Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Free Will Defence - Coggle Diagram
Free Will Defence
MACKIE's version
- 'first order goods' are happiness and pleasure
- 'first order evils' are unhappiness, pain, misery
we can reduce their misery by being sympathetic, understanding, kind, compassionate, loving OR make it worse by being spiteful, mean, envious
- 'second order goods' are sympathy, love, understanding, kindness, compassion
- 'second order evils' are spite, meanness, envy, jealousy, greed
second order goods maximise first order good + minimise first order evil
second order evil maximise first order evil + minimise first order good
-
freedom is third order good; allows us to choose between instantiating first and second order evil to maximise first order evil + minimise first order good
thus, God is justified in allowing evil in universe since it permits freedom to choose/reject good. it teaches us to be morally responsible
-
Strengths
- Plantinga's account of FWD shows both his MSR1 and MSR2 are logically possible so Plantinga refutes Mackie
- Mackie would be refuted by Plantinga since it would be logically impossible for God to have created a world (PW3) in which people had free will but never made morally bad choices. Even an omnipotent being could not do the logically impossible
- natural evils bring about 2nd order moral goods (sympathy, love, compassion). Such goods are to be valued above simple happiness & pleasure
- a world with free creatures is more valuable than a world without them. Freedom alone is the thing that makes any love or joy or goodness worth having
- humans value the risk of pain. For some, where there is no risk there can be no enjoyment
Weaknesses
- mackie; it is logically possible for a world of humans who have free will to always make good choices. So God could have created such a world. The fact that God did not do that suggests he is either not powerful enough/not loving enough to do it
- Plantinga, even though his MSR1 and MSR2 show FWD is logically coherent, it does not show that it is true. His explanation of natural evil elevates a mythological story to the status of a philosophical argument, which it isn't
- FWD relies on libertarian accounts of free will. Libertarian accounts of free will cannot be proved, however, it can only be assumed
- FWD has no convincing response to evidential problem of evil. At the point of creation, God must have known the full extent of human evil, so why did he bother to create such a universe?
-
MACKIE'S rejection
- it is logically possible for a person to make free, good choices all the time
- God could have created humans so they only make free good choices
- God did not
SO
- either God lacks power
- or God is not loving enough to do so
- either way, FWD fails
- thus, God doesn't exist
it is logically possible for a world of humans who have free will to always make good choices. God could have created such a world. The fact that God did not suggests he is either not powerful enough or not loving enough to do it
-
-