Could God have an excuse for not preventing gratuitous evil? I think so. In the original version of the Free Will Defense it is argued that, possibly, moral agents freely bring about some instances of evil, E. Let’s stipulate the following,
P1. An instance of evil E is justified iff. it is not possible that E is prevented without producing an outcome that is overall worse.
P2. Instances of evil that are not justified are gratuitous.
P3. God is justified in not preventing an instance of evil E iff. E is justified.
P4. If E is not justified, but God cannot prevent E without producing an outcome that is overall worse, then God has an excuse for not preventing E.
Instances of moral evil in the free will defense are such that they all satisfy (P4). The evil that moral agents produce is not justified according to (P1) because it can be prevented without producing an overall worse outcome. The agents themselves can prevent it, for instance. But then by (P3) God is not justified in not preventing E, either. But the moral evil is also such that God cannot prevent it without interfering in the exercise of the libertarian freedom of moral agents and producing an outcome that is overall worse. So by (P4) God has an excuse for not preventing the moral evil E.
So we should read the free will defense as illustrating how God might not be justified in allowing moral evil, but might be excused for allowing moral evil. Here’s an analogy: the suffering you are experiencing as a result of your toothache might well be gratuitous, since it can be prevented without producing an overall worse world. But I have an excuse for not preventing it, since were I to try to do so, I would make the outcome overall worse.
"Here’s an analogy: the suffering you are experiencing as a result of your toothache might well be gratuitous, since it can be prevented without producing an overall worse world. But I have an excuse for not preventing it, since were I to try to do so, I would make the outcome overall worse."
But a dentist would not have that excuse. I presume the God has the knowledge a dentist has so God would not have that excuse if there were no dentist avaiable to reduce your suffering.
John,
It is part of the description of the situation in FWD that (as stated above in the post),
But then by (P3) God is not justified in not preventing E, either. But the moral evil is also such that God cannot prevent it without interfering in the exercise of the libertarian freedom of moral agents and producing an outcome that is overall worse. So by (P4) God has an excuse for not preventing the moral evil E.
It is not that God does not know enough or is not powerful enough to prevent E. It's rather that he cannot prevent the exercise of libertarian free agency without undermining the agent's freedom. You might disagree with that, or with the claim that it is too costly for God to interfere, but those are distinct from the problem you note in your comment.
"But the moral evil is also such that God cannot prevent it without interfering in the exercise of the libertarian freedom of moral agents and producing an outcome that is overall worse."
One question I have is that in many cases, this does not seem to be true.
If God prevents a particular case of child abuse, for instance, it is true that God is infringing on free will, but it is hardly plausible to suppose that this particular prevention of FW is not a bad that is outweighed by the huge benefit of preventing the abuse. Likewise in other cases.
It's an instance of a familiar moral paradox. My not voting makes no difference, but if everyone follows my rule and sits home watching C-span, disastrous consequences result.
Likewise if God weighs the consequences of each individual deprivation of FW, and acts accordingly, we end up with arguably a much worse situation (w/free will greatly diminished)
Is God a rule-utilitarian? But any Rule would also include qualifications. Yet if FW is the sole reason for not intervening, it looks like God's respect for FW is absolute (or at least nearly so).
Hi Gordon,
I've worried about that a lot; it's a very good point. There are some complicated ways one could go here, some involving the idea that God has counterfactual control over the CFF's that obtain in a world. His preventing certain instances of evil could adversely affect the profile of CFF's obtaining. But this move involves some deep metaphysical commitments. Another route I've proposed is that God does not interfere in such cases because doing so precludes the possibility of a very great good. That great good is the person deciding on his own not to follow through on the evil action. Does that sound unreasonable? God gives you every opportunity to bring about a good state of affairs; but to do so, he must allow you to bring about an evil state of affairs.
Mike,
To restate the problem John A. offers in the first comment, your analogy implies either that God's power is limited in some way or that there is something good about about the world as it is presently constituted.
The free will defense is unsatisfactory in certain respects, as Gordon points out, so perhaps there is some good other than the preservation of free will which justifies or excuses God not preventing gratuitous evil. I am however not sure what that good might be.
David,
You write,
To restate the problem John A. offers in the first comment, your analogy implies either that God's power is limited in some way
Well, yes, it is limited by the impossible (if that counts as a limit). He cannot cause a free action, since it is impossible to cause a free action. There's no genuine worry here.
The free will defense is unsatisfactory in certain respects, as Gordon points out, so perhaps there is some good other than the preservation of free will which justifies or excuses God not preventing gratuitous evil.
Whether it is unsatisfactory is what's in question. Gordan raises a good question; I offered one possible answer. I don't see where that answer is clearly mistaken. There are other possible answers, too.
Mike,
Suppose the second option you suggest holds. Then God has a morally sufficient reason not to interfere in every creaturely act, no matter how heinous. But if God has a reason that is morally sufficient to justify obstaining, don't I have the same reason? There are epistemic differences, surely (maybe while we can speculate about this possible good, God actually knows it).
I am inclined to think that it is God's very power that limits how God ought to intervene. Suppose that there is a limit of how much suffering God will allow people to cause. Up to that point, God will respect or liberty. To be fair, God would have to apply this principle universally, and once that it is done our own sense of how serious our life decisions are will correspondingly be diminished. True freedom requires the ability not just to sort of screw up, but to really screw up.
I don't know if that is right. I think the problem shows that while FWD is important, it is not by itself an adequate defense against the argument from evil (at least the inductive variety.
One of the problems I have with the FWD is that we do not think it is applicable to excuse others from acting to eliminate evil by stopping others from exercisng their FW to do evil. The only moral agent who gets a pass from eliminating evil is God. God is one lucky moral agent to be the only one who is always in a situation that can satisfy P3 and P4.
That's a nice point, Mike. It shows that when we talk about gratuitous evils as ones that can be prevented without producing an overall worse outcome, we are speaking ambiguously. We need to specify by whom the hypothetical prevention is to take place. It is quite possible that an evil E is such that it can be prevented by x without producing an overall worse outcome but cannot be prevented by y without producing an overall worse outcome. One kind of case is the free will cases you list. Another kind of case would be where y has a commitment to not interfering, or not interfering in particular ways, in certain kinds of cases, and breaking that commitment would produce an overall worse outcome. (For instance, it could be that y is vowed to non-violence, and E is such that it can only be violently prevented. For a different case, U.S. Marines protecting the U.S. embassy in a peaceful country could prevent a mugging happening near the embassy, as could the local police force. But it could be that the overall outcome would be rather bad if the Marines intervened in an activity falling within the purview of local law enforcement.)
But whether this shows that God could have an excuse for not preventing gratuitous evils does depend on how one defines gratuitous evils. I think the lesson here is that one should not define gratuitous evils as ones that could be prevented without making things overall worse, but rather as ones that could be prevented by God without making things overall worse. Or, one might go one step further, and say that an evil is gratuitous if a perfectly good, omniscient and omnipotent God would not be justified in not preventing it. (Richard Gale and I do something like this at one point.)
I think the lesson here is that one should not define gratuitous evils as ones that could be prevented without making things overall worse, but rather as ones that could be prevented by God without making things overall worse.
It seems important to distinguish the justification of an action from the justification of a person in performing an action. An action A is justified just in case there is someone or other that can perform A w/o on balance moral cost. A person S is justified in performing A just in case S can perform A without on balance moral cost. But maybe that distinction cannot be sustained.
Suppose the second option you suggest holds. Then God has a morally sufficient reason not to interfere in every creaturely act, no matter how heinous. But if God has a reason that is morally sufficient to justify obstaining, don't I have the same reason?
I see the pull in this direction, but I'm not sure it works in this case. God might have sufficient reason, since the wrongdoer must answer to Him finally. If he is given every opportunity to refrain, he's without any grounds for complaint about the final punishment. But he does not have to answer to me finally, and so I do not owe him the opportunity to refrain from the wrongdoing.
"But he does not have to answer to me finally, and so I do not owe him the opportunity to refrain from the wrongdoing."
Why doesn't he have to answer to us? It seems to me that we often ask moral agents to explain and justify themselves. If God is a moral agent then why is it not permissible to ask him for an explanation and justification of why He does not intervene to eliminate evil, especially when we think we should intervene if we are able to. If He expects us to refrain from wrongdoing then why should we not expect Him to do likewise, especially when He is the only one that can prevent the harm from happening?
Moreover, God's reason for refraining from stopping the wrongdoer might be to give me the opportunity to stop the wrongdoer--and I can't justify my own standing back in that way!
I think what I have in mind is a case where someone is damaging something I own. Since I own it, I can allow him to damage it. If I know that he will have to answer to me in the end, I think I might allow him every opportunity to change his behavior. I'd have to be awfully generous to do so, however. But if you see him damaging my property, then you should immediately report him.
Now suppose that I am God's property, and so is everyone and everything else. And apply the reasoning there.
If we are God's property, we are not like his automobile, but more like his dog. It is a poor dog owner who lets the neighbor beat her dog.
But we are less like property and more like children, and it is an even worse parent who lets the neighbor come by and beat up his kids.
There might be something to what Alex said, but when it comes to those Horrendous Evils, that sort of appeal seems lame. A parent will let kids bicker and fight, but when they get the shotgun out, intervenes.
Mike: Pardon me for pressing this, but I am a little confused. it seems God could intervene without intervening in the act of will at all, but only w/respect to the consequences of that act. Like tilting the bullet a little to the right or left. If moral responsibility pertains to what we will, God's intervention leaves that intact.
But we are less like property and more like children, and it is an even worse parent who lets the neighbor come by and beat up his kids.
I suppose that depends on the reasons. I mean, He did let the neighbors come by and beat up his kid. Perhaps there are redemptive reasons for allowing suffering in general. Maybe the key is in tying suffering in general to redemption.
I'm obviously sympathetic to the position you've taken, since I've taken it myself in print. More than once! But now I'm trying to think out loud about other ways to see this extraordinarily difficult problem.
Mike: I will have to check out your work on this. I have been impressed by Marilyn Adams's work. I think she has a deep understanding of the extent and nature of the problem, whether her deep Christology is the answer... I don't know yet.
Hi everyone,
Regarding God and excuses: perhaps some FW Defenders would focus on the earlier stages in the performance of moral evil, and claim that God’s failure to curtail the freedom of an agent would be inexcusable in cases where He foreknew (allowing that He could) that her freedom would be exercised in a such manner. These defenders would still advocate FW in the exercise of moral good, since in these cases it clearly has an intrinsic worth that elevates the moral beauty of the action. For instance, the woman who dives in the river to save a drowning child because that is her free choice is more estimable than she who is simply pushed in.
Correspondingly, FW exercised in the performance of moral evil makes the action worse. The woman who shoots a child under coercion (because she has a gun pointed at her head) is less blameworthy than she who does so freely. If FW had intrinsic value like cases, then we should believe that evil freely performed is mitigated by the freedom involved in its occurrence; but this goes against law and common sense.
Perhaps such Defenders might believe that God’s having excuses in the way proposed permits evils of the very worst kind, from which, they might say, a loving God would shrink.
Just a thought. Thanks.
The value of having creatures with free will is the same with or without God. Consider this thought-experiment. Suppose we could place a computer chip in every infant's brain that would prevent them from ever performing a bad action. Would the resulting world be a good one? There's not much merit in performing actions that are good when there's no alternative.
One more thought experiment. Suppose God has a choice between W letting moral agents freely choose their lives, for good or ill, and then expressing perfect justice relative those choices or W' letting agents choose only those actions that are on balance good, and allowing all universally in heaven. Which is a better world?
Hi Mike,
Computer chip in the brain preventing moral evil: a better world? Well, it looks as if freedom (to do evil) has been compromised, but whether or not for the better, perhaps we’d better ask, e.g., the parents of all those shot by teenagers wielding firearms, the families of Mugabe’s victims and those of the many who died in the holocaust. For the sake of putting up with your chip, I think the world would be a better place without these evils.
Consider also those in the past who have acted as though they were so enchipped: Albert Schweitzer, Martin Luther King Jr, Mother Teresa. I think these would say that (in some sense) God forbade them to do evil – either by the power of His word as spoken in the Bible (which they took seriously), or by revelation, or by some other divine means. Either way, we could look upon the situation that their freedom was compromised in a way that, say, Ted Bundy’s was not. Are these people any less morally praiseworthy than he reprehensible?
Having the freedom to do (only) good doesn’t mean ‘doing only good’. One would also have the freedom to refrain from so doing. So there is still choice.
Finally, I’d say W’ is a far better world. I don’t see how it could be advantageous to God to create beings on whom He intends to shower divine grace (as R.M. Adams has argued) and then punish some of them only for employing the gift of freedom in ways He has made possible.
Thanks for your time.