Humans have free will

The argument

The theodicy here answers the problem of evil by identifying something God values more highly than the absence of evil. God protects human free will above all else. That ordering is the whole of the argument: it accepts that God could end evil, and explains why he does not. The explanation runs through what ending evil would require. A world in which evil does not occur is a world in which no one is able to choose it. To eliminate evil, God would therefore have to remove the capacity to choose evil over good — and a being that cannot choose evil cannot meaningfully choose good either, since a choice requires an available alternative. Intervening to prevent evil is not, on this account, a matter of God removing a regrettable feature of the world while leaving the rest intact. It is a matter of removing the faculty of choice itself, and with it the moral standing of every human action. So the divine restraint is not indifference. God wills that humans should have free will more than he wills that evil should not exist, and both of those are things he wills. The suffering evil produces is real and is not being minimised; what the argument claims is that it is the cost of something whose value exceeds it. A world of genuine agents who sometimes choose wrongly is, on this valuation, better than a world of beings incapable of choosing at all. That is how the theodicy discharges its explanatory burden. It does not deny God's power to end evil, which would compromise omnipotence, and it does not deny that evil is bad, which would compromise the moral framework. It locates the answer in a ranking of goods — and once free will is ranked above the absence of evil, God's permitting evil follows from the ranking rather than from any failure of will or of power.

Context

God gave humans free will. While God is benevolent, omniscient and omnipotent, through the preservation of free will humans are able to choose evil over good.

Premises

Counter-arguments

If God permits evil to protect free will, God cannot be exclusively good. For God to be benevolent and exclusively good, nothing can be more good than God. If we can imagine an alternative divine being that did not permit evil, even if it meant sacrificing an element of free will, then this supreme being would be “more good” than God. Because we can contemplate another supreme being “more good” than God, God cannot be the “most good” divine being we can imagine. Therefore, God cannot be all good, and therefore, cannot be benevolent. This leaves a situation where either God is not exclusively good or does not exist. Either one is catastrophic for our understanding of God. Additionally, while the preservation of free will above all else adequately explains evil as a result of human behaviour, it cannot account for evils that lie beyond our control. For example, childhood cancer is not the result of human free will. It could be eradicated without infringing on our free will.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] That God ranks free will above the prevention of evil is stipulated to fit the conclusion rather than independently established. A being that valued both more highly is readily conceivable, and would on the argument's own terms be greater. [Rejecting P2] Free will requires the ability to choose evil, not that evil choices succeed. A world in which malicious intentions were reliably frustrated would preserve the choice while preventing the harm, so the trade-off the premise treats as necessary is not. [Rejecting P3] Even granted, this covers only suffering that results from someone's choice. Childhood cancer, earthquakes and famine involve no exercise of will and could be removed without touching anyone's freedom, so the largest part of the problem is left unaddressed. [Rejecting C] The theodicy therefore accounts for part of the problem at best, and does so by ranking free will above suffering in a way the argument asserts rather than defends.