In, “The Problem of Evil,” Eleonore Stump holds the belief that the existence of evil in our world does not automatically disprove God’s existence. The belief that God cannot live alongside evil is considered to be the Evidential Problem of evil and this is what Stump is arguing against in her paper. Stump argues, the ability to fix our defective free will makes Union with God possible, which overwrites all the un-absorbable evils in the world, showing both God and un-absorbable evils can coexist. In this paper I hope to show that God can exist, but also show that human free will is limited.
There are three claims that the majority people are committed to and agree upon if God exists; God is omnipotent, God is omniscient, and God is perfectly
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good. These claims may be considered to be true, but another claim brought that makes their existence confusing is, there is evil in the world. Stump points out that most people believe these claims to be true, but there are illogical consistencies. For example, there is no morally sufficient reason for God to allow instances of evil, which is why evil existing at all could be considered an issue.
God is someone who encompasses all good things which means he must be a good God, and a good God would not want evil in our world. Humans having free will is a claim brought up by Stump to show Plantinga’s “Free will defense,” to possibly answer the problem of evil. Plantinga believes the response to the logical problem of evil is, the possibility of having free will and using it for good rather than evil, is a value that has the potential to outweigh all the evil in the world. Stump revises this claim because it leaves the existence of evil mysterious and does not fulfill the entirety of the response to the evidential problem of …show more content…
evil. Instead Stump revises fellow philosophers Hick’s and Swineburne’s ideas into the claim, “Significant exercise of free will in the enterprise of soul-making is of such great value that it outweighs all the evil in the world,” This claim explains why we are able to have both good natured people like Mahatma Gandhi and bad natured people like Joseph Stalin. Significant exercise of free will is the decision between being good or bad, the ability to make this decision is what outweighs all the evil. Stump’s own argument starts with three Christian beliefs that Stump remarks are especially relevant to the problem of evil. The three claims are; Adam fell, natural evil entered the world as a result of Adam's fall, and after death, either human beings go to Heaven or they go to Hell. Although Stump knows these claims are controversial, Stump believes they are not demonstrably false and can be used to support her overall conclusion. According to these three Christian beliefs all human beings since Adam's fall have been defective in their free wills. A defective will, is a will which wills what it ought not to will. Defective wills lead humans to make selfish and personal choices without considering moral obligations. It is not possible for human beings to be in complete Union with God and go to heaven due to this defect. A will which is defective will never will what it ought to will. Stump claims that this defect can be fixed, the only solution is that man must will for God to change his will into a good will. Through the ability to fix our defective will it shows how both un-absorbable evils can coexist with God. This is why God allows evil to exist in our world. It is shown in the paper that both moral and natural evil can humble us and show us that we need God’s help.
Although this is not a guarantee to come from evil, it is what leads most down the righteous path. Being able to will for God to fix their will is what allows God to intervene and fix someone’s defective free will. The fixing of defective free will by a person freely willing that God fix it is what Stump believes to be the foundation of a Christian solution to the problem of evil.
My goal is to not disprove God’s existence, or to disprove that humankind can live in Union with God. My hope is to argue that our will which wills what it ought not to will is limited. I believe that every day we have the equal opportunity to make choices, both good and evil, and we are able to do this because of our free will. I am not arguing that our defective free wills do not exist, I want to argue that they are restricted.
My first claim is, if God is all knowing, he knows where we will end up in life. Secondly, I believe when our consciousness comes into existence, God knows if we go to Heaven or Hell. Thirdly, no matter what choices we make throughout our lives, the end result will always be what it was meant to be before our existence. Therefore, no amount of free will during our time on earth, will change our end result which means our free will is
limited. Our destinies are already set prior to our birth, but that won’t prevent us from seeking Union with God through predetermined free will. God is all knowing and he knows why act the way we do. He already knows who will end up in complete Union with Him and those who unfortunately will not. A question brought up against this argument might be, how does God allow un-absorbable evil to exist if he already knows some souls are doomed? We humans do not know our end result, we can have hopes and ideas about it but we will never be certain. Thus, we do not know if we seek to fix our defective free will with God until we have already done it. For example, a mother of three has bought both chocolate chip cookies and raisin cookies and the mother can tell the difference between the two. The mother then puts both cookies into the cookie jar. Now her three children want to eat the chocolate chip cookies. One child isn’t even aware that the raisin cookies exist. One child knows there are raisin cookies but does not care. And lastly one child knows there are raisin cookies so they do everything in the power to try and examine and choose the right cookie. The first child gets a chocolate chip cookie, the second child gets a raisin cookie, and the last child chose the chocolate chip cookie correctly. The mother was observing the whole time and could have easily intervened before the children ate their cookies to tell them which cookie was which, but she did not. Does this make her a bad mother? Just because she had the knowledge, should she have outright told them? This does not make her a bad mother she cannot control every aspect of their lives because there is only one of her and three of them. Although she can have direct influence she cannot entirely re-route her children’s choices or experiences. The mother knew the fates of each child before they took a bite similarly to how God knows our fate before we make any choices at all. Showing although God knows what will happen to us it does not make him bad for not telling us and letting it happen. Evil exists because human nature is flawed, God created us like scientists creates experiments. Scientists do not set out to make a bad experiment it sometimes happens because it was what was meant to happen. God does not want us to suffer or live with evil but due to Adam’s fall we have a defect that he cannot simply fix. God lets there be evil because we have the ability to acknowledge that it is there. We should all strive to be the third child by being aware of this evil and trying to recognize when it is among us. Choosing good through our defective free will is still what gives us the ability to live in communion with God, but it is impossible to change our end result. In summary, an all-knowing and good God can still exist alongside evil. God wants the best for us because he loves us but He cannot intervene on everyone’s life for that defeats the purpose of those who chose to live in union with him. He cannot force his will on those who do not initially choose Him. Meaning defective free will is mainly just an illusion that we have choice.
In his essay, "The Magnitude, Duration, and Distribution of Evil: a Theodicy," Peter van Inwagen alleges a set of reasons that God may have for allowing evil to exist on earth. Inwagen proposes the following story – throughout which there is an implicit assumption that God is all-good (perfectly benevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient) and deserving of all our love. God created humans in his own likeness and fit for His love. In order to enable humans to return this love, He had to give them the ability to freely choose. That is, Inwagen holds that the ability to love implies free will. By giving humans free will, God was taking a risk. As Inwagen argues, not even an omnipotent being can ensure that "a creature who has a free choice between x and y choose x rather than y" (197)1. (X in Inwagen’s story is ‘to turn its love to God’ and y is ‘to turn its love away from God,’ towards itself or other things.) So it happened that humans did in fact rebel and turn away from God. The first instance of this turning away is referred to as "the Fall." The ruin of the Fall was inherited by all humans to follow and is the source of evil in the world. But God did not leave humans without hope. He has a plan "whose working will one day eventuate in the Atonement (at-one-ment) of His human creatures with Himself," or at least some of His human creatures (198). This plan somehow involves humans realizing the wretchedness of a world without God and turning to God for help.
Intentional will is defined as God’s will for humans from the very start on a personal level with each human being, and as a wider goal for humanity. It is the way he would like for human life to...
A foundational belief in Christianity is the idea that God is perfectly good. God is unable to do anything evil and all his actions are motives are completely pure. This principle, however, leads to many questions concerning the apparent suffering and wrong-doing that is prevalent in the world that this perfect being created. Where did evil come from? Also, how can evil exist when the only eternal entity is the perfect, sinless, ultimately good God? This question with the principle of God's sovereignty leads to even more difficult problems, including human responsibility and free will. These problems are not limited to our setting, as church fathers and Christian philosophers are the ones who proposed some of the solutions people believe today. As Christianity begins to spread and establish itself across Europe in the centuries after Jesus' resurrection, Augustine and Boethius provide answers, although wordy and complex, to this problem of evil and exactly how humans are responsible in the midst of God's sovereignty and Providence.
In this paper, I will use the writings of John Hick and Richard Swinburne to dispute the problem of evil argument. After I first elaborate on the P.O.E., I will give support for God’s existence with regards to the problem of evil. Then, I will address further counterarguments
...aintain that God may have an idea of where he wants you to end up in life in it up to you to choose the correct steps to get there. The choices we make help decide the path we take in life the only thing we have no choice in is where we end up after our journey here on earth is complete.
In our reading on Discourse of Free Will, we get a good idea of the opinions both Erasmus and Luther had on the topic of free will and the how it correlates with God’s grace. Once we look beyond the back and forth debate of this text, we will begin to look at their theological opinions on free will separately to find a better understanding and formulate our own opinions on this commonly debated topic.
In this essay, Walter T. Stace writes about how the existence of free will is not a real problem, that a lot of people may not believe in free will because they do not have the correct definition of it, but if they
If God did not exist, he would not be the greatest being imaginable. He is the greatest thing imaginable. Therefore, he does exist. From this argument, God’s existence is viewed. as necessary (Ayer. A. J. 1973).
.... Stump states that we should always ask for good things by way of petitionary prayer so that good things will occur in our world. If Stump’s claim is correct, then two scenarios could come into play. If God has the power to put the world in a better state than it already is, but we, humans, aren’t sending him requests by way of petitionary prayer, God can either choose to put the world in a better state than it already is or he can choose to not change the state of the world at all. The consequence of God making the world better is the infringement of the human free will. On the other hand, if God chooses not to make the world better because of the lack of petitionary prayer, human free will is left intact but the world is not made better.
The divine command theorist’s presumed critique of the divine will theory is twofold: first, what would happen in an instance in which the command and the will of God are not expressing the same thing? If God’s commands are his only way of communicating intent, but his commands are not perfect reflections of his intention, then how can human beings possibly know what actions are morally mandatory or prohibited? Second, in such an instance, what is the point of a command if not to communicate God’s will? The divine command theorist would charge that the point of a command under the divine will theory becomes arbitrary, and theists altogether reject the notion that God ever acts arbitrarily.
To conclude, both Pereboom and Kane come to two very distinct settlements on the debate in question. Both of these philosophers have different beliefs on how we should assess and approach the conceptual ideas of free will. Each position is constantly under scrutiny as philosophers and scientists alike, attempt to decipher and dismiss the multiple theories that have developed over the years. Furthermore, with so much emphasis placed on this particular debate, many people even begin to associate free will with the possibility of an existing higher power.
Lewis writes, “If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having”
It is impossible to taste the sweet without having first tasted the sour. This is one of the many lessons found within Genesis 2.0 and more specifically the story of Adam and Eve. It is also from this twisted tale of betrayal and deceit that we gain our knowledge of mankind?s free will, and God?s intentions regarding this human capacity. There is one school of thought which believes that life is mapped out with no regard for individual choice while contrary belief tells us that mankind is capable of free will and therefore has control over hisown life and the consequences of his actions. The story of Adam and Eve and the time they spent in ?paradise? again and again points to the latter as the truth. Confirming that God not only gave mankind the ability to think for himself but also the skills needed to take responsibility for those thoughts and the actions that they produced.
God can be defined as a being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions (1). There are many people that do not believe in any religion. People who do not believe in a religion have no reason for believing in a God. People who do not believe in a God and argue against the existence of God are proving something that is completely false. There is a God for numerous reasons.
Nature is complicated. It includes many different sorts of things and one of these is human beings. Such beings exhibit one unique yet natural attribute that others things apparently do not—that is free will.