Flew and the Free Will Defence

1977 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 477-483 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard L. Purtill
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Argument From Evil ◽  
Key Terms ◽  
Libertarian Free Will ◽  
Libertarian View

In a recent paper Anthony Flew gives an argument which can be outlined as follows:1. Any attempt to give a ‘free will defence’ (to rebut the argument from evil against God's existence) must be based either on a compatibilist notion of free will or a libertarian, incompatibilist, notion of free will.2. A free will defence based on a compatibilist notion of free will must fail, for on a compatibilist view of free will, God could make creatures who were free but never chose evil.3. A free will defence based on a libertarian notion of free will might have other difficulties, but on a libertarian view of free will God could not both leave men free and bring it about that they never chose evil.4. But a free will defence based on an incompatibilist, libertarian notion of free will can be rejected, since:(a) It is not clear that the ordinary use of such key terms as ‘action’ and ‘choice’ carry any implications of libertarian free will.(b) If such terms did carry the implication of libertarian free will it becomes hard to see how anyone could be in a position to know that a choice had been made or an action performed.(c) The possession of libertarian free will by created beings seems to be incompatible with the essential theistic doctrine that all created beings are always utterly dependent on God as their sustaining cause.5. Therefore the free will defence fails.

A New Argument Against Libertarian Free Will?

Analysis ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 296-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Widerker
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Libertarian Free Will

God, Suffering, and the Value of Free Will

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura W. Ekstrom
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Skeptical Theism ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Moral Goodness ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
Argument From Evil ◽  
Close Investigation ◽  
Traditional Doctrine

This book focuses on arguments from suffering against the existence of God and on a variety of issues concerning agency and value that they bring out. The central aim is to show the extent and power of arguments from evil. The book provides a close investigation of an under-defended claim at the heart of the major free-will-based responses to such arguments, namely that free will is sufficiently valuable to serve as the good, or to serve prominently among the goods, that provides a God-justifying reason for permitting evil in our world. Offering a fresh examination of traditional theodicies, it also develops an alternative line the author calls a divine intimacy theodicy. It makes an extended case for rejection of the position of skeptical theism. The book expands upon an argument from evil concerning a traditional doctrine of hell, which reveals a number of interesting issues concerning fault, agency, and blameworthiness. In response to recent work contending that the problem of evil is defanged since God’s baseline attitude toward human beings is indifference, the book defends the essential perfect moral goodness of God. Finally it takes up the question of whether or not it makes sense to live a religious life as an agnostic or as an atheist.

scholarly journals To Be Able To, or To Be Able Not To? That is The Question

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-32
Author(s):  
Nadine Elzein ◽  
Tuomas K. Pernu
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Alternative Possibilities ◽  
Transcendental Argument ◽  
Ought Implies Can ◽  
Libertarian Free Will

A type of transcendental argument for libertarian free will maintains that if acting freely requires the availability of alternative possibilities, and determinism holds, then one is not justified in asserting that there is no free will. More precisely: if an agent A is to be justified in asserting a proposition P (e.g. "there is no free will"), then A must also be able to assert not-P. Thus, if A is unable to assert not-P, due to determinism, then A is not justified in asserting P. While such arguments often appeal to principles with wide appeal, such as the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’, they also require a commitment to principles that seem far less compelling, e.g. the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘able not to’ or the principle that having an obligation entails being responsible. It is argued here that these further principles are dubious, and that it will be difficult to construct a valid transcendental argument without them.

Providence, Freedom, and Human Destiny

1990 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Talbott
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Moral Evil ◽  
Specific Region ◽  
Universal Love ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Good For ◽  
Love Of God ◽  
Libertarian Free Will ◽  
Traditional Doctrine ◽  
Human Destiny

According to some theists, God will never completely destroy moral evil or banish it from his creation entirely; instead, he will eventually confine moral evil to a specific region of his creation, a region known as hell, and those condemned to hell, having no hope of escape from it, will live out eternity in a state of estrangement from God as well as from each other. Let us call that the traditional doctrine of hell. Elsewhere I have argued that any form of theism which includes such a doctrine, even one that tries to preserve consistency by denying the universal love of God, is in fact logically inconsistent. But moderately conservative theists, as I have called them, have an argument for the traditional doctrine that some have found convincing, one that emphasizes libertarian free will. The argument is this. Because God is perfectly loving, he wills the good for every created person and wills the redemption of all who have fallen into evil; but because he has also given his loved ones the gift of freedom and some of them in fact exercise their freedom to reject him forever, it is simply not within his power, even as an omnipotent being, to redeem all of those who fall into evil. According to moderately conservative theists, therefore, the following hypothesis, which I shall call the Rejection Hypothesis (RH), is at least possibly true:(RH) Some persons will, despite God's best efforts to save them, freely and irrevocably reject God and thus separate themselves from God forever.

The free will theodicy

1998 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 457-470
Author(s):  
Richard Schoenig
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Argument From Evil

The Free Will Theodicy (FWT) attempts to defeat the Argument from Evil by claiming that the suffering of the innocent (SOI) is justified by the existence of free will (FW). I argue against the FWT by demonstrating that there are at least three logically possible worlds, one without FW and two with it, such that, if given a choice, all conscious beings would act rationally in choosing to live in any of those three worlds rather than in the current world. This choice outcome undermines the FWT's contention that FW adequately justifies the quantity and severity of the SOI in this world.

The religious adequacy of free-will theism

2002 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-61
Author(s):  
DAVID M. CIOCCHI
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Current Work ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Principal Practices ◽  
The Common ◽  
Will Theory ◽  
Petitionary Prayer ◽  
Libertarian Free Will

In this paper I question the claim that the increasingly popular position known as ‘free-will theism’ or ‘the open view of God’ supports a rich religious life. To do this I advance a notion of ‘religious adequacy’, and then argue that free-will theism fails to be religiously adequate with respect to one of the principal practices of the religious life – petitionary prayer. Drawing on current work in libertarian free-will theory, I consider what are likely the only two lines of defence free-will theists might use in response to my argument. I argue that these defences either fail or have features that make them unacceptable to free-will theists. I then suggest that this failure with petitionary prayer is an instance of a larger problem for free-will theism, that the position's distinctive views often differ more dramatically from the common beliefs and practices of most believers than is usually recognized or acknowledged. I conclude that free-will theism can support a rich religious life only for those who make the requisite changes in belief and practice, including changing their expectations about petitionary prayer.

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