are too much then where do we draw the line? what if we lived in a universe where ‘ear-flicking’ was the worst possible pain? our understanding of suffering is only relative to our own experience.

criticisms - Mackie

• the FWD claims that god had only two choices; could make a world where he maximise pleasure, minimises pain but no free will. Or pain and suffering a price worth paying for free will.

• Mackie says that god had a third option. genuine freedom and the minimisation of pain - if god is all powerful then could have best of both worlds. humans who are always good.

• genuine freedom and the minimisation of pain.

• supporters of the FWD say that what Mackie says is logically impossible. beings who always do good are not truly free.