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Must G-d Create Only Good People?
Mack says to the Christian:
You say that free will is the origin of evil. But it is possible for a person to freely choose to do no evil. Your G-d, if he exists, would be able to create such people. He would know how to create such people. And he would definitely do so because he is good. But no such thing happened, and therefore your G-d does not exist.
Does anyone else see the problem I see with Mack’s way of thinking? I’d been wanting to properly deal with this problem since 2005, but I finally found a little mental space to put some real work into it last year. Now it’s a published article: “Must G-d Create the Best Available Creatures?” in the journal Philosophia Christi, the journal of the Evangelical Philosophical Society.
Mack’s remarks above (written by me) are drawn from J. L. Mackie, who distinguished himself in 1900s philosophy by presenting an important objection to the traditional free will explanation for why G-d could allow evil: If evil is due to the free choice of creatures, why wouldn’t an omnipotent G-d simply create free creatures who would choose better?
Alvin Plantinga, in turn, distinguished himself with his critique of Mackie. Plantinga’s main point is that Mackie made a mistake in assuming that it is within the power of omnipotence fully to create just any possible world.
So far, so good.
But I think Mackie made another mistake. He had another highly questionable assumption that Plantinga does not critique.
Mackie assumes that a G-d, as construed by classical theistic belief, who could create either of two people—one of whom would freely choose right and the other of whom would freely choose wrong—must create the one who would freely choose right.
But if that’s true, then, just as long as there is any possible person whom G-d could have created and placed in the Garden of Eden and who would not have sinned, G-d won’t allow anyone else the chance to sin!
So, in Mackie’s view, no one else sinning is even possible! And even that one possible, not-sinning person doesn’t have any possibility of sinning as long as there’s someone else who wouldn’t have sinned given the chance.
In short, for nearly every conceivable arrangement of the facts about what possible people would do, . . . every possible person, or all but one of them, is completely unable to ever sin! And where does that leave free will?????
Now you might be thinking it’s just not reasonable to even talk about the so-called facts about what not-real-but-possible people might do. You might be right. I think that’s a very respectable position.
And there are some other options. But I think the best option is to . . . Just. Drop. Mackie’s. Assumption.
This also means we don’t need Alvin Plantinga’s idea, which is this: Maybe all possible created people have what he calls trans-world depravity, meaning that maybe all of them would have sinned given the chance.
I love Plantinga’s Christian philosophy, but I don’t think that particular position is likely. Still, if I’m criticizing Plantinga, it’s a friendly, and a pretty mild, criticism. It’s less that Plantinga is wrong and more that . . . we can agree with Plantinga’s criticism of J. L. Mackie, and go just one step further.
Two more notes. First, the title of my article is inspired by Robert Adams’ famous article, “Must G-d Create the Best?”
Second, this is the best I’ve been able to do so far. Maybe I’ll do more later. All this time I’m working with the idea of free will as the ability to do otherwise, which is a prominent theory on what free will is, and is Plantinga’s theory. But there are other views on what free will is.
If we’re going to stick with this definition, we may have to consider the possibility that free will is not good only as a means to the end of freely chosen moral good, but also for other reasons, or even just good in itself. This is an idea I might explore in the future.
And I think I’ve stumbled on a promising insight: If human beings are made in the image of G-d and if part of that involves the responsibility to creatively develop creation in G-d’s name, then maybe that creativity requires some ability to do otherwise. This might be at least part of the explanation for why FW—as the ability to do otherwise—is important.
In any case, frankly, I’m happy enough if we just question Mackie’s assumption. It should never have been allowed to pass unquestioned.
Published in General
This is a great post. Free will is a great topic.
Write your next one on the ability to do otherwise which I believe is important.
Like . . . outline a whole publishable article in a Ricochet post?
Egad, it’s a lovely and terrifying idea. There’s no better place to outline a publishable article in advance of writing it, but . . . oh, so much work!
Mack tries a naked map-for-territory swap. He modifies the idea of free will until it means “predetermined,” then leverages the corrupted word for his argument. This one’s obvious, and the pattern is common.
But it’s a bad choice anyway. Mack’s world without free will would be poorer. Without the fall there wouldn’t be redemption and salvation.
I’m not seeing a problem.
One more. Mack may think he wants a static perfect world encased in amber. That’d be death. Everything lively, like light or a human spirit, is a process driven by this or that dialectic. If the price of perfection is to be made static, I wouldn’t pay it.
Unlike Captain America, I did not understand that reference.
Yes, some version of felix culpa (the Happy Fall) theory is one alternative theory, and/or a likely part of the complete explanation–if we ever could hope to put together a complete explanation.
Dig man;
Mack the Knife by Louis Armstrong – YouTube
My homeboy Allama Iqbal, a Muslim philosopher I enjoy, says stuff like that. I can think of at least one Jewish chap on Ricochet who would no doubt agree.
And Christians? Probably N. T. Wright!
The Far Side cartoon makes more sense now. Not that it wasn’t weirdly funny enough before.
Maybe Man was made perfect. After all, if he’d been made static he’d not progress. If free will is the thing that pushes Man away from some equilibrium, then it’s also the thing that propagates his life thru time. Perfect existence without evolution would eventually succumb to entropy.
There’s perfection in the sense of flawlessness, and then there’s perfection in the sense of completion. Perhaps we were created perfect in one sense, but not the other. Completion would require time and energy and work cultivating creation in G-d’s name. This requires free will, which comes with the worthwhile risk of losing perfection in the sense of flawlessness.
I guess I hold that perfection as completion doesn’t apply to life. Completion is death,
which is not perfect. Later: No, that’s dumb, just leave it as “Completion is death.”Ok, so scratch “completion” and write in “fulfilment.” Something, anyway, that comes from growth and action–something better than mere static goodness, which is no life for a human.
Right. So from this POV, Man was made perfect, with free will so that he could progress and make his way back to God. The whole of the process is obviously perfect, but it’s not easy to see that from inside it.
I’m missing something.
What is free about a choice that is already made?
Without free will there is no such thing as virtue, thus one has to know right from wrong too strive to become virtuous.
Well, yeah. That’s why Mackie’s other assumption should never have been allowed to go unchallenged.
But there is this: In a Frankfurt case, a person does not have the ability to do otherwise and is still morally responsible.
From my article:
So let’s say we don’t care about the ability to do otherwise as such; we only care about preserving moral responsibility. And suppose G-d creates Adam and Eve and they choose not to sin.
If Mackie’s assumption–G-d would not create a person who chooses wrong if some other possible person would choose right–is correct, could Adam and Eve still have moral responsibility? They have no ability not to sin, but are they still morally responsible? I think they actually are; that’s why, if we want to preserve the idea of free will as the ability to do otherwise, we might have to talk about it being valuable in itself and/or for reasons other than just moral responsibility.
It’s too recent for Steve and way before your time, but look it up. Discover how dark the popular culture has always been.
Nah, make it a post, not a paper. We have easier standards and would welcome your thoughtfulness.
If I did a post on why the ability to do otherwise is important, I would have to make it an outline of a publishable paper, or at least of the paper’s main argument.
I thought that a key element to theology of the fall: Adam and Eve were created perfect, as far as time-bound, less-than-divinely-perfect physical beings of the type we call “human” in English can be. The ability to chose to do good or not is therefore a good unto itself. I would argue (and have argued) that it is an ineluctable component of a life with meaning. Here:
Departures III: One of My Problems with the Alleged Problem of Evil – martinfamilyinbavaria
Here:
My Problems with the Alleged Problem of Evil (Continued ) – martinfamilyinbavaria
And here:
The Cost of Meaning – martinfamilyinbavaria
Feedback welcome.
I think the other component is meaning. Choices must have consequences – good or bad- in order to be meaningful. That’s the point in the third blog entry I referenced in my response to Barfly above. Thanks for the post, by the way.
Amen.
Absolutely!
Creation is a process, and all processes have stages, and ups and downs, and roadblocks… even G-d’s creations fall short from these (see Genesis up until the Flood). And this is even more true for our own creations.
I have heard the argument that God should not have created mankind, or perhaps certain individuals who would turn out to do great evil, knowing what they would do. In other words, God being omniscient as well as omnipotent would have known that a particular person was going to do great evil. In that case, God should not have created him.
But that is a misunderstanding of omniscience. God did not know what a person would do before He created them (only the possibility of what he could do). There is an order to God’s knowledge. First God makes the decision to create knowing what could happen – both good and bad. Once He creates, He knows what that person or persons will do. Think about it. If God did not create anyone, He would not know what they would do because they do not exist and never will. God does not know people who do not exist.
So God’s foreknowledge comes after creation, not before. God knew the risks and created free moral humans anyway, but already planned before the founding of the world to redeem those who would repent and accept His salvation. (My Calvinist friends will probably comment at this point.)
Another question to ask a doubter is this: Would you rather not exist, or would you rather live with evil a short time and then live in eternal bliss? I’ll take that deal.
Well, not my position, but a perfectly respectable one. And it sure puts Mackie’s argument out of commission.
G-d certainly can create beings that do not sin. They are called angels, and they are for all intents and purposes slaves.
G-d did not create humans to be slaves.
I dunno. I get antsy when folk try to define G-d too narrowly. I can’t remember which Islamic philosopher said it (Averroes? Avicenna? One of those guys, anyways.), but he argued one cannot even describe G-d as “perfect” because “perfection” is a human concept and therefore too limited too describe G-d accurately. It’s a notion to which I’m quite sympathetic.