I can easily conjure up in my imagination a world with "free will" where unimaginable suffering is not intrinsic - why couldn't an omnipotent being design the world that way?
Most philosphers think that philosopher Alvin Plantinga has mostly "solved the problem": There are two possibilities,
if God is bound by logic:
- There are possible worlds that even an omnipotent being can not actualize.
- A world with morally free creatures producing only moral good is such a world.
It is possible that God, even being omnipotent, could not create a world with free creatures who never choose evil. Furthermore, it is possible that God, even being omnibenevolent, would desire to create a world which contains evil if moral goodness requires free moral creatures.
A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all. Now God can create free creatures, but He can't cause or determine them to do only what is right.
For if He does so, then they aren't significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can't give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so.
As it turned out, sadly enough, some of the free creatures God created went wrong in the exercise of their freedom; this is the source of moral evil. The fact that free creatures sometimes go wrong, however, counts neither against God's omnipotence nor against His goodness; for He could have forestalled the occurrence of moral evil only by removing the possibility of moral good.
This is mostly a rehash of my post 14490 on page 5 of this thread.
So I personally accept that we are living in the best of all possible worlds. I am glad for free will, even if free will creates the possibility for evil. The goodness of the existence of free will outweighs the badness of evil actions as outcomes of free will.
My question then: But why then would he not stop the consequences of doing evil?
Why wouldn't he make a bullet shot at an innocent person as soft as a daisy?
Why couldn't he make the air refuse to carry hateful, evil words?
BTS
