References:

(1) “Evil and Omnipotence” by J. L. Mackie in Mind, 1955, pp. 200-212

(2) “Stand Firm” by Paul M. Gould, Travis Dickenson, and R. Keith Loftin.

(3) Rene Descartes formulated the concept of “necessary truth” such that a statement is “necessarily true” if it is logically impossible to deny it (that is, to believe it to be false).

(4) In terms of the problem of evil, an important distinction is often made between a defense and a theodicy.

(5) A theodicy is a term Leibniz coined from the combination of the Greek, theos, God, and dike, justice, righteous, so it indicates “ a justification of God. It is a philosophical position that deals with the issue of evil in the light of the traditional view of God’s existence and nature, that is, of an all-good, all-powerful God against the seemingly incompatible existence of evil in the world. Its goal is to give a PLAUSIBLE or reasonable explanation as to why God permits evil.

(6) A defense, by contrast, is only intended to give a POSSIBLE explanation as to why God permits evil.

(7) I examine J. L. Mackie’s and Alex Rosenberg’s objection to Alvin Plantinga’s free will defense.

(8) They ask: Couldn’t God create free but morally perfect individuals, individuals who would always freely choose the good?

(9) Their objection is totally misguided: first, because of their erroneous idea of evil; second, because of their erroneous assumption that God could create something different from Him that is perfect; third, that imposing the limitation on humans so that they always must choose good is contrary to the idea of free will; and fourth, erroneously assuming that God can create any conceivable world no matter how illogical.

(10) There are 2 problems with this demand that God disallow evil. The first is logical. The second is personal.

(11) If God is perfect, then anything different from Him, in any way, is no longer perfect. That means anything that God creates is, by definition, different from Him and must itself be less than perfect.

(12) There are 4 possible types of worlds God could have created: 1. No world at all. 2. A robotic world where everyone must choose good. 3. An amoral world where there is no such thing as good and evil. 4. A moral world with free will where love is possible but also hate, where pleasure is possible but also pain, where good is possiblen but also suffering and evil.

(13) For God to preclude even the possibility of evil, He must either not create anything at all, or create something utterly pointless.

(14) Once a person accepts the idea that evil has to be possible in order for us to have a meaningful free will, the next (atheistic) step is to criticize God for allowing too much evil or the wrong kind of evil.

(15) We cannot say, logically, that if God does not act according to our moral preferences, then He Himself cannot exist in moral perfection. What that claim would do is instead make the critic of God the ultimate standard of morality!

(16) God never promises to make everyone’s life easier or better, nor does He promise to alter cause and effect simply to satisfy our moral whims. But He did say, "My grace is sufficient for you," and He did say, “Come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need,”

(17) “On Guard” by William Lane Craig.

This is episode 100.