Damnation & Human Agency

Human agency is the capacity for human beings to make choices and to impose those choices on the world. It is normally deployed in contrast to natural forces, which are causes involving only unthinking deterministic processes, but in religion or theology occurs also as a counterpoint to the will of God.

In this it is subtly distinct from the concept of free will, the philosophical doctrine that our choices are not the product of causal chains, but are significantly free or undetermined. Human agency entails the uncontroversial, lower claim that humans do in fact make decisions and enact them on the world. How humans come to make decisions, by free choice or other processes, is not at issue.

Human agency invests a moral component into a given situation. If a situation is the consequence of human decision making, persons may be under a duty to apply value judgements to the consequences of their decisions, and held to be responsible for those decisions. Human agency entitles the observer to ask should this have occurred? in a way that would be nonsensical in circumstances lacking human decisions-makers, for example, the impact of Shoemaker-Levy into Jupiter.

In certain philosophical traditions (particularly those established by Hegel and Marx), human agency is a collective, historical dynamic, more than a function arising out of individuals. Hegel's Geist and Marx's universal class are idealist and materialist expressions of this idea of humans treated as social beings, organized to act in concert.


Determinism


Determinism is the philosophical doctrine which claims that every physical event, including human cognition and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. The principal consequences of this doctrine are that free will is an illusion, and that the outcomes of all future events have already been determined. Determinism is associated with, and relies upon, the ideas of Materialism and Causality. Some of the philosophers who have dealt with this issue are David Hume, Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant, and, more recently, John Searle.

The exact meaning of the term "determinism" has historically been subject to various interpretations. Some view determinism and free will as mutually exclusive, whereas others, labelled "Compatibilists", believe that the two ideas can be coherently reconciled. Most of this disagreement is due to the fact that the definition of "free will," like determinism, varies. Some feel it refers to the metaphysical truth of independent agency, whereas others simply define it as the feeling of agency that humans experience when they act. For example, David Hume argued that while it is possible that one does not freely arrive at one's set of desires and beliefs, the only meaningful interpretation of freedom relates to one's ability to translate those desires and beliefs into voluntary action.

The doctrine of a deterministic universe has been articulated in both Western and non-Western religion, philosophy, and literature. In the West, determinism is often associated with Newtonian physics, which argues that the physical matter of the universe operates according to a set of fixed, knowable laws. The "billiard ball" hypothesis, a product of Newtonian physics, argues that because the initial conditions of the universe have already been established, it is theoretically possible, with complete knowledge of physical matter and the laws governing that matter, to predict the time and place of every event that will ever occur. In this sense, the basic particles of the universe operate in the same fashion as the rolling balls on a billiard table, moving and striking each other in predictable ways to produce only slightly-less predictable results.

In the East, determinism has to a certain extent been expressed in the Buddhist doctrine of Dependent Origination, which states that every phenomenon, exclusive of Nirvana and space-time, is conditioned by, and depends on, the phenomena that it is not. In Buddhism, this teaching is used to demonstrate that to ascribe value to any one thing is to ignore the interdependence of all things.

Some critics of determinism argue that if people are incapable of independent choice there can be no basis for morality, and therefore some aspects of criminal and civil jurisprudence and legislation are left without their necessary foundation. Others, more recently, have interpreted the developing field of quantum mechanics as being consistent with the argument that some basic events may be truly random and non-deterministic.

Determinists have responded to the first critique by distinguishing between normative and objective claims, arguing that statements of fact can and should be made independently of their consequences. Thus, even if determinism is inconsistent with the idea of a moral universe, that does not necessarily invalidate its conclusions.

With respect to the second critique, there are two main counter-arguments:

1) Quantum mechanics has been misinterpreted, and the idea of "randomness" has wrongly been interpreted to mean the occurrence of something entirely uncaused by prior events. The "random" movements of sub-atomic particles are random in the sense that no human measurement can account for or predict them. They are not random in the sense that they have no prior cause. These events occur according to probability and may have an as-of-yet-unknown cause.

2) If non-deterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics are correct, and uncaused events occur, these events are not the products of human cognition. Rather, the actions of a person influenced by these events would be attributable to a truly independent quantum mechanism, not the person's own free will.

Intrinsic to the free will vs. determinism debate is the issue of first causes. Either the entirety of space-time came into existence at some point without any prior cause, in which case the determinist argument fails, or else space-time has always existed, leaving both sides to contemplate the problem of infinity.

See also

External link

Free will

Free will is the philosophical doctrine that our choices are, ultimately, "up to us." Consequently, an unfree action must be somehow "up to" something else. The phrase "up to us" is vague, and, just like free will itself, admits of a variety of interpretations. Because of this vagueness, the usefulness of the concept of free will is questioned by some. We can ask several logically independent questions about free will.

Contents [hide]
1 Determinism vs. Indeterminism
2 Moral responsibility
3 Compatibilist theories of free will and the could-have-done-otherwise principle
4 The science of free will
5 In theology
6 See also

Determinism vs. Indeterminism

Determinism holds that each state of affairs is necessitated (determined) by the states of affairs that preceded it. Indeterminism holds that determinism is false, and that there are events which are not entirely determined by previous states of affairs. The idea of determinism is sometimes illustrated by the story of Laplace's demon, who knows all the facts about the past and present and all the natural laws that govern our world, and uses this knowledge to foresee the future, down to every detail.

Some philosophers hold that determinism is at odds with free will. This is the doctrine of incompatibilism. Incompatibilists generally claim that a person acts freely (has free will) just in case the person is the sole originating cause of the act and the person genuinely could have done otherwise. This kind of free will is (at least allegedly) incompatible with determinism. If determinism is true, and everything that happens is completely determined by the past, including events that preceded our births, then every choice we make would ultimately be determined by prior events that were not under our control. Our choices would be just another outcome determined by the past. So if determinism were true, then we would be trapped by the past and free will would be an illusion. "Hard determinists", such as d'Holbach, are those incompatibilists who accept determinism and reject free will. "Libertarians", such as Thomas Reid and Peter van Inwagen, are those incompatibilists who accept free will, deny determinism, and instead believe that indeterminism is true. (This kind of libertarianism should not be confused with the political position of the same name.)

Other philosophers hold that determinism is compatible with free will. These "compatibilists", such as Hobbes, generally claim that a person acts freely just in case the person willed the act and the person could (hypothetically) have done otherwise if s/he had decided to. In articulating this crucial proviso, Hume writes, "this hypothetical liberty is universally allowed to belong to every one who is not a prisoner and in chains". Compatibilists often point to clearcut cases of someone's free will being denied — rape, murder, theft, and so on. The key to these cases is not that the past is determining the future, but that the aggressor is overriding the victim's desires and preferences about his or her own actions. The aggressor is coercing the victim and, according to compatibilists, this is what nullifies free will. In other words, determinism does not matter; what matters is that our choices are the results of our own desires and preferences, and are not overridden by some external (or even internal) force. To be a compatibilist, one needn't endorse any particular conception of free will (one need only deny that determinism is at odds with free will), but the positions canvassed here are typical of compatibilism.

Furthermore, it is often held that the phrase "free will" is, as Hobbes put it, "absurd speech", because freedom is a power defined in terms of the will, which is a thing--and so the will is not the sort of thing that could be free or unfree. Some compatibilists argue that this alleged lack of grounding for the concept of "free will" is at least partly responsible for the perception of a contradiction between determinism and liberty.

Moral responsibility

We generally hold people responsible for their actions, and will say that they deserve praise or blame for what they do. However, moral responsibility is believed by many to require free will. Thus another important issue is whether we are ever morally responsible, and in what sense.

Incompatibilists tend to think that determinism is at odds with moral responsibility. After all, how can you hold someone responsible for an action that could be predicted from the beginning of time? Hard determinists say "So much the worse for moral responsibility!" and junk the concept — Clarence Darrow famously used this argument to defend the murderers Leopold and Loeb — while libertarians say "So much the worse for determinism!" This issue appears to be the heart of the dispute between hard determinists and compatibilists; hard determinists are forced to accept that we often have "free will" in the compatibilist sense, but they deny that this sense of free will truly matters — that it can ground moral responsibility. Just because an agent's choices are uncoerced doesn't change the fact that determinism robs the agent of responsibility.

Compatibilists often argue that, on the contrary, determinism is a prerequisite for moral responsibility — you can't hold someone responsible unless his actions were determined by something (this argument can be traced to Hume). After all, if indeterminism is true, then those events that are not determined are random. How can you blame or praise someone for performing an action that just spontaneously popped into his nervous system? Instead, they argue, you need to show how the action stemmed from the person's desires and preferences — the person's character — before you start holding the person morally responsible. Libertarians sometimes reply that undetermined actions aren't random at all, and that they result from a substantive will whose decisions are undetermined. This move is widely considered unsatisfactory, for it just pushes the problem back a step, and further, it involves some very mysterious metaphysics.

Compatibilist theories of free will and the could-have-done-otherwise principle

Many claim that, in order for a choice to be free in any sense that matters, it must be true that the agent could have done otherwise. They take this principle — van Inwagen calls it the "principle of alternate possibilities" — to be a necessary condition for freedom. For instance, if a scientist puts a machine in Bob's brain that makes him kill the President, his action was not free, for Bob couldn't have done otherwise. Incompatibilists often appeal to this principle to show that determinism cannot be reconciled with free will. "If a decision is completely determined by the past," they ask, "how could the agent have decided to do something else?" Compatibilists often reply that what's important is not simply that the agent could have done otherwise, but that the agent could have done otherwise if he or she had wanted to. Moreover, some compatibilists, such as Frankfurt or Dennett, argue that there are clear cases where, even though the agent couldn't have done otherwise, the agent's choice was still free: what if Bob really wanted to kill the President and the machine in Bob's brain would only kick in if Bob lost his nerve? If Bob went through with it on his own, surely the act would be free. Incompatibilists claim that the problem with this idea is that what Bob "wanted" was determined before Bob was conceived. See also Elbow Room, a book by Dennett that presents an argument for a compatibilist theory of free will.

More sophisticated analyses of compatibilist free will have been offered. A free action may require not only liberty from external coercion (according to some), but also liberty from internal conflicts. Compulsive behaviors and the actions of the insane are thus not free. Moreover, our common sense conceptions of free will also demand the possibility that an agent could act rationally or irrationally with equanimity. In either case, what we mean by free will could be that an agent can claim ownership of his or her will despite external or internal influences.

The science of free will

Throughout the history of science, attempts have been made to answer the question of free will using scientific principles. Early scientific thought often pictured the universe as deterministic, and some thinkers believed that it was simply a matter of gathering sufficient information to be able to predict future events with perfect accuracy. While not mechanistic in the same sense as classical physics, most current scientific theories are also deterministic, by necessity — it is a basic assumption of all scientific endeavors that the future can be predicted. It is also difficult, if not impossible, to write the mathematics for a non-predictive science.

Various interpretations of quantum mechanics may suggest that the universe, when viewed as a single system, is deterministic, as there is no outside entity capable of making observations, aside possibly from God. It is far from clear, however, that microscale interpretations of quantum mechanics can be applied to large systems in this way, and whether quantum mechanics ultimately describes a universe governed by laws of cause and effect or by chance is hotly debated both by physicists and philosophers of science.

Like physicists, biologists have also frequently addressed the question of free will. One of the most heated debates of biology is that of "nature versus nurture". How important are genetics and biology in human behavior compared to culture and environment? Genetic studies have identified many specific genetic factors that affect the personality of the individual, from obvious cases such as Down's syndrome to more subtle effects such as a statistical predisposition towards schizophrenia. However, it is not certain that environmental determination is less threatening to free will than genetic determination.

It has also become possible to study the living brain and researchers can now watch the decision-making "machinery" at work. A seminal experiment in this field was conducted by Benjamin Libet in the 1980s, wherein he asked subjects to choose a random moment to flick their wrist while he watched the associated activity in their brains. Libet found that the brain activity leading up to the subject flicking their wrist began approximately one-third of a second before the subject consciously decided to move, suggesting that the decision was actually first being made on a subconscious level and only afterward being translated into a "conscious decision." A related experiment performed later by Dr. Alvaro Pascual-Leone involved asking subjects to choose at random which of their hands to move. He found that by stimulating different hemispheres of the brain using magnetic fields it was possible to strongly influence which hand the subject picked. Normally right-handed people would choose to move their right hand 60% of the time, for example, but when the right hemisphere was stimulated they would instead choose their left hand 80% of the time (recall that the right hemisphere of the brain is responsible for the left side of the body, and the left hemisphere for the right). Despite the external influence on their decision-making, the subjects continued to report that they believed their choice of hand had been made freely.

In theology

The theological doctrine of divine foreknowledge is often alleged to be in conflict with free will. After all, if God knows exactly what will happen, right down to every choice one makes, how can one's choices be free? God's already true or timelessly true knowledge about one's choices seems to constrain one's freedom. This problem is related to the Aristotelian problem of the sea-battle: tomorrow there will or will not be a sea-battle. If there will be one, then it was true yesterday that there would be one. Then it would be necessary that the sea battle will occur. If there won't be one, then by similar reasoning, it is necessary that it won't occur. This means that the future, whatever it is, is completely fixed by past truths — true propositions about the future. (However, some philosophers hold that necessity and possibility are defined with respect to a given point in time and a given matrix of empirical circumstances, and so something that is merely possible from the perspective of one observer may be necessary from the perspective of an omniscient.)

In Christian theology, God is described as not only omniscient but omnipotent, which implies that not only has God always known what choices you will make tomorrow, but actually chose what you would choose. That is, by virtue of His foreknowledge He knows what will influence your choices, and by virtue of His omnipotence He controls those factors. This becomes especially important for the doctrines relating to salvation. Most Christians find ways of avoiding the conclusion that God predestines who will be saved and who damned, but Calvinists embrace it. Arminians believe that humans always have free will, but God's prevenient grace is always calling them.

Some philosophers believe that free will is equivalent to having a soul, and thus that (at least some) animals don't have free will. This is also the position of Jewish philosophy, which stresses that free will (Hebrew: bechirah chofshith) is a product of the intrinsic human soul (neshama). There is some controversy on the contradiction between God's omniscience and free will; this was first debated between Maimonides and his critic Abraham ibn Daud (Raavad III), e.g. in Maimonides' Mishneh Torah Hilchoth Teshuva 5:5.

See also

Morality

(Redirected from Moral)

Morality is a complex of principles based on cultural, religious, and philosophical concepts and beliefs, by which an individual determines whether his or her actions are right or wrong. These concepts and beliefs are often generalized and codified by a culture or group, and thus serve to regulate the behaviour of its members. Conformity to such codification may also be called morality, and the group may depend on widespread conformity to such codes for its continued existence. A "moral" may refer to a particular principle, usually as informal and general summary with respect to a moral principle, as it is applied in a given human situation.

Some philosophers make a distinction between morals and ethics, with the latter thought to be a more intellectual approach to describing how we ought to behave, how we go about arguing for a moral position, e.g., the language of morality, or the process of determining whether moral judgments are even meaningful. Other philosophers, for example, Michael E. Berumen, suggest that these are distinctions without an important difference, and that ethics and morality are utltimately interchangable concepts.

Contents [hide]
1 An overview of Morality
2 Changes in morality
3 Morality and Darwinism
4 Morality in Juridical Systems
5 The Moral - in Story
6 External links

An overview of Morality

Views on morality have varied greatly over time, and from culture to culture. Usually, a morality applies to fields in which the choices made by individuals express an intention relative to other individuals (even non-members of the society). Thus, there exists an academic dispute about whether morality can exist only in the presence of a society (meaning a plurality of few individuals), or also in a hypothetical individual with no relationships with others.

A concept of morality may tend toward any of the possible directions in a given field, and moralities exist that recommend heavy restrictions on behaviours, as well as moralities that recommend totally free self-determination, as well as a variety of intermediate positions.

The efficacy of a morality depends on the social position and political representativeness of the group that espouses it, and on its relationship with the norms of the related society. A morality is put into effect through its influence on the society's general rules and formal codes—especially penal codes and the determination of juridically correct conduct. The fields in which the influence of morality is most commonly appreciated are sex-related matters, financial and professional conduct (with the notable example of deontology), and human relationships in general.

A morality can be derived from many sources. For many individuals, morality is influenced, to large degree, by religion or theology, but other, secular, ethical codes are also followed. Religions typically hold that morality is not a human construct, but is the work of God. For example, in Judeo-Christian religions, one or another version of the Ten Commandments is held to have been issued directly to mankind by God. Moreover, religions often hold that the human conscience, the internal mechanism through which one senses the moral aspect of actions, is infused in mankind by God. Non-religious individuals may justify morality on the basis of that improving the human condition or helping humanity is itself fundamentally 'good': they may aspire to base morality on humanitarian principles of reciprocal behaviour and prevention of suffering or through 'objective' approaches, such as utilitarianism.


For moral relativists, morality is viewed as a system of personal ethical conduct that the individual imposes on himself or herself. With this view, it is more concerned with individual choices, as a personal effect of free will, rather than with dispute resolution or conflict, and does not seem to imply a relationship with other individuals or groups. This subjective self-regulation can also sometimes be derived from religion or theology, but is also often seen as totally personal, unsharable, intuitive, creative and aesthetic (a "moral core").

Changes in morality

Moralities often include rules and regulations that do not have obvious reasons for existing, i.e., no immediate harmful results of transgression are apparent. This is sometimes because the harmful effects of such actions are largely indirect, but real nonetheless. Alternatively, the morality may derives from historical circumstances no longer common or relevant in society. Either way, the need for the particular aspect of morality may be questioned. It is not unusual for widescale changes in views on morality to occur, especially by younger generations in society. At times, this questioning extends to the society in general, even to the extent of liberalising laws which prohibited certain behaviours.

Morality and Darwinism

Some evolutionary psychologists have argued that human morality originated from evolutionary processes. An innate tendency to develop a sense of right and wrong helps an individual to survive and reproduce in a species with complex social interactions. Selected behaviours, seen in abstraction as moral codes, are seen to be common to all human cultures, and reflect, in their development, similarities to natural selection and these aspects of morality can be seen in as the basis of some religious doctrine. From this, some also argue that there may be a simple Darwinian explanation for the existence of religion: that, regardless of the validity of religious beliefs, religion tends to encourage behaviour beneficial to the species, as a code of morality tends to encourage communality, and communality tends to assist survival.

These explanations for the existence of morality do not, however, necessarily assist in deciding what is truly right for future actions. Should an individual's own morality really be determined by what is best for their genetic offspring (colloquially, but inaccurately, "the good of the species")? Viewholders counter that evolutionary psychology extends millions of years of emprical justification for our moral sense, provided that sense is indeed innate--more than recorded history could demonstrate. Ergo, they claim, sensible people would behave with morality knowing subconsciously that it has succeeded in the past. Still, an explanation of why and how humans could have a moral basis does not imply that they ought to hold these views.

Morality in Juridical Systems

In some juridical systems, the word morality concretely means a requirement for the access to certain charges or careers, or for the obtaining of certain licenses or concessions, and generally consists of the absence of previous records on (e.g.) crimes, bankruptcy, political or commercial irregularities.

In some systems, the lack of morality of the individual can also be a sufficient cause for punishment, or can be an element for the grading of the punishment.

Especially in the systems where modesty (i.e., with reference to sexual crimes) is legally protected or otherwise regulated, the definition of morality as a legal element and in order to determine the cases of infringement, is usually left to the vision and appreciation of the single judge and hardly ever precisely specified. In such cases, it is common to verify an application of the prevalent common morality of the interested community, that consequently becomes enforced by the law for further reference.

The Moral - in Story

A moral is a one sentence remark made at the end of many children's stories that expresses the intended meaning, or the moral message, of the tale. For example, at the end of Aesop's fable about the tortoise and the hare, in which the plodding and determined tortoise wins a race against the much-faster yet debilitatingly arrogant hare, the moral is "slow and steady wins the race." Morals have long been included in children's literature, perhaps because many of the stories written for children have been written for the purpose of teaching and guiding children, as opposed to entertaining them. Many morals are even introduced with the phrase, "The moral of the story is..." to emphasize to the reader what the point of the episode was. Morals have grown increasingly out of fashion in modern storytelling, and are now usually only included for ironic purposes.

See also: blue laws, sexual morality, moral relativism, moral absolutism, moral universalism, moral hazard

Compare: ethics

External links

  • Morals and Ethics (http://www.religiousbook.net/Books/Online_books/Jt/Jesus_Teaching_20.html)

Good, evil, and ethics (http://donoevil.blogspot.com/).


The problem of evil

In the philosophy of religion, “the problem of evil” is the problem of reconciling the existence of evil or suffering in the world with the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent God (the so-called Epicurean paradox). In Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme et l'origine du mal, a well-known essay written in 1710, Leibniz introduced the term “theodicy” to describe the formal study of this subject.

See also Logical and evidential arguments from evil.

Contents [hide]
1 Defining the problem
2 Summary of proposed resolutions
3 Analysis of these solutions

3.1 The free will theodicy
3.2 The Calvinistic theodocy
3.3 Relativity of goodness — evil is not absolute
3.4 Human nature
3.5 God is not omnipotent or omniscient
3.6 Contemporary philosophy of religion
3.7 Holocaust theology

4 See also
5 External links

Defining the problem

The problem of evil arises from the supposition that a perfectly good God would not allow evil or suffering to exist in the world and that an omniscient and omnipotent God should be able to arrange the world according to his intentions. Since evil and suffering manifestly exist, it would seem that God either intends them to exist and is therefore not perfectly good; is not omniscient enough to foresee all evil and suffering, or is not omnipotent enough to arrange the world entirely as he intends so as to avoid evil and suffering.

Summary of proposed resolutions

Theodicy is a project to refute the problem of evil and similar arguments against the existence of God, by providing good justifying explanations that reconcile God's existence to the more troubling features of the world.

Resolutions to the problem of evil generally entail one of the following:

  • What humans consider evil or suffering is an illusion or unimportant.
    • Events thought to be evil are not really so (such as deaths by natural disaster).
  • A perfect God is not only good but also evil, since perfection implies no lacking, including not lacking that which is evil. A lacking of evil would imply that there is something external to his all-encompassing perfection. This is related to monistic philosophies such as advaita, or pantheism.
  • Evil is the consequence of God permitting humans to have free will, or God may intend evil and suffering as a test for humanity. Without the possibility to choose to do good or evil acts humanity would be nothing but robots.
  • Evil is the consequence, not cause, of people not observing God's revealed will. Universal reciprocated love would solve most of the problems that lead to the evils discussed here.
  • God's ultimate purpose is to glorify Himself (which, by definition, He alone is infinitely entitled to, without vanity). He allows evil to exist so that we will appreciate goodness all the more, in the same way that the blind man healed by Jesus appreciated his sight more so than those around him who had never experienced blindness.
  • God's divine plan is good. What we see as evil is not really evil; rather, it is part of a divine design that is actually good. Our limitations prevent us from seeing the big picture.
  • God created perfect angels and perfect humans with a free will. Some of his creations choose independence and lost their perfection: they began to sin, which resulted in evil doing and death. For a while God will allow this to continue, so that it can be proven that his creations can not be happy while independent from God because this was the challenge which caused the rebellion in the first place. In due time God will restore the people who choose to depend on God to perfection and so bring an end to sin and with it an end to evil.
  • God is a righteous judge; people get what they deserve. If someone suffers, that is because they committed a sin that merits such suffering.
  • Suffering is educational. It makes us better people.
  • Evil is one way that God tests humanity, to see if we are worthy of His grace.
  • Evil and pain exist in this world only. This world is only a prelude to the afterlife, where no pain will exist. The scales of justice are balanced in the afterlife.
  • Absolute evil is not actually real. Rather, it is only a condition of not enough goodness. (See also mention of William Hatcher's explanation.)
    • Evil is relative to good; neither good nor evil could exist without both existing simultaneously.
  • Karma: All good is balanced by evil, and it is only when we achieve proper balance that our reincarnation ends. This explains why an infant may be born into misery, due to experiences they will have later in that life, or in previous or later lives.
  • One of the conflicting assumptions is wrong: Drop either the assumption that God is omniscient, or omnipotent, or perfectly good. See the entry on the subject of God and omnipotence for more details on this point.
  • Religions such as Gnosticism and Manichaeism, and even some Christian groups, dispense with the issue by embracing various forms of dualism, in which God is opposed by an evil counterpart, and is therefore not omnipotent.
  • Maltheists go even further than the Gnostics, in a sense, by saying that God simply is evil himself. To them, the problem of evil is not a problem at all, and is neatly resolved by acknowledging that an omnipotent benevolent God would not create a world in which there was evil, concluding that God, assuming he exists, is either not omnipotent, not benevolent, or perhaps both. (They frequently add that if God is not omnipotent but claims that he is, he is thus lying, and consequently is also justifiably deemed evil in nature.)
  • Most atheists believe that statements about God are meaningless. Some atheists believe that the problem of evil can be used to prove that God does not exist by the method of reductio ad absurdum. However, as maltheists point out, this method does not prove that God does not exist, but rather that if he does exist he is not omnipotent or benevolent, as he and his followers might claim him to be.

Analysis of these solutions

The following are detailed analyses of the above stated solutions.

The free will theodicy

Assume that both God and Man possess ultimate free will. Why should free will lead to evil? The traditional answer is that humans are corrupt at heart, and they consequently choose to harm their fellows, but that would assume a will that is evil rather than free. It is said to be true that, in order to be free, we must do evil, for God is traditionally said to be both free and morally perfect. Rather, as a matter of contingent fact, humans happen to choose evil by their exercise of freedom. And if God were to 'get involved' and start influencing human actions for the better, then the actions wouldn't be free any longer. Human freedom means that God cannot guarantee human perfection. (See incompatible-properties arguments).

Why should it be better for God to respect human freedom? What's so great about free will? The response is that free will is what makes us valuable moral agents, and that, if God were to deny us our freedom, human society would be like an assemblage of robots. Perhaps there would be some value in such a world, but it is said to be nothing compared to the free moral agency possessed by God and actual humans. All the cruelty that we humans freely perform is indeed regrettable, but it is a small price to pay for freedom.

No matter how successful this response, it can only explain evil caused by human free will. It does not explain any catastrophic horror that has nothing to do with human choices. Think of earthquakes, floods, and disease -- so-called 'natural evil' or 'acts of God'. We cannot confront a paralyzed, demented, and blind Tay-Sachs child and his despondent parents and then chalk up the entire wretched scenario to free will. No one chose it. Healing that child wouldn't tread on anyone's freedom. At its best, the value of free will is relevant to, and can only excuse God for, a mere portion of the evil we find. Whether of not we call that 'evil', we must stick with the evil that we humans freely create -- so-called 'moral evil'.

But there is another, similar problem. Some instances of moral evil already involve violations of free will -- e.g., rape. For God to step in and deny the violator his freedom would also be to protect the victim's freedom. In such cases, it all comes down to whose free will is more valuable -- which instance of coercion would be worse? And it is morally implausible that the best thing to do is to respect a rapist's freedom to rape unhindered rather than protecting the victim's freedom. So, for a large category of moral evil -- all moral evil involving coercion -- it's automatically implausible that the value of free will can justify God's inaction. We must then narrow the domain of admissible evil yet again.

With the candidate evil suitably restricted, we can ask: Is God off the hook? Many say no. Some deny the existence of free will, and so can dismiss the entire proposal as mere fiction. Compatibilists sometimes attack the essential premise that God cannot influence our choices without thereby cancelling our freedom. After all, compatibilists believe that determinism is consistent with human freedom. And if determinism can allow for freedom, perhaps so can appropriate divine meddling with our decisions. The upshot of these challenges is that, to absolve God, we need a reason to think that he really couldn't influence our choices without cancelling our freedom. The customary theistic appeal is to a libertarian conception of free will, but such a conception is under heavy fire from its rivals.

Another challenge focuses on different ways to interfere with freedom. One way is to 'jump in' and take control of the agent, dictating its every movement and thought. This is the kind of coercion we envision in mad scientist stories. But it might also be the kind of coercion that motivates our above intuition that if God got involved, we'd all be 'robots'. We should remember that there are other, softer kinds of coercion. Look to policemen and jailers. They don't take control of an agent's decisions. They just threaten the agent with physical force and restraint, and carry out their threats if necessary. Policemen and jailers restrict our freedom, but it is a restriction we're willing to accept, for our own protection and safety. Now, return to God. If he were to get involved as a Divine Policeman, making threats and enforcing them, then would we be 'robots'? Seemingly not. Instead, we'd be citizens of a divine nation-state, and a very safe and reliable nation-state at that. But then the moral claim is dubious -- it's no longer clear that God should hold back. Taking total control of our decisions would be wrong, but laying down the law might be right. So why hasn't God done it?

Several further challenges attack the idea that evil-eliminating divine interventions must cancel human freedom. These challenges suggest different ways for God to eliminate evil, all the while leaving our free will untouched -- "innocent interventions". One proposal is that God allow sinful acts, but stop their evil consequences. So if I fire a rifle at your head, God allows me to make the decision, but then makes the trigger stick, or the rifle misfire, or the bullet pop out of existence. Such interventions would, happily, divorce evil choices from the subsequent suffering. Another proposal is for God to fortify humans as to render us less vulnerable to the sins of our fellows. We could be bullet-proof, invulnerable to poison, etc. That way, humans would retain the capacity for evil choices and activities; it's just that such evil behavior would be harmless to the 'victims' and futile for the evildoers.

The Calvinistic theodocy

John Calvin and other Reformed Christians have held to a form of theological determinism and compatibilism, and thus have denied that man possesses free will in the libertarian sense. So for them the problem of evil could not find resolution in appeals to such freedom. For them, the issue had to be resolved within the very nature of the compatibilistic relationship itself.

For God to hold man morally accountable, yet to predestine everything that man thinks or does, something other than the "freedom of contraries" must ground this accountability. Calvinists believe that this something is the capacity of man to choose and act according to his moral state of being, the "freedom of choice". But man's moral state of being is presently subject to sin, and this fact, itself, is part of the problem of evil. So one must inquire as to the cause of man's subjection to sin.

Reformed theology places the cause of this condition in the first man, Adam, whom they believe to be the legal representative of the entire human race. This doctrine, called Federal Headship, is also present in the doctrine of Substitutionary Atonement (and its corollary, Justification by Faith). As a representative of the race, when he sinned against God by eating the forbidden fruit, the entire race fell under the curse of God with him. Various explanations of the exact relationship of Adam to his posterity have been offered, but what concerns us at present is only the doctrine of Adam's legal representation of the race.

Here another question presents itself. How could Adam be held accountable (and with him the entire human race), if he was not free to do other than he did do -- if God really intended for him to do exactly as he did? With this question we come to the heart of the Reformed Theodicy. The main points are, firstly, that no one has ever been held accountable for what they could have thought or done, only for what they have thought or done, and for their purposes in thinking or doing it; and, secondly, that though both Adam and God intended that evil should come about, their purposes were distict, God's being ultimately good, Adam's being ultimately evil.

The Reformed Theodicy boils down to the distinction of purposes between the primary agent (God) and the secondary agents (humans). While it is true that God intends to bring about evil, God's purpose is not, of itself, evil (cf. Gen. 50:20). This idea can be expressed by analogy:

Picture a man holding down a child while other men stick pieces of metal into the child's eye, all the while the child is screaming in pain, crying out for them to stop. On the surface it seems like a horrible, cruel thing these men are doing to the child. But if we add the information that the child is bleeding to death from the nasal cavity, that there is no time for anesthetic, that the man holding him down is his loving father, and that the men sticking the metal into his eye are doctors trying to save his life, then the problem of evil dissappears. The evil doesn't disappear, it is still there (just ask the child!), but the problem of evil is no longer present, because the intention is good.

Perhaps a better analogy is that of a prison warden, call him Bill, who hires a guard, Chuck, to execute a condemned rapist and murderer, Spike. Now suppose that Chuck derives some perverse pleasure from killing Spike, and Bill knows this. Does this involve Bill in the evil of Chuck's action? Not unless either the action of killing Spike is evil in itself (which it is not), or Bill shares the same purpose as Chuck (gratification of some perverse desire) in killing Spike (which he does not).

Opponents of this position have argued that it endorses an "ends justifies the means" system of ethics, but this charge is suspect since Reformed Christians claim that the means, of themselves, are truly evil, and therefore subject to punishment, not justified by the ends to which God intends them.

Proponents have argued that the Free Will Theodicy is actually, in principle, no different from the Reformed Theodicy, it simply places the bare possession of libertarian free will as the good that God intented to bring about by the existence of evil, and that the Reformed Theodicy does more justice to the Biblical account of God and man.

Relativity of goodness — evil is not absolute

A less well known approach has been that of the mathematical logician William Hatcher (http://www.onecountry.org/e144/e14416as_Minimalism_Review.htm). He has written about the problem of evil from a relational logic point of view. Hatcher has argued that the problem may be resolved with a minimum of theological assumptions. This is quite appealing because it does not tie the traditional problem to any particular brand of theology. It is part of an approach to traditional philosophical problems that Hatcher calls Minimalism (not to be confused with the use of the same term in art and pop culture).

Briefly, Hatcher uses relational logic to show that very simple models of moral value that include a minimalist concept of "God" cannot be consistent with the premise of evil as an absolute, whereas goodness as an absolute is entirely consistent with the other postulates concerning moral value. In Hatcher's view one can only validly talk about an act A being "less good" than an act B, one cannot logically commit to saying that A is absolutely evil, unles one is prepared to abandon other more reasonable principles.

Human nature

Another, more subtle proposal is for God to alter human nature for the better. Now, talk of improving our nature immediately strikes us as coercive -- surely, it would rob us our freedom as moral beings! But remember that we already have a nature, a bundle of tendencies that influences our choices. Now, the most ardent determinist must grant that human nature alone does not determine our choices. But the most ardent libertarian must in turn grant that our choices are significantly influenced by our natures. It is easier for a sociopath to kill a child than it is for the rest of us. It is easier for us to send money to help our children than to help complete strangers. This is true, even if ultimately we each have final say on our decisions. Now note that this human nature is flawed. We are disposed to be cruel and callous in many ways. The world might be a better place if humans shared a more virtuous and generous nature.

But would it violate our freedom for God to have given us a better nature? Perhaps not. We might choose a kinder nature, if, for example, virtue came in pill form. We might wish it were easier for us to do good. This suggests that an improved nature may be in accordance with our free will, and not contrary to it. Moreover, if God exists, then surely he had a large hand in crafting human nature. As long as he's giving us some nature or another, why not shoot for a virtuous nature? If it's wrong to make humans virtuous, then why should it be less wrong to make humans corrupt?

One salient theistic reply is that our corrupt nature is due to the Original Sin of the first human couple. Their free choice changed us for the worse, and for God to change us for the better would be to disrespect their free choice. But this reply raises too many troubling issues of its own. First, the wholesale corruption of mankind was, for Adam and Eve anyway, an unforeseeable consequence of Original Sin; one can no more allege that they truly chose human corruption than that Gavrilo Princip truly chose to plunge Europe into war. Big mistakes don't count as freely chosen outcomes. Second, even if Adam and Eve really did choose human nature for the rest of us, why should their choice count for so much? Don't the rest of us have a say? Invoking Original Sin only makes God look more and more morally confused.

God is not omnipotent or omniscient

The problem of evil only exists when one simultaneously holds that God is omniscient (all knowing), omnipotent (all powerful) and omnibenevolent (all good). The problem of evil does not exist if one gives up any of these three beliefs.

Some schools of the Kabbalah (esoteric Jewish mysticism) argue that the creation of the universe required a self-limitation on the part of God, and that evil is a consequence of God's self-imposed exile from the universe He created. In some readings of this theology, God has deliberately created an imperfect world. The question then arises as to why God would create such a world, and the standard response is to maximize human freedom and free will. Other readings of the same Kabbalistic texts one can hold that this is the best world that God could possibly create, and that God is not omnipotent. Given this reading, the problem of evil does not exist.

In Unitarian Universalism, in much of Conservative and Reform Judaism, and in some liberal wings of Protestant Christianity, God is said to be capable of acting in the world only through persuasion, and not by coercion. God makes Himself manifest in the world through inspiration and the creation of possibility, and not by miracles or violations of the laws of nature. God relinquishes his omnipotence, in order that humanity might have absolute free will. In this view, the problem of evil does not exist.

In Judaism the most popular works espousing this point are from Rabbi Harold Kushner; many of his works have also become popular with Christians as well.

The idea of a non-omnipotent God was developed by philosophers Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne, in the theological system known as process theology.

In the Evangelical movement of the Protestant churches, Open Theism (also called Free Will Theism), similarly asserts that God acts only cooperatively, and lacks omniscience concerning the future.

Contemporary philosophy of religion

J. L. Mackie, in his now classic article "Evil and Omnipotence", argued that human freedom is consistent with human perfection, and that God should have opted for both. Mackie asserts that human misconduct is a contingent matter -- we can choose to do good or evil, with both alternatives being possible. He then asks us to imagine a world in which everyone always chooses good and never chooses evil -- a virtuous and sinless world. Finally, he notes that God could have chosen to bring about any possible world, from the one that is actual, to a world in which people choose more wickedly, to the good world Mackie just described. So why not go with the good world? The only reply can be that, in choosing to bring about that world, God would thereby deny humans their freedom. But that can't be true. For if it were, then God would have denied us our freedom by bringing about the actual world. Bringing about a world in which people make choices is not freedom-cancelling, and so God should have brought about a world in which people make better choices. This argument is the seed of contemporary discussions of the logical argument from evil, which aims to show that theism and evil are logically incompatible.

Alvin Plantinga, in a response that has also achieved 'classic' status, rebuts Mackie. Plantinga's celebrated "free will defense" argues that evil is consistent with God's existence, because there are some possible worlds that God cannot bring about. This seems curious enough, if we assume that God is omnipotent. Shouldn't he be able to bring about any possible world he wants? But Plantinga reminds us that there are always trivial limits on omnipotence -- God can't make 2+2=5 or create a married bachelor. Plantinga's trick is stretching these trivial limits to very non-trivial results.

Step one: Plantinga proposes that there are logical truths -- so-called "counterfactuals of freedom" -- about our free choices in various possible situations, with one choice dictated for every situation. On Plantinga's example, where S is a situation in which Curley is free to take or refuse a bribe, it is either true that "If Curley were to be free in S, he would take the bribe" or "If Curley were to be free in S, he would refuse the bribe" (assume that exactly one can be true). These truths about what we would freely do in possible situations help make us what we are, and are timelessly and necessarily true -- and so, crucially, out of God's hands. Consequently, if the first proposition is true (and Curley would take the bribe), then God cannot bring about the possible world in which Curley refuses the bribe. God can only bring about S and sadly watch Curley's freely chosen venality manifest itself, as timelessly reported by that unchangeable counterfactual of freedom.

Step two: Plantinga argues for the possibility of a person who will sin at least once, no matter what situation God puts him in. Such a person suffers from so-called "transworld depravity". Though he can choose to do good in each situation, though it is possible that he do good in each situation, it is nevertheless true that he will choose to sin, a sad fact reported by his counterfactuals of freedom. And God can do nothing to bring about the sinless possible worlds -- that's up to the sinner, who will, as a matter of fact, choose otherwise.

We've arrived at the conclusion that perhaps even God cannot bring about Mackie's virtuous and sinless worlds. God may be omnipotent, but he can't change people's free decisions, and he can't change the fact that they will freely choose as they do. And if people will make nasty choices, then those possible worlds in which they choose good are beyond God's reach. Plantinga proposes that perhaps all persons suffer from transworld depravity, that perhaps the actual world, though not the best possible world, is the best one that God could bring about, if he is to respect the free choices of the creatures therein. Natural evil? Perhaps it's also the result of sinful actions -- the actions of invisible, powerful moral agents like demons. And this scenario is one in which God's moral perfection is squared with having created a horrid world like our own.

(Here another problem arises, related to God's claim (in many religions) that, after the end of the world, a paradise will be created where evil is defeated. The whole argument that God in his omnipotence could not create the "virtuous sinless world" described above seems to be contradicted by his own claim to plan to do this very thing! Heaven is the promised paradise of infinite bounty that fully matches the criteria of this virtuous sinless world. If such a world is not possible, then God is lying about the promise of Heaven. If such a world is possible, and God plans to make one world that way, why wasn't our world also made this way?)

One recent, friendly response to Plantinga is from Daniel Howard-Snyder and John O'Leary-Hawthorne. They claim that, to show the compatibility of theism and evil, Plantinga needs to support the possibility of his sketched scenario -- it mustn't be reasonable to doubt its possibility. And they claim that the possibility of all persons being transworld depraved is unsupported. After all, there is another prima facie possibility, that all persons are in fact transworld sanctified (and so would do no wrong). Both 'possibilities' seem equally possible, and since they rule each other out, only one of them can be possible. Thus it is reasonable to doubt the possibility of either, and it is reasonable to doubt that Plantinga's scenario is possible; so it is reasonable to doubt that God really is consistent with evil. The two critics take to repairing Plantinga's argument, by replacing the "it is possible that" propositions with similar "for all we reasonably believe, it is possible that" propositions. The conclusion is then not that theism and evil are compatible, but that, for all we reasonably believe, theism and evil are compatible. The compatibility is not proven, but the incompatibility isn't reasonable, either. Mackie is still rebutted.

Another, stronger challenge comes from Richard Gale. In Plantinga's scenario, God's decisions cause human behavior and the psychological makeup whence that behavior stems; consequently, Gale maintains, human freedom gets cancelled by God's decisions. Ironically, then, Plantinga's "free will defense" story is a story without human freedom. Now, as Gale notes, Plantinga's God can't change peoples' counterfactuals of freedom; the truth of these propositions is up to the relevant people. But, by Plantinga, God does decide which possible persons get actualized, knowing full well their counterfactuals of freedom; it's up to God who gets to exist and then do their stuff. Moreover, God crafts his creatures' psychological makeup, which in turn exercises significant influence over their decisions. This is freedom-cancelling, even if our psychology doesn't determine our decisions, for it makes God like a mad scientist who implants a test subject with new dispositions and preferences to make her more agreeable. And to decide who gets instantiated is to be a sufficient cause of what decisions get made, even if the persons themselves are sufficient causes in their own right. The result is that Plantinga's God is in charge of too much, robbing humans of their freedom. Or so Gale avers.

In his book The Problem of Pain pop theologian C. S. Lewis called pain "God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world".

Holocaust theology

Main article: Holocaust theology

In light of the magnitude of evil seen in the Holocaust, many people have re-examined the classical theological views on God's goodness and actions in the world. How can people still have any faith after the Holocaust? There is a separate entry which discusses the theological responses that people have had in response to the Holocaust.

See also

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Damnation

In Western Christian traditions, Damnation to hell is the punishment of the Christian God for persons with unredeemed sin. Damnation is a primary motivator for conversions to Christianity.

One conception is of eternal suffocating heat, being taunted by demons for all eternity.

Another conception, derived from the scripture about Gehenna is simply that people will be discarded (burned), as being unworthy of preservation by God.

In both conceptions, Jesus Christ is accepted as the Lamb of God, able by perfect sacrifice to atone for one's sin, though one is required to accept Him. This acceptance is said to constitute salvation from sin, and therefore from damnation (though a debate exists between Christians over the role that works play in salvation).

In Eastern Christian traditions (Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy), it is not seen as a legalistic punishment meted out by an angry and vengeful God for a slight against some set of spiritual rules. Instead, it describes a state of separation from God, a state into which all humans are born but against which Christ is the Mediator and "Great Physician".

"Damnation" (or, more commonly, "damn") is widely used as a moderate profanity.

"Damnation" is also the name of an album by the Swedish band Opeth.