Does the presence of free-will allow for the possibility of evil in a world with a benevolent God?

Question

The Problem of Evil is to understand how God can allow evil in the world if He is omni-benevolent (all-good), as someone who is all-good would not knowingly allow evil to occur where they could prevent it. However, if God allows man free will (enough to allow man the ability to choose evil himself), does this count as a resolution or at least some progress towards the problem of evil?

For example, had men no free will, then they would be automatons or robots, essentially not much different to a brick that must react to a given situation in a completely specific and determined way.

Answer 1

I would say that Alvin Plantinga's free will defense is perhaps the most philosophically rigorous defense that many agree defends the logical possibility of a good God which has created a world with evil. Please see the link for arguments pro/con about his defense.

Let's be clear about the argument - it's not just that God always acts good (or is all-good/omnibenevolent), it is also that God is all-powerful and all-omniscient, but evil still exists - how can a good God create/allow moral evil?

Platinga's argument is a logical attack on the core ability of an all-powerful being to logically create a world in which a true moral actor can always act good. However, I think that leaves the argument rather dry and makes it easy to miss the deeper logic of it.

There Must Be A Greater Good

The core of the defense must be that there is a "greater good" in allowing free moral choice and thus permitting - and even creating - evil in order to preserve free moral choice, because that is the morally right thing for God to do. It is morally right for God to give humans free will, even though a side result of giving free will is that they are able to commit evil.

Good must be defined as "whatever God wills", because God is defined in the "Problem of Evil" argument as all-good. Therefore evil cannot be committed by God - again, he has been defined in the argument to only do good. Evil must be defined as being committed only when a free moral actor other than God chooses to do something other than what God wills. Therefore it is never God desiring or willing evil, but only permitting the evil that other moral actors commit, because - and this is the key - to not permit a free moral actor from committing evil would be to override free will, and free will must therefore be a greater moral good than permitting evil.

I do believe this answers the problem of evil, per your question.

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Why Is Free Will a Greater Good?

Some will ask why allowing free moral will is a "greater good" which overcomes the fact that evil must be allowed in this world. I believe this can be answered as follows:

1) God is love, he made us to be in relationship with him and with each other, to love and be loved. This is evident throughout the entire metanarrative of the Bible from a Christian perspective. For example, Jesus said, paraphrased: "Love God above all, and your neighbor as yourself, these commands sum up all of the law". The ability to love is therefore the essence of all good moral conduct.

2) Given #1, the argument is that the greater good for allowing evil is to allow love. Therefore, an assumption made is that free will is required in order to allow love. If one cannot choose to love, one cannot love. The definition of love must require free choice to love - if one is compelled to love another being it cannot properly be called love. A world without free will is therefore a world without the greatest moral choice - love.

3) Given #1 and #2, it follows that for God to create a world where the highest moral good is possible, he must create a world with love. To create a world with love, he must create free moral actors. Free moral actors must be allowed to choose either good or evil by definition. Therefore, evil must be allowed in order to allow free will and thereby allow the greater good of love to exist.

A good God therefore must create a world in which free moral actors other than God himself are allowed to commit evil moral acts, because that is the only way that the greater moral act of love can also exist.

Put another way - to create a world without evil is to create a world without love.

Note: Free moral will in this defense is Libertarian Free Will, not Compatibilist Free Will

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Edit to add comment regarding last 2 paragraphs:

1) A world without Hitler would thus be a world in which no human is able to love each other or have a relationship with God, greater than perhaps a dog might have with a man. Is a world of "not-evil" robots better than a messy, but meaningful world of real humans with real relationships and choices? I say no, but your mileage my vary!

2) It is wrong to say heaven is the best possible world - your view here is too narrow - you must include all of creation/the universe/the multiverse in order to make this argument. Thus a universe including both existing earth and heaven, future earth and heaven (if different than current), and also hell, must be considered. If you boil the defense above down to allowing relationship with God and choosing either for his way or against it, then heaven just ends up being the place where you continue that relationship, and hell is the place where you go to continue not having a relationship with God, so they are sort of just an extension of your choices in that regard here on earth and morally the spiritual world is not then much different in analysis from the material world.

Answer 2

Evil only exists as a view point of a specific perceiver. It has no objective reality. For example: if a scientist developed a virus that when released killed 90% of humans, we would call that evil. However, from the view of other mammals this would be a good as it would keep many from extinction.

Answer 3

An essentially omnipotent god can set the payoff matrices of interactions. By allowing strong negative terms, God is allowing evil. The problem is in creating a universe where evil is so easy (and desirable!) to do, not in allowing free will.

(For example, why is it even remotely possible for one person to kill another?!)

This therefore does not solve the problem of evil at all.

Answer 4

Yes to "some progress", with a free will defense like Alvin Plantinga's or Alexander Pruss'. These only allege to rebut the logical problem of evil, leaving the evidential one wide open. Note that a free will defense is weaker than a theodicy.

One way to get more progress is to talk about other things a benevolent creator would want, like for his/hers/its creation to form rational beliefs and be able to understand all things, including moral things. Then again, such a creator hopefully doesn't need e.g. Unit 731, which did provide knowledge that we otherwise wouldn't have. Is moral knowledge worth the cost? One can probably construct possible worlds where the answer is 'yes' and some where it is 'no'.

Answer 5

If free will necessarily leads to evil, and God desires good, then you have to find a way to make free will and its potential for evil a method for improved benevolence. One way is to show that an apparent good act of an agent is made good by the fact that the agent chose to do it. In other words, saving someone's life when you had the option not to, makes that act a good one. On these grounds, good cannot exist without the choice to do evil, and if you take away the ability to do evil, then you cannot describe that which is left as good.

Fair enough, but how to treat the evil that comes along for the ride? Aquinas came to the conclusion that evil does not really exist in the same way as good, so the good of a free agent is not negated by the evil of that agent.

More modern treatments seem to focus on the concept of the Best Possible World (BPW), where good/evil seems to have some kind score (like a football match). If there was no free will, the score would be 0-0, because no acts are good or evil. With free will, the score is x-y (let's say x for good, y for evil). Presumably, there exists some benevolence function of (x,y) and the BPW is the world where this function is maximized for good. Plantinga is probably the foremost authority on this view (I suspect he will probably reject my analogy though).

A successful refutation of the Problem of Evil on these grounds requires of our world to be the BPW. If our world is not the BPW, then God is somehow allowing more evil than is strictly necessary, which contradicts the property of omni-benevolence.

Is it the case that our world is the BPW? We can't prove that this is not be the BPW, so the defence on these grounds is logically sound. But considering our world the BPW has a number of interesting consequences. Firstly, if a world with Hitler and suicide bombers is the best God can do, that does provide some insights into the limitations of God's supposed omnipotence. Secondly, some religions believe in the concept of heaven, which they usually define as the BPW. If heaven exists, then that is the BPW, not this world, so we seem to have a contradiction here that needs explaining.

Answer 6

Free will can only be called such if it allowed you to choose to do things contrary to what God wants. It's very definition allows for evil to come into the world.

As for the why: my best guess is that God wants man to be able to resist the temptation and freely choose not to do evil. That is a much greater thing than merely being unable to do evil because God controls you.