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\nGary Hill<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\n
Portrayal of the Christian God as a sort of chimera with both benevolent and malevolent intention toward us is decidedly unfashionable. This was not always the case. Little more than a century ago Christian children’s books were replete with tales of the dark side of God and the monstrous evils he would visit on naughty boys and girls. The appropriately named Catholic priest John Furniss (1809-1865), for example, wrote a number of such books, which were published by his church and sold at no profit by the Redemptorist Fathers, an order devoted to preaching to the poor. In all, four million copies of his books were printed, some titles posthumously. The following extracts are from ‘The Sight Of Hell’ (1874):<\/p>\n
“<\/em>But listen! There is the sound just like that of a kettle boiling. Is it really a kettle boiling? No. Then what is it? Hear what it is. The blood is boiling in the scalding veins of that boy. The brain is boiling and bubbling in his head. The marrow is boiling in his bones………..A little child is this red hot oven. Hear how it screams to come out! See how it turns and twists itself about in the fire! It beats its head against the roof of the oven. It stamps its little feet on the floor. You can see on the face of this little child what you see on the faces of all in Hell, despair, desperate and horrible<\/em>.”<\/em><\/p>\n The book boasted an approbation from William Meagher, the Vicar-General of Dublin, who remarked that he found:<\/p>\n “.<\/em>……….nothing whatsoever in it contrary to the Doctrine of Holy Faith; but, on the contrary, a great deal to charm.<\/em>“<\/em><\/p>\n Islam also portrays a God of such pathological vindictiveness. The terrible punishments that will be inflicted on infidels and the immoral are described in the Qur’an along with the promise that believers will be able to look down from Paradise at their sufferings and gloat for eternity. Note the obvious moral contradiction here; on the one hand moral virtuosity plays a role in getting you to Paradise, yet the place seems to be purpose built for sadists who would enjoy watching others suffer eternal torment. In the case of Christianity, at least, a Furniss-style approach to proselytising is unlikely to be acceptable today. A general consensus in contemporary Christianity assumes at least a tacit appreciation that somewhere between the Old and New Testaments God matured from, at worst, a psychotic tyrant or, at best, a selfish, surly child exhibiting regular destructive temper tantrums to a (relatively) mature, more laid back adult. Indeed, if modern clinical psychologists were presented with notes detailing the behaviours and attitudes of the Old Testament God as a blind case study they would have confidently diagnose an individual exhibiting psychopathy\/sociopathy, narcissism, disorganised thinking and poor attention to detail.<\/p>\n Accordingly, the epicentre of evil needed to be shifted from God to humans. No longer is evil perceived to be evidence of God’s omnipotent psychopathy and difficulty with anger management as described in Isaiah 45:7:<\/p>\n “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these<\/em>.”<\/p>\n As well as Amos 3:6: and Job 2:10:<\/p>\n “Does evil befall a city and the Lord hath not done it?<\/em>“<\/p>\n “Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?<\/em>“<\/p>\n However, although God is no longer considered as capricious as he once was, he still remains unaccountable for his actions, whereas humans are definitely accountable.\u00a0So it is God’s alleged benevolence and care for human welfare which is now employed as Christianity’s primary marketing tool (e.g., Moreland, 2009a). Hence, in the United States at least, it is difficult to find modern Christians denying outright that their God, if not omnibenevolent (i.e., having an infinite capacity for goodness, love, mercy, justice and compassion) is capable of great benevolence should he feel us deserving (e.g., Barret, Kurian & Johnson, 2001; Froese & Bader, 2010). Citing Biblical passages such as Psalm 100:5 is common:<\/p>\n “<\/em>For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations<\/em>.”<\/em><\/p>\n and Psalm 107:1<\/p>\n “<\/em>Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; for His loving kindness is everlasting<\/em>.”<\/em><\/p>\n Benevolence is inferred from a number of other passages that describe God’s love (e.g., 1 John 4:8; 1 John 4:16; Peter 3:9; Corinthians 13:11-14; James 1:13 in conjunction with James 1:17). As C S Lewis tells us in his widely cited treatise on Christian apologetics ‘Mere Christianity’ (1952), God is\u00a0“quite definitely good”<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0“loves love and hates hatred”<\/em>. Similarly, there are a number of passages in the Qur’an that appear to show that Allah can also be benevolent (i.e., entirely loving and merciful, e.g., 1:1-3; 2:143; 2:173; 2:218). Indeed all but one of the 114 chapters of the Qur’an start with the phrase “Allah is merciful and compassionate.<\/em>” However, those who accept the benevolence of God must also be aware of the obvious discrepancy between their characterisation of God and the existence of suffering. For, by definition, we can only describe a being as benevolent and caring if it meets certain behavioural characteristics we are able to agree upon and recognise as benevolent. Indeed, the one area of divine activity that you would expect to see some evidence of a maximally caring God would surely be the minimisation and amelioration of suffering of those beings for whom he is responsible.<\/p>\n Definitions and degrees of suffering are necessarily subjective, so I assume a theory-neutral definition of suffering that embraces all forms and degrees. I define suffering as any physical and\/or psychological experience that is unwanted by the sufferer and\/or causes some demonstrable harm to the sufferer, whether caused by the actions of oneself, other persons, natural (or supernatural) phenomena. Normally, I would refrain from using the term ‘evil’ because I do not accept that it has any ontological reality or merit and because it tends to presuppose the existence of a God. However, because the term is common parlance in discussions of theodicy I use it whenever the theological notion is intended.<\/p>\n It is worth mentioning at this point that the fact that suffering exists holds nothing inherently contradictory or otherwise illogical for the atheist. It is a relatively simple thought-exercise for an atheist to suggest tenable scenarios whereby an omnipotent and benevolent God might create a universe without suffering, including, but not limited to, his not creating life in the first place (see e.g., Benatar, 1997). More realistically, those lacking belief in a deity are apt to accept a universe that is intrinsically indifferent to its inhabitants and containing no vested interest in making our lives pain-free. Evidence suggesting this is not hard to come by; the vast bulk of the universe seems hostile to life as we know it, and on this planet evolution by natural selection so obviously produces species well-suited for fecundity, not a lack of suffering or any form of happiness. Indeed, the mechanisms for the diversification of life are ridiculously wasteful, with perhaps 99% of all species that have ever lived now extinct. Shakespeare acknowledged such a universe “emptied of divinity<\/em>” in King Lear when Gloucester laments:<\/p>\n “<\/em>As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods. They kill us for their sport.<\/em>“<\/em><\/p>\n As did Richard Dawkins, more comprehensively, in ‘River Out Of Eden’ (1995):<\/p>\n “<\/em>In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.<\/em>“<\/em><\/p>\n Note: This in no way invokes the naturalistic fallacy. Just because the universe is indifferent toward us, it does not logically follow that humans should be indifferent to one another, or even to other species. It may surprise some theists to know that Dawkins’ view is not exclusively an atheist position, as Christian theologian John Hick (1966) confirms:<\/p>\n “………..in a world that is to be the scene of compassionate love and self-giving for others, suffering must fall upon mankind with something of the haphazardness and inequity that we now experience. It must be apparently unmerited, pointless, and incapable of being morally rationalized<\/em>.”<\/p>\n I find Hick’s viewpoint to be particularly worrisome. He seems to imply that we should readily accept and worship a God regardless of the amount of suffering that he causes us to experience and that no amount of suffering can ever falsify the notion of the existence of God. Yet those who trust an authority figure, no matter how they behave toward us, are clearly in an abusive relationship. Trust should be earned. The person who denies this abdicates their moral discernment. Finally, Jack Gilbert cynically observes in his poem ‘A Brief For The Defense’ (2005):<\/p>\n“<\/em>Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies Unlike Hick, there is no need for the atheist to invoke any supernatural power or moral purpose to explain why suffering exists and, as far as I can tell, there is not a single philosophical stance lacking a supernatural component that claims any moral purpose to suffering. Put simply, suffering seems unavoidable for all life forms on this planet, something recognised by Ancient Greek and Buddhist scholars years before any Christian attempts at theodicy. Pantheistic traditions too, generally regard suffering and and evil as inevitably woven into the fabric of the universe. Some philosophers, such as Liebnitz, and theists, particularly those of the\u00a0Bah\u00e1’\u00ed faith, as well as some Christians influenced by Augustine (354-430 CE; about whom the political philosopher Larry Siedentop (2014) wrote\u00a0“it would be hardly too much to say \u00a0that he invented Christianity as a religion”<\/em>), have attempted to argue that evil does not actually exist and is better conceptualised as simply the privation of good, in a similar manner to sickness being the absence of health. The problem with this view is that it holds no convincing explanatory value as to why we should necessarily accept the notion that some objective good actually does exist. Why not turn the idea around? Surely it is just as reasonable to consider evil to be the default position (as Buddhists do with their concept of suffering in Samsara) with good viewed as the privation of evil or suffering. In any case, the whole notion of an ‘absence of good’ is obviously erroneous in practical terms, as philosopher Wallace Matson \u00a0(1965) so ably illustrates:<\/p>\n “<\/em>It may console the paralytic to be told that paralysis is mere lack of mobility……..it is not clear, however, that this type of comfort is available to the sufferer of malaria………his trouble is not that he lacks anything, but rather that he has too much of something, namely protozoans of the genus Plasmodium<\/em>.”<\/em><\/p>\n It would also seem to be the case that if evil is perceived as the absence of good, and so really doesn’t exist, why is there such a preoccupation with evil and sin in the Abrahamic religious traditions? The default position, or null hypothesis, is surely that, although we can often identify proximate reasons for specific instances of suffering, suffering as a concept has no underlying intrinsic or objective meaning or purpose. It just is. Thus the burden of proof that suffering does hold some meaning or purpose lies firmly, and only, with those who claim there exists a benevolent God. As granted by, for example, Norman L. Geisler and Winfried Corduan (1988):<\/p>\n “<\/em>Unnecessary evil of any kind would certainly be incongruous with an absolutely perfect God.<\/em>“<\/em><\/p>\n And Terence Penelhum (1996):<\/p>\n “<\/em>It is logically inconsistent for a theist to admit the existence of a pointless evil<\/em>.”<\/em><\/p>\n Theodicy is the name given to\u00a0post-hoc<\/em>\u00a0rationalisations for why a loving God allows suffering to occur and to what end. It is worth mentioning that this ‘problem of evil’, as it is usually coined, is peculiar to comparatively modern monotheistic views of God. In polytheistic religions the gods tend to be variable in terms of their attitudes to mortals. Some gods are perceived as kindly, others brutal and vindictive, some indifferent to the world, and even others as incompetent and comical. Polytheistic religions generally have no ‘problem of evil’. Suffering can easily be explained by multiple, often uncooperative gods, each of which has sovereignty over different elements of the universe. The pantheons of comic book gods in the Ancient Greek (7 gods and 5 goddesses according to the Olympian tradition; see Buxton, 2004) \u00a0and Norse religions (41 gods and 51 goddesses mentioned in the ‘Prose Edda’; Byock, 2005) are invariably devoid of any ‘omni’ labels yet were no doubt considered to be as logically coherent in their respective cultures as some deem the Abrahamic God is today. Indeed, it remains the case that any contemporary logical argument marshalled in favour of a single God can be cogently employed to favour multiple gods.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, the logical inconsistency between claims of a benevolent monotheistic God and the experience of suffering has long been recognised. The most famous formulation of this is widely attributed to the Ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BCE; the ‘Epicurean Paradox’), although some scholars believe this citation to be erroneous as the earliest written version is found in the writings of Sextus Empiricus (c.160-210 CE). This version is from David Hume in his ‘Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion’ (1776):<\/p>\n “<\/em>Epicurus’s old questions are yet unanswered. Is he [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil<\/em>?”<\/em><\/p>\n A more formal modern rendering goes something like this:<\/p>\n Some consider that a possible way around the ‘Epicurean Paradox’ is to posit the ontological importance and necessity for our possessing free will. A number of theologians have done this, but the Christian theologian Alvin Plantinga’s ‘free will defence’ is probably considered the most erudite. He argues (outlined in detail in his 1974 book ‘The Nature Of Necessity’, and based on much earlier thinking from Augustine):<\/p>\n Thus, by introducing the concept of free will into Christian theology Plantinga has attempted not only to excuse God for our suffering but endorsed the notion of a transfer of evil from God to humanity. I imagine this type of thinking would have been highly problematic for some Christians as, at first sight, it appears to be a demotion from an omni-everything God to that of a semi-potent observer of our thoughts and behaviours. Although the ‘free will defence’ is considered by most Christians to be a full-blown theodicy, Plantinga denies this on the grounds that theodicies claim unreasonable certainty. He argues that, as a mere defence, there is no onus on his argument being either true or plausible; the mere possibility that it might be true (as in a\u00a0“broadly logical”<\/em>\u00a0possibility) gives it merit. As such, he is aiming to ascertain no more than\u00a0“what God’s reason might possibly be”<\/em>. The cautious nature of Plantinga’s approach, however, is certainly not shared by some of his comrades in faith, such as Robert Adams (1985):<\/p>\n “.<\/em>…….it is fair to say that Plantinga has solved this problem. That is, he has argued convincingly for the consistency of good and evil.<\/em>“<\/em><\/p>\n And William Hasker (2007) who makes the surprising claim that there:<\/p>\n “<\/em>is at present a widespread philosophical consensus, shared by atheists as well as theists, that this problem has been\u00a0satisfactorily answered by Alvin Plantinga’s Free Will Defense<\/em>.”\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n However, as I intend to argue, Plantinga hasn’t solved this problem, and certainly not in the minds of most atheists, if there was ever a problem to begin with. All he has done is to have created a story acceptable to believers in which a particular conceptualisation of God is no longer in logical contradiction with the reality we all face. A story in which God and evil can happily coexist. Philosophers Julian Baggini and Peter Fosl (2003) have created a similarly logical story using cheese, cats and students:<\/p>\n Logical arguments that substitute ‘cheese’ and ‘cats’ with the terms ‘God’ and ‘evil’ in their premises are equally suspect. The problem lies in that Plantinga’s argument can be considered a\u00a0petitio principii.\u00a0<\/em>He\u00a0presupposes, not only the existence of God, but a particular conceptualisation of God (i.e., one that is benevolent), in order to conclude the characteristic conditions that might constrain such a God. The problem is, we cannot demonstrate the existence of an entity, never mind its characteristics, by logic alone\u00a0(in contrast to well-defined and universally accepted abstract concepts such as numbers and mathematical axioms). I am confident we can all agree that cheese, cats and philosophy students are fully coherent, observable entities; their existence and characteristics have been repeatedly and independently confirmed. Even so, I cannot accept that Meg the cat is more intelligent than any philosophy student, no matter the validity of the logic that tells me so, because I have independent, replicated evidence that this is not true. Plantinga on the other hand, can proffer no independent, replicated evidence that would allow us to accept the subject of his premises. His evidence cannot be demonstrated by logic alone. Truth is always discovered, never invented; it is a property (or not) of statements that exists at some particular time or because of some state of affairs. Furthermore, Plantinga’s convenient use of the ‘defence’ label, for something that is in all actuality indistinguishable from a theodicy, seems an attempt to immunise the minutiae of his claims from any examination that would undoubtedly reveal their inherent weaknesses. As the late philosopher David Lewis quipped (1993):<\/p>\n “If somehow it could be made to explain why God permits evil, the hypothesis that pigs fly would be good enough for a mere defence.”<\/em><\/p>\n Lewis’s frivolity harbours a serious point. Plantinga’s approach probably doesn’t faze those Christians who routinely defend their faith without ever seriously examining why they hold such faith in the first place. They have no requirement for a theodicy to be compatible with reality because the majority of theistic believers did not come to, nor do they sustain their beliefs\u00a0via<\/em>\u00a0empirical evidence and rational argumentation. The majority of adherents to any religion are taught the central ideas of the ideology well before they are able to read let alone analyse logical arguments (indeed, probably the majority of theists who have ever lived have been illiterate). Because of this, theodicies are rarely devised with the unbeliever in mind, though they are sometimes written in a style that pretends otherwise. They are more an attempt to convince believers that the cognitive dissonance they experience of their loving God allowing suffering is no reason to abandon their faith. If there is such a thing as an atheist mindset it would surely thrive on provisional beliefs and be more likely to accept doubt. We are prepared to\u00a0“butt our heads against some stone wall of utter incomprehension” <\/em>as philosopher Dan Dennett (1995) writes. In contrast, the theistic believer seems to require consistent explanatory closure at any epistemological cost. Theologians revel at providing this; they are masters of the sleight of mind and sometimes it appears as if they can persuade believers of anything, including the notion that something is likely even if there is no evidence for it (for a prime example of this, see the interview with Plantinga conducted by Gutting, 2014). For too many theists, reason becomes reliable only when it submits to revelation, interpreted by someone they trust. But if merely\u00a0“broadly logical”\u00a0<\/em>is an acceptable criterion for an idea to hold respectability, how on earth can theists ever hope to discern anything that is true?<\/p>\n Just as importantly, there is no explicit mention of free will in the Bible. It was only ever a rudimentary concept in Ancient Greece, and certainly not discussed to the extent of early Buddhist teachings such as the Pali Canon (which seems not to identify any definitive conclusion, though it certainly leans toward determinism). Indeed, compared to contemporary fiction, stories such as those that comprise Homer’s ‘Iliad’ are largely devoid of characters who doubt or equivocate when faced with a moral dilemma. They simply act according to their nature, good or bad, as if they have little choice but to do otherwise (see Malik, 2014 for some insightful discussion on this point). Christianity had little to say on the matter until the fourth century CE, when Augustine began advocating human free will in order to better promote the notion that we are responsible for our actions. Where free will is inferred in the Bible, it is usually concerned simply with whether we should accept the authority of God or not. Indeed, if the Bible alone was consulted on this subject, the concept of free will might never have surfaced in Christianity for there are numerous passages suggesting strongly that the fate of human beings has been predetermined by God. For example, Ephesians 1 states:<\/p>\n “………He chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.”<\/em><\/p>\n And a little later in Ephesians 2:<\/p>\n “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so no-one can boast.”<\/em><\/p>\n Other passages suggesting our lives have been predestined are\u00a0Acts 13:48, Romans 8:29-30, 2 Timothy 1:9, Thessalonians 2:11-13, Jude 4, and Romans 9:11-22. God has\u00a0“predestined, called, justified and glorified……..every leaf that falls is because of God’s will”<\/em>\u00a0as John Calvin (1536) put it. In his ‘Institutes of the Christian Religion’, Calvin implies that any choices we make as individuals, freely willed or not, are irrelevant to God. Although the concept of predestination is nowadays deliberately played down by many Christian theologians (see e.g., Craig, 2010), a strong sense of determinism prevailed until relatively recently, even within mainstream European Christianity. As recently as 1938, the First Commission on Doctrine of the Church of England was affirming a hard determinist view stating:<\/p>\n “…….that the whole course of events is under the control of God………logically this involves the affirmation that there is no event, and no aspect of any event, even those due to sin and so contrary to the Divine will, which falls outside the scope of His purposeful activity.”<\/em><\/p>\n This included the notion of Biblical prophesy, much touted by fundamentalist Christians today as example of Biblical inerrancy. Belief in fulfilled prophecy relies strongly on acceptance of predestination. For, to come to fruition, specific people, living in specific places at specific times must perform specific acts for a specific purpose, as if\u00a0“the whole course of events is under the control of God”<\/em>. Their thoughts and behaviours must have been fixed beforehand in complete opposition to their free will.\u00a0Biblical examples of this state of affairs are found in e.g., Isiah 39: 5-7, 44:28 and 45:4; Jeremiah 25:11; Matthew 27: 3-5; and Acts 21:11.\u00a0Even anti-Calvinist minded Christian theologians such as William Lane Craig maintain that God has a\u00a0hand in even the most trivial of supposedly freely-willed human endeavours. In a recent interview (Shellnut, 2014) he had this to say regarding praying for a particular outcome at sporting events:<\/p>\n “..…I see nothing the matter with praying for the outcome of these things. They’re not a matter of indifference to God. God cares about these little things, so it’s appropriate…….Nothing happens without either God’s direct will or at least his permission of that event. That includes every fumble, every catch, every run……These are of importance to God as well, even though they seem trivial<\/em>.”<\/p>\n Despite the doctrine of Calvin and the prior doctrine of the Church of England, however, a strict acceptance of predestination is highly problematic for much of Christianity. If God has predestined those who will receive his grace, then on what basis can Christian ministries aver that a freely chosen faith in Christ will be rewarded with eternal life? And how does a belief in predestination equate with the notion of a benevolent God? After all, why would a loving God predestine some people (including innocent babies and infants) to the everlasting torture of Hell? A Calvinist interpretation would seem to suggest that God has allowed some people to be born for no other purpose than to suffer eternal damnation (a view which should nullify, to any reasonable person, the notion that religion has value because it brings comfort).<\/p>\n All that said, to the majority of Christians, the ‘free will defence’ does appear to be a\u00a0“<\/em>broadly logical<\/em>“<\/em>\u00a0possibility. However, there is an immediately identifiable problem in that the premises do not define free will. Indeed, like the concept of God, there is no universally acceptable definition of free will, other than presupposing that, when active, it has some\u00a0finis operantis<\/em>\u00a0or goal of some sort. A typical definition (see Searle, 2001, for discussions using this type of definition) suggests that:<\/p>\n “<\/em>Whatever we chose yesterday or last year, we could choose otherwise (all things being equal) if we were to somehow relive that time<\/em>.”<\/em><\/p>\n As someone seriously interested in how the universe works, I find this kind of\u00a0laissez-faire<\/em>\u00a0definition so deeply unsatisfying as to be a waste of time. The problem with this definition is threefold. First, it is completely unfalsifiable because reliving ‘that time’ is impossible. Second, if we were perfectly able to make a different choice second time around, even though all variables are identical (all things being equal), how can we then differentiate between a freely made choice and a determined choice? Third, this definition seems to be self-defeating; if we desire to do other than our will has already chosen and acted upon, then in what way can we identify ourselves as coherent, autonomous selves? Although this type of definition might be convenient for thought experiments or the theologian arguing against, say, Calvinist notions of predestination, it is obviously grossly inadequate for any more serious analysis, e.g., for the purposes of psychological or neuroscientific research. Plantinga’s chosen definition (1974b), however, is even more ludicrously libertarian:<\/p>\n “.<\/em>…….if a person is free with respect to a given action, then he is free to perform that action and free to refrain from performing it; no antecedent conditions and\/or causal laws determine that he will perform the action, or that he won’t.<\/em>“<\/em><\/p>\n Echoing the late libertarian philosopher Roderick Chisholm (1964):<\/p>\n “<\/em>Each of us, when we act, is a prime mover unmoved. In doing what we do, we cause certain events to happen, and nothing – or no one – causes us to cause these events to happen<\/em>.”<\/em><\/p>\n Another Christian philosopher, J.P. Moreland (2009b) concurs with Plantinga and Chisholm in his description of each person as a:<\/p>\n “<\/em>first mover………not subject to laws in the initiation of its action……..such an initiation is a first, spontaneous action, not caused by a prior event, it amounts to the absolute origination of initiatory movement…….the uncaused cause of your own actions<\/em>.”<\/em><\/p>\n Basing his definition on little more than the fact that:<\/p>\n “<\/em>…………people the world over are simply directly aware of themselves exercising active power………On the basis of such awareness, we form the justified belief \u00a0that we exercise originative, free, active power, for the sake of teleological goals<\/em>.”<\/em><\/p>\n So we have a\u00a0“justified belief”<\/em>\u00a0on the basis that we are\u00a0“simply, directly aware”<\/em>? Moreland must surely be aware that phenomenology and introspection are far from reliable methodologies by which to uncover empirical truths. For example, the diametrically opposed notions of Sartre’s idea that we are“condemned to be free”<\/em>\u00a0and the determinism inherent in the Buddhist concept of ‘dependent origination’ were both arrived at using introspective methods (Flanagan, 2011). As William James (1890) humorously commented, introspection is akin to:<\/p>\n “…………trying to turn up the gas quickly enough to see how the darkness looks.”<\/em><\/p>\n But this is not the only reason definitions such as Plantinga’s and Moreland’s should ring both philosophical and scientific alarm bells. In what other field of investigation (bar, perhaps, some interpretations of quantum mechanics) would we accept physical and mental phenomena characterised as having\u00a0“no antecedent conditions”<\/em>, never mind a biological organism being an\u00a0“uncaused cause”<\/em>\u00a0of its actions. Ironically, claims that we possess Plantinga-style free will\u00a0fall dreadfully foul of one of the current favourite ‘proofs’ for the existence of God. The Kalam Cosmological Argument in it’s classical form (see e.g., Hossein, 1993) states:<\/p>\n So, if causality has a beginning (as it logically must, according to the Kalam argument, otherwise the claimed apparent illogicality of an infinite regress must be the case), that beginning must be God, as he is the only possible being capable of\u00a0ex nihilo\u00a0<\/em>creation (Craig, 1979). Yet here we have, from the very same people who champion the Kalam Argument, passionate arguments that God is not the only being capable of acausal action. Human beings are also\u00a0“prime movers”<\/em>, the\u00a0“uncaused cause of your own actions”,\u00a0<\/em>that have\u00a0“no antecedent conditions.”\u00a0<\/em>It appears that some theologians want to have their free will and eat it too. The notion that human beings have the capability to pop thoughts, wants, wishes, desires, choices, volitions or actions into existence, without any antecedent conditions, is worse than magical ideation. Even a fantasy writer who invents a new mythological creature must endow that being with morphological or other characteristics with which her reader will be familiar. Without such antecedent qualities, the mythological being would be incoherent. Yet accusations are often made that Plantinga-style definitions of free will are carefully chosen by atheists for criticism simply because they are so easy to refute. Yet, as we have seen, these are the very definitions employed by sophisticated, modern Christian theologians, all of whom are incorrigible dualists. How, then, can critiquing these views be considered as attacking a straw-man?<\/p>\n Free will theodicy follows an apparently esteemed tradition in religion; explaining one variable (in this case suffering) by producing another one (free will) that equally requires explanation (ironically then claiming that there is no explanation; we just do it). This brings us to the next problem for Plantinga and indeed the majority of modern Christian theology. They simply presuppose the existence and efficacy of free will, regardless of the definition. They have no choice but to do so. If we deny free will, for whatever reason, and take this view to its logical conclusion, then the notion that human beings hold any responsibility for their actions becomes questionable and the moral base of Christian theology collapses in its entirety. Without free will who consciously decides whether to have faith in God, or not, or to adhere to a divinely commanded moral code, or not? In the absence of free will we would certainly still be capable of performing actions that harmed or benefited others, but God would be left with no rationale or moral basis by which to judge these actions, anymore than we would hold a cyclone responsible for devastating a town or a computer for executing program code. Some influential theologians, such as William Lane Craig (2010), have argued against both Calvinism and determinism in general on subjective grounds, pointing out that if\u00a0someone were to accept a deterministic universe, that decision, by definition, would have been predetermined,\u00a0a la<\/em>\u00a0Calvinism, and\u00a0“a sort of vertigo sets in”<\/em>. But even if we do possess Plantinga-style free will, it does not follow that we do not live in a deterministic universe. Inherent in the definition of free will is the idea that human beings are somehow able to circumvent the causal constraints that apply to the rest of the universe. If the rest of the universe was not subject to causal constraints in the first place, what would be the point of postulating that we have free will? Whether the universe (and ourselves) is deterministic is essentially an empirical question and rejecting evidence because you don’t like its possible consequences is ultimately a futile and dishonest act; universally satisfactory explanations have no requirement to be individually satisfying explanations.<\/p>\n Even though Calvinist (or it’s Catholic equivalent in the form of Jansenists; see Abercrombie, 1936) interpretations of scripture appear to be effortlessly sidestepped in the minds of many believers, claims that we possess free will are not without further logical disconnects. For, if we actually do possess Plantinga-style free will, it logically follows that God cannot be omniscient. If our thoughts and actions have no antecedents then it must be the case that God continually acquires knowledge about us, including our thoughts, bit by bit, over our lifespan, in order to be able to predict our thoughts and actions. Thus, at some points in our lifespan God cannot be omniscient with regard to each of us. In reply to such an idea, Christian geneticist Francis Collins had this to say (in a written debate with Richard Dawkins, God vs. Science, Time Magazine, November, 2006):<\/p>\n “<\/em>By being outside of nature, God is also outside of space and time. Hence, at the moment of the creation of the universe, God could also have activated evolution, with full knowledge of how it would turn out, perhaps even including our having this conversation. The idea that he could both foresee the future and also give us spirit and free will to carry out our own desires becomes entirely acceptable…………My God is not improbable to me. He has no need of a creation story for himself or to be fine-tuned by something else. God is the answer to all of those “How must it have come to be” questions.<\/em>.”<\/em><\/p>\n Collins is attempting, as theists so often do, to circle their wagons around a raft of contradictory notions; in this case, God exists yet had no beginning and he predetermined the universe yet gave us the ability to act with free will. This appeal to disregard the laws of logic is an interesting tactic for a Christian for two reasons. First, it is a view shared with the Islamic faith. In much Islamic thought Allah is deemed to transcend reason and to exist somehow above and beyond logic. This notion is most notable\u00a0in Asha’rite philosophy which states that logic is no more than “the slave of Allah<\/em>” (see e.g., Frank, 1984). When it comes to characterising Allah, concepts such as\u00a0necessity, logic and explanation simply break down.\u00a0Allah’s omnipotence and will is absolute. He is completely free and cannot be bound up in reason, so we are all wasting our time thinking on these things. Like Collins’ assertion that God can be both omniscient and allow us free will, if Allah wishes that 1 + 1 = 3 he can simply make it be so and it is. However, if we grant that God really does exist in some realm that is beyond logic, then, essentially, the very characterisation of a God becomes meaningless for humans. How could any theologian provide us with evidence that there exists a God beyond logic? By using some illogical means? In contrast to Islam, Christian theology generally claims that the laws of logic are an ontological-absolute and so God too is subject to the restraints of logic (being at least partly knowable through logical and rational analysis, e.g., Swinburne, 2004). Yet, despite such assertions the fundamental laws of logic, even in the natural realm, appear to be circumvented by, for example, the nucleus of Lead-186 being able to exist in three entirely different shapes at once; a sphere, a prolate spheroid and an oblate spheroid (Andreyev et al., 2000).\u00a0So the laws of logic may not, as is sometimes claimed\u00a0ipse dixit<\/em>\u00a0by Christian theologians, be invariant, unchanging and eternal, transcending time, space and matter, and so representing a constraint on all possible realities, including their God. They may be no more than descriptions of reality garnered from our sensory experiences and so reliable only within that particular frame of space-time reference in which we have evolved.<\/p>\n The essential point I am making here is certainly not whether God is constrained by logic, or by how much. Even if such an entity exists, I doubt very much whether I could know this. It is to point out that theism, despite at least a millennium head start on science, is still not able to offer universally acceptable findings to even the most basic theological questions. There is clearly no basis whatsoever for anyone to assert that the universe (or God) is logically predicated (or not). While science uses such gaps in our knowledge as a basis for further research theists, including scientists like Collins, simply fill in the theological gaps with assertions. Yet the very success of science is predicated on the fact that scientists do not act like theologians and support their ideas with contradictory and changeable\u00a0ad hoc<\/em>\u00a0explanations and untestable hypotheses. Because he is such a good scientist we should expect a more rigorous analysis from Collins. He knows that his God is not an isotope, but allegedly, a\u00a0“full Aquinas Agent”<\/em>\u00a0(as Boyer, 2002 puts it). As such, we would expect an omniscient God not only to predict our thoughts and behaviours, but to be able to predict his own reactions to our specific thoughts and behaviours. If he can, this raises the further question as to whether God himself possesses free will (I wonder whether God can surprise himself?) or is merely fulfilling some purpose. If both ourselves and the rest of the universe truly behaved in an inherently random fashion (if such a thing were even possible), God would not be able to predict anything; or at least only make probablistic statements. Ergo, if God is omniscient it is precisely because he is observing a universe that is not random, but somewhat determined.<\/p>\n Even though Plantinga claims a\u00a0prima facie\u00a0<\/em>case for the inherent ‘goodness’ of free will, that endorsed its use by God, can we not counter by making a\u00a0prima facie\u00a0<\/em>case that suffering and evil are inherently unwanted by the majority of human beings? Of course we can. So how might the permitting of suffering resulting from our having free will ever be morally sanctioned? For Plantinga’s free will defence to make moral sense, he must further assume that our possessing free will is at least equal to, if not more important than, the absence of our suffering. Yet God is portrayed by Plantinga as accepting free will on the basis of logic and then imbuing us with free will at an enormous cost to ourselves, i.e., if you belief in Christianity, the risk of our experiencing an indefinite and potentially infinite amount of suffering. As to why God places such high value on our possessing free will is never made explicit. He merely tells us so. As did Augustine:<\/p>\n “………as a runaway horse is better than a stone which does not run away because it lacks self-movement and sense perception, so the creature is more excellent which sins by free will than that which does not sin because it has free will.”<\/em><\/p>\n According to Augustine’s analogy, it is somehow better to have free will and, as a result, risk wilful sinning and face the consequences of eternal torture, than to have no free will and so be unable to sin, and so never have to face the prospect of eternal torture. This does not strike me as a decision made by a benevolent God. It appears that both God and Augustine were unable to\u00a0“stop to think of the victim’s below the horses hooves”<\/em>, as David Lewis (1999) so succinctly comments.\u00a0How often have we heard someone say\u00a0“there but for the grace of God, go I”.<\/em>\u00a0This sentiment unequivocally expresses the widely held notion that some people receive God’s grace more than others. Not necessarily as a reward for something they have done in their lives, but just because God has chosen it to be that way. It’s a tacit acceptance of predeterminism. If God doles out free will to human beings in variable proportions, as he does with countless other attributes, the result would not simply be variability among human characteristics. If the capacity to exercise free will varies among people, then those thoughts and behaviours not resulting from free will must derive from some form of predestination, for nobody acts in a completely random fashion. Therefore, if Plantinga’s free will defence is at all credible we should predict none or little individual variation in the capacity to exercise free will. And, for the theist, if a differential does exist, it follows that it must result from some divine purpose. Unfortunately, this question is, to some extent at least, empirically testable and, not surprisingly, Plantinga’s synopsis is again found wanting. Not everyone enjoys the same degree of or ability to exercise free will. It follows then that some people’s thoughts and behaviours must be determined to a greater or lesser degree than others.<\/p>\n Demographic analyses of the human population bear this out. Carl Haub (2004) has (conservatively) estimated that the total number of human beings ever born to be 108 billion. Extrapolating from historical population estimates Hill (1995) has also estimated the percentage of all females who have ever lived and died before the age of five years. It is astonishingly high; between 44-60%, and male infant mortality rates are invariably higher than female (similarly, the total mortality rate of women during childbirth is estimated to be 5-15%). The number of children who have succumbed to malaria alone has been estimated by Finkel (2007) to be 20 billion.\u00a0Paul (2009) has further calculated that there must have been somewhere in the order of 350-500 billion human conceptions to date. We can add to this figure the rate of spontaneous abortion (because a foetus is an ensouled person in the Christian view), conservatively estimated at 20% of all conceptions. When all this is taken into account Paul (2009) estimates that only 50 billion humans have ever lived to adulthood, giving us a very conservative ratio of 7 conceptions to 1 live adult. Furthermore, it also appears that only about 3% of those conceptions have ever lived long enough, or in the right temporal era or geographical location to have been exposed to the teachings of Christianity. Thus it becomes obvious that the vast bulk of human beings conceived could not possibly have experienced anything like the free will Plantinga claims exists.<\/p>\n When discussing theodicy, theologians (and even scientists trying to be theologians) tend to ignore, be remarkably sanguine, and can even be flippant about childhood mortality. Their assumption is that children ordinarily grow up to be adults and possess free will. Physicist and priest John Polkinghorne (1998) has this to say:<\/p>\n “……suffering of the world is such that we might be tempted to think that less freedom would be a worthwhile cost to pay for less pain. But do we really wish we had been automata?”<\/em><\/p>\n While Christian biochemist Michael Behe (2007) writes:<\/p>\n “Many children die, yet many others thrive. Some people languish, but others lead full lives.”<\/em><\/p>\n Hick (1966) even more blatantly ignores the matter:<\/p>\n “Men are not to be thought of on the analogy of animal pets, but rather on the analogy of human children who are to grow to adulthood in an environment whose primary and overriding purpose is not immediate pleasure but the realization of the most valuable potentialities of human personality.”<\/em><\/p>\n Even those of us alive today, having reached adulthood, differ markedly in our ability to make choices. For example, IQ distributions approximate a Gaussian distribution and there is an obvious difference in the ability to effectively make choices between those shifted toward the right and left sides of the curve. Surely only the most ardent proponent of Plantinga-style free will would argue that physiologically-mediated intellectual abilities would not distinguish a person’s ability to exercise their free will. It goes without saying that someone who has identified ten feasible choices available for their consideration has a greater degree of free will than someone only able to identify three. In addition, people can suffer limitations on their cognition and decision making skills due to a number of adverse social and economic conditions beyond their control (e.g., Mani\u00a0et al.<\/em>, 2013). A neurologically normal, poorly educated subsistence farmer in sub-Saharan Africa whose crops have failed and whose children are dying of malnutrition and whose land is being stolen by a rebel army would have far less opportunity to exercise free will than a neurologically normal, well-educated, high-salaried individual in an economically developed nation. There are simply more choices available to one than the other. Indeed, the lives of some human beings are far more likely to be subject to the free will of others than they are to exercise any meaningful degree of free will themselves. If such a person was undergoing extreme suffering, here, now, I wonder what value many people would realistically place on their possessing free will compared to the immediate and lasting cessation of their suffering. Wouldn’t a benevolent God happily remove their free will if they offered to willingly surrender it in return for an existence without suffering?<\/p>\n Another physiological shortcoming is that we are unable to function effectively for more than a few days without a prolonged absence of free will in the form of the unconsciousness of sleep. It would appear, then, that God not only favours free will over the absence of suffering but that he further favours the need for a third of our lives to spent in unconsciousness over a continuous ability for us to employ free will. There is no logical reason why this should be\u00a0so. God could have designed human beings to be permanently awake. Such a scenario would only act to maximise our opportunities to employ free will. A finding in contradiction to Plantinga’s notion that suffering is a logical, but valuable, consequence of free will is that we are denied respite from suffering even when asleep and unable to exercise or even appreciate our free will. Cross-cultural psychological research has shown that dreams contain a higher ratio of aggression\u00a0to friendliness, a higher ratio of misfortune to good fortune, and a higher ratio of negative emotions to positive emotions. Approximately 80% of dreams are considered affectively neutral, confused or unpleasant (Domhoff, 2000; Schredl\u00a0et al<\/em>., 2004).<\/p>\n Theologians supporting the free will defence need to better detail why free will is so enormously valuable to us if they expect us to accept their reasoning. As it is, not one human being has ever made a free and informed decision to have free will, based on any theological synopsis. Paradoxically, in this regard Plantinga’s Christian-inspired view is in accordance with the atheist existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre (1943):<\/p>\n “I am responsible for everything……….except for my very responsibility………Man is condemned to be free.”<\/em><\/p>\n According to both, we have been given no choice but to make choices. We have been burdened with free will like a Biblical donkey. The unfairness and immorality of the situation of this was recognised over 300 years ago by Pierre Bayle:<\/p>\n “It is in the essence of a benefactor to refrain from giving any gift which he knows would be the ruin of the recipient……..free agency is not a good gift after all, for it has caused the ruin of the human race in Adam’s sin, the eternal damnation for the greater part of his descendants, and created a world of a dreadful deluge of moral and physical evils.”<\/em><\/p>\n The Objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand (1961) agrees with Bayle that, were it true, it would be God, not humans, who is responsible for the “ruin of the human race in Adam’s sin<\/em>“. However, like me, she denies that humans have ever been so endowed, either with original sin or with free will. In her characteristically blunt manner she writes:<\/p>\n “A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality……..A free will saddled with a tendency is like a game with loaded dice……..Do not hide behind the cowardly evasion that man is born with free will, but with a tendency to evil. If the tendency is of his choice , he cannot possess it at birth; if it is not of his choice, his will is not free.”<\/em><\/p>\n Another logical incongruity with Plantinga’s notion of free will is the widely-held claim that we are all predetermined by God to accept the ‘fact’ of his existence. In addition to our possessing free will, Plantinga (2000) argues strongly for the existence of the\u00a0‘<\/em>sensus divinitatis<\/em>‘<\/em>, an originally Calvinist notion that each person possesses an innate knowledge of God as a ‘basic belief’. As Calvin wrote in his ‘Institutes’ (1536):<\/p>\n “.<\/em>……knowledge of God is innate…….naturally engraved on the hearts of men…….a matter of instinct………every man is self-taught it from his birth……… the human mind, by natural instinct itself, possesses some sense of a deity.<\/em>“<\/em><\/p>\n This is essentially Plantinga’s fall-back position when dealing with charges that, for example, the Gospels might not be as historically accurate as is often claimed. Although he agrees that the evidence for their veracity is weak, he nevertheless claims that he can be sure of their truth because he has personally received such knowledge\u00a0via<\/em>\u00a0the\u00a0‘<\/em>sensus divinitatus<\/em>‘.\u00a0<\/em>In a debate with philosopher Dan Dennett entitled ‘Science and Religion: Are They Compatible?’\u00a0(American Philosophical Association, Chicago, 2009), Plantinga stated:<\/p>\n “<\/em>Belief in God is seldom accepted on the basis of the teleological argument, or indeed any argument, or propositional evidence at all…….Suppose Christian and theistic belief has a good deal of warrant for me by way of faith……..then the fact that theism is evidentially challenged doesn’t give me a defeater and doesn’t bring it about that my theistic belief is irrational<\/em>.”<\/em><\/p>\n Later, in an interview with Gary Gutting in the New York Times (Feb 9th, 2014) he reiterated his claim:<\/p>\n “<\/em>I should make clear first that I don’t think arguments are needed for rational belief in God<\/em>.”<\/em><\/p>\n The gist of Plantinga’s position seems to be this: there may be good arguments for the existence of God, but none of them matter to him because the\u00a0‘sensus divinitatus<\/em>‘ has afforded him knowledge of the existence of God regardless of any evidence to the contrary. He actually goes much further, having previously claimed (e.g., Plantinga, 2001) that Christians are entitled to practice a distinct form of science, which he labels ‘Augustinian science’ in which personal revelation and Biblical teachings are given as much credence and evidential force as the usual provisional naturalistic methodology.<\/p>\n Putting aside the entirely reasonable conclusion that Plantinga’s notions are simply ‘circling his wagons’ in an attempt to invoke intellectual infallibility, the whole notion that everyone possesses a\u00a0‘sensus divinitatus’<\/em>\u00a0and is able to directly discern God is obviously contrary to the claim that we possess free will. If we ‘know’ that God exists, how then do we freely choose to accept the existence of God? It also raises the question as to why we might need people to explain religious belief; after all, we don’t ordinarily need anyone to explain what we perceive using any of our other senses. Objections may be raised that human infants demonstrate other innate expectations such as simple concepts of addition and subtraction (Wynn, 1990) and cause and effect (Rochat\u00a0et al.<\/em>, 1997), and so the concept of having an innate\u00a0‘<\/em>sensus divinitatus<\/em>‘\u00a0<\/em>is perfectly in keeping. The difference here, however, is that arithmetic and notions of cause and effect are objectively veridical mental representations of the physical world; they are not ‘basic beliefs’ in something that cannot routinely\u00a0be discerned. They have real survival value. Similarly, the innate\u00a0predisposition we have to attribute and infer agency in ambiguous circumstances has clear evolutionary value; hyperactive agentic detection mechanisms that allow us to mistake a boulder for a bear keep us safer than mistaking a bear for a boulder. As Shenkman (2016) explains:<\/p>\n “Evolution teaches us to think quickly. In the life-and-death setting common in the world of hunter-gatherers, speed was of the essence in sizing up both people and situations. We couldn’t let anything get in the way of our making up our minds, not even an absence of facts. In circumstances where we lacked facts- a common occurrence in the real world- we found other bases upon which to make a decision. The point was to act. Dillydallying could kill you.<\/em>“<\/p>\n See also Boyer (2002);\u00a0McCauley (2000) and Scholl & Tremoulet (2000) for similar arguments.<\/p>\n A\u00a0‘sensus divinitatus’<\/em>, on the other hand,\u00a0<\/em>holds no such selection value. If it exists, it has been predetermined to be there.\u00a0It is\u00a0inimical to free will also because any apparently free choice we might make to not believe in God would mean we are acting in direct contradiction to our senses. This, in itself, is not necessarily a problem if done for, say creative reasons, but in the mind of some theists it is viewed, not as a free choice\u00a0per se,<\/em>\u00a0but as a symptom of some underlying pathology, in the same way that the non-acceptance of, or inability to perform arithmetic, might be. Acceptance of such a view, however, suggests that we need not discern what we perceive to be the case from the physical reality we find ourselves in. Human brains also contain neural structures that enable us to effortlessly and unwillingly perceive optical illusions and visual and auditory anomalies. The Necker cube is probably the best known example. Using Plantinga’s logic should we not also accept that the Necker cube is not illusory, but a real shape that happens to exist beyond our limited concept of three dimensional space? After all, perception of a Necker cube (like God) is innate, a matter of instinct, the human mind possesses some sense of a Necker cube. If the two spatial properties of a Necker cube cannot be perceived then we suspect pathology. Similarly, though absence of belief in God is acknowledged as possible, the very nature of a ‘basic belief’ suggests that a corresponding non-belief can never be made on the basis of rationality. Rather, it is evidence of some moral derangement (as ardent presuppositionalists such as Sye ten Bruggencate assert or, perhaps less abrasively, corrupted by original sin as Plantinga suggests). William Lane Craig (in a debate with philosopher Arif Ahmed, Cambridge, 2009) argues:<\/p>\n “<\/em>Even when we have no good reason to believe and many persuasive reasons to disbelieve, even then the disbeliever has no excuse because the ultimate reason he does not believe is that he has rejected, deliberately, God’s will.<\/em>“<\/em><\/p>\n Craig’s view is not dissimilar to the Islamic notion of ‘Kufrul-Inkaar’ as described in Qur’an 16:83:<\/p>\n “They recognise the favour of Allah; then they deny it<\/em>.<\/em>“<\/p>\n These kinds of views, commonly used by Christian fundamentalists to bash atheists and non-Christians, can make for some particularly unpleasant reading. For example, the American evangelist John Hagee (2005) has claimed that the Jewish people have only themselves to blame for the Holocaust as they had incurred God’s inter-generational curse because their ancient ancestors worshiped idols. Similarly,\u00a0Christian apologist Barry Leventhal (1998), when discussing the high number of Jewish survivors of Auschwitz who had become atheist, condescendingly categorises them into two categories. The first group, the ’emotional atheists’ he claims “cannot respond to rational and logical reasoning<\/em>“. The second group, he contends, are characterised by a ‘belligerent atheism<\/em>‘ that “arises out of an arrogant and foolish heart<\/em>“. How is any meaningful dialogue possible with someone so arrogant that they consider that a sense of atheism can never be arrived at via rational assessment, even in the most harrowing of personal experience?<\/p>\n I noted earlier that theodicies need not be compatible with reality; they simply need to slot into an existing story line, no matter how absurd it might be. Good examples of this are provided by the theological just-so stories concocted by Christian apologist Paul Copan (2001) to defend a potentially devastating problem with Plantinga’s free will defence. Plantinga’s central argument, that God could not logically create a world with free willed beings who would never suffer is directly contradicted by a central plank of the major monotheistic religions. That is, the supposed existence of something akin to the Christian Heaven or the Islamic Paradise, both of which are postulated to be God-created communities of beings possessing free will in which suffering does not occur. Applying the free will defence to conventional Christianity, if we live a morally good life in the best possible but terribly flawed world that God had no logical choice but to provide for us, then our souls will eventually get to live a perfect life in the best possible, completely unflawed world that God has chosen for us. I am surely not alone in seeing the absurdity of this scenario. One might think that this discrepancy in reasoning alone would cause the free will house of cards to topple. But, no. Copan meets the challenge by offering three versions of what anthropologists dub ‘mythical elaborations’, i.e., conjuring up more acceptable scenarios to rescue a less than perfect original version (Boyer, 2002).<\/p>\n First, he asserts that although our free will survives in Heaven, our will to sin disappears. What Copan seems to be saying here is that God has given us the free will to make moral choices (e.g., based on divine commands, interpretation of scripture, our own reasoning, or even, perhaps, a lack of reasoning) then, as a reward for our making authorised moral choices, our will to make moral choices disappears. But, if we somehow feel rewarded by being given the opportunity to not exercise our free will, isn’t this a tacit admission that having free will is a burden we would be better off without?<\/p>\n Second, Copan asserts that God can be sure that no-one will sin in Heaven because he is omniscient and has the ability to foresee those who might. The possibility of a logical contradiction between our possessing free will and God’s omniscience has already been discussed, so here I ask the question: why does God not just design higher-quality products in the first place and fast-track all suitable units to Heaven? What, exactly, is the point of this cosmic game? Of course, the very question as to why God might bother to create anything, never mind a whole universe, has never been satisfactorily addressed within theology (and when it is addressed with any confidence, the reader cannot escape the sheer hubris that the author conveys as they inform us of what goes on in the mind of God). As defined by most variants of the Ontological Argument (see Sobel, 2004 for an overview) God must, by necessity, be the maximally greatest (i.e., most perfect) being. So logically he is unable to create beings greater than himself. It follows then, that God existing alone is the greatest, most perfect reality that is possible. By creating this particular universe he has, in effect, relegated reality to a lesser state, i.e., one that is less than perfect. Why do such a thing?<\/p>\n Also, if God’s omniscience has been attenuated because of our possessing free will, we can question whether he is able effectively identify those who will not sin in Heaven because they have willingly shown themselves to have made genuinely moral choices. The readiness with which Pascal’s wager (see Jordan, 2007 for a thorough overview) is offered by lay Christians as a reason to believe in God suggests that many consider that we are able to utilise our free will to trick God into accepting our piety. This notion is not confined to monotheism. Indeed, it is commonplace in traditional cultures consider that the gods can be easily fooled (e.g., Gray & Moore, 1916-1933). The anthropologist Roger Keesing (1984) describes how the Kwaio people of the Solomon Islands regularly sacrifice a pig to their ancestor-gods in exchange for their protection. The villagers then eat the pig themselves. When asked whether this isn’t cheating the ancestors of their pig, the tribal elders readily agreed that they were fooling the ancestors into protecting them. Might God similarly be misidentifying sycophantic humans, fearful of being seen as disobedient, with those who have genuinely chosen a path of moral rectitude? An apologist would probably argue that, even if we have free will that makes us somewhat unpredictable, God would eventually know what’s in our heart at the end of our life. If this is so, then again, what is the point of the game?<\/p>\n Copan’s third possibility is that free will is intact in Heaven and so sin and evil are theoretically possible there. However, because we are in the presence of God and his ‘goodness’, the notion of sinning doesn’t enter our minds. But if a choice does not enter our minds, how can we then be said to have the free will to choose? And what might we ask, went wrong with Satan? Well, in true apologetics style, there is an answer to this question too, this time from David Wood (in a debate with John Loftus, ‘God And The Problem Of Evil’, 2007).\u00a0It appears that, in the past, God had kept some epistemic distance from the inhabitants of Heaven and so evil thoughts and actions were indeed possible. Wood appears to be telling us that God lacked omniscience because he did not realise he was making a mistake. Satan, too, being ignorant of God’s omnipotence and benevolence, made some wrong choices. Since then, God has rectified the situation and all who dwell in Heaven are now fully in his presence and thus have no desire to sin (yet still somehow possess free will).<\/p>\n Probably the strongest theological problem for Plantinga’s free will defence rests with the fact that it can only ever realistically explain suffering perpetrated directly by the actions of human beings. Suffering wrought by natural disasters or other natural processes (natural evils) such as disease and physical and cognitive decline cannot reasonably be causally related to free will (excepting freely chosen actions which have led directly to injury or ill-health). Whenever a supposedly benevolent God is perceived as being directly responsible for natural evils or at least allowing such suffering to occur, theists are left with three broad explanatory choices:<\/p>\n The first proposition is intuitively unreasonable and largely incoherent, as well as being a callous and cruel outlook. It suggests, as Augustine did, that natural evil isn’t really evil but only seems so to our limited minds. Natural calamities, he proposed, are actually\u00a0“s<\/em>plendid in their own places and natures<\/em>“<\/em>\u00a0with a\u00a0“<\/em>beautiful order<\/em>“<\/em>, contributing\u00a0“in proportion to their own share of beauty”\u00a0<\/em>(apparently hedging his bets, he also proposed that calamities were the work of Satan and of God, as punishment for sin). It would be a brave theologian indeed to point out to the distraught survivors of a tsunami the splendidness and beauty of their situation. The fact is that both moral and natural evils cause us to suffer. The actual quantity of the suffering wrought might even be identical, if such a concept could be measured. We all, theists and atheists alike, feel naturally inclined to prevent and treat disease and ameliorate the effects of natural disasters as well as trying to protect ourselves from the malicious intent and accidental actions of others. We have even made a virtue of it. And we do this because neither can reasonably be deemed\u00a0“<\/em>splendid in their own places<\/em>“<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0“<\/em>beautiful order<\/em>“<\/em>\u00a0unless, that is, our empathy has been short-circuited.<\/p>\n The second proposition is the stuff of mythology and comic books; the universal tale of good vs. evil and the hero with superpowers versus the almost-as-strong fiendish adversary. Yet, disturbingly, even so-called ‘sophisticated’ theologians like Plantinga (1974b) have suggested this one. Why doesn’t God not simply discontinue or diminish Satan’s, or fallen angel’s power on utilitarian grounds, i.e., the welfare of the many vs. the welfare of the one? Again, the free will defence is employed. The rise of Satan is likened to the fall of man. The angels, according to Augustine, were given free will but the Devil chose to act as God’s adversary and spend his time corrupting humankind:\u00a0“Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven”<\/em>\u00a0according to John Milton in ‘Paradise Lost’. It makes for a good myth, but does little to answer why a supposedly benevolent God continues to value maintaining the Devil’s free will over the welfare of human beings, despite having made us in his own image. But, even more pertinent, surely once free-willed non-human beings are invoked as the causal agents for natural evil then natural evil ceases to be a viable concept. In effect, there is no such thing as evils brought on by natural causes; they have been rebadged as moral evils not be caused by human beings. Thus Plantinga (1974b) sidesteps, rather than deals with, the problem of natural evil.<\/p>\n The third proposition tends to be unpalatable to theists because it suggests that God has limited powers over the laws of nature. This is despite the fact that, ironically, it gives God the very ‘get out of jail free’ card for which theodicies are searching. It is intuitively reasonable and seemingly universally accepted to hold the view that the more limited an agent is, the less culpable they are for their actions (Sarkissian\u00a0et al<\/em>., 2010). But, of course, if God is benevolent yet had no choice but to place us in an imperfect and inherently dangerous universe, in what way can he be considered omnipotent? In centuries past it was commonplace to assume that God directly controlled geological and meteorological events, and commonly used this power in response to our behaviours. This view is epitomised by the English evangelist John Wesley (1703-1791) who preached that:<\/p>\n “<\/em>Whatever the natural cause, sin is the true cause of all earthquakes<\/em>.”<\/em><\/p>\n It is certainly true that our decisions can have an effect on natural phenomena such as, for instance, deforestation causing reduced rainfall or anthropogenic global warming resulting in an increase in atmospheric temperature or storm activity or Soviet-era Lysenko-like manipulation of agriculture resulting in disastrous decreases in farm productivity. However, now that we have a good understanding of the physical processes underlying most geological, agricultural and meteorological events we no longer have any good reason to consider any of the three choices theists must make. Natural phenomena show no evidence whatsoever of any supernatural causation and there is simply no known or even vaguely likely mechanism that would have human immorality (or virtue) effect a change in natural laws and mechanisms. Indeed, the very notion that calamities and epidemics are ‘natural evils’ as opposed to God’s working has only taken root since science has offered viable explanations. Nowadays, of course, only the most unsophisticated of theologians still take seriously the notion that God is a capricious being who needs to be obeyed and appeased, lest he visit us with calamities. Nevertheless, recent YouGov research (2013) disturbingly showed that only 17% of Americans think that God never intervenes in weather or natural disasters while 31% think that God controls the weather and other physical conditions of the Earth\u00a0“all the time”<\/em>.<\/p>\n Not surprisingly, however, even those theologians who share the views of 1 in 3 Americans cannot agree on the actual causes for natural calamities, though they are all certain that they result from our freely chosen behaviours. Islamic theologians blamed the eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland, which caused so much disruption to air travel in 2010, on European women choosing to wear immodest clothing. Hurricane Katrina, which devastated large areas of New Orleans in 2005, came under particular scrutiny. Although sure that it resulted from God’s retribution, religious leaders were unable to agree why God might have been angered. One ultra-orthodox Israeli Rabbi, Ovadia Yosef, claimed it was God’s punishment for President Bush having supported the withdrawal of Jewish settlers from Palestinian lands (in addition to making racist remarks about the ungodliness of the black community there). Gerhard Wagner, then Bishop of Linz in Austria, cited abortion as the cause selectively noting that all five medical centres which performed abortions had been destroyed, while conveniently neglecting to mention the huge percentage of churches that were also destroyed (for example, every Episcopal church in the city was either completely destroyed or badly damaged and other denominations were similarly affected). The American evangelist John Hagee, on the other hand, cited liberal attitudes to homosexuality. Obviously there is considerable noise in the signal from God. If God produced calamities at will simply to smite us for our freely-chosen, yet apparently ill-advised behaviours then natural evils as such do not exist. Instead, moral evils and natural evils are conflated. If this is so, how then could we have ever generated viable theories for any geological or meteorological phenomena? Consider, for example, the buildings that have survived an earthquake. We have been able to ascertain which types of architecture and building materials are up to the task of being earthquake-proof; couldn’t we also infer God’s favoured behaviours based on the lifestyles of those people that have survived? Perhaps not, in light of the 2013 Oklahoma twister which killed over 20 people, raised 13,000 homes and left a repair bill nearing $2 billion. After all, Oklahoma is particularly intolerant of abortion and same-sex marriage, does not recognise discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity and executes more people per capita than any other US state.<\/p>\n In any case, what we now label as natural disasters have occurred on this planet from the outset (and at a far higher rate) billions of years before our species evolved any perception of free will or even began to consider which behaviours might be virtuous. Indeed, we can observe similar and often much harsher events on other, uninhabited planets. This is the logical problem befalling Plantinga: what reasons might a benevolent God have for including naturally occurring evils in the world, not only now, but from before the beginning of sentient life? After all, we are told in Genesis 1:31 that\u00a0
\nare not starving someplace, they are starving
\nsomewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
\nBut we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.<\/em>“<\/em>\n\n
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