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From: flink@umcp-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Jones on free will and evil
Message-ID: <7343@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 4-Jun-84 06:45:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.7343
Posted: Mon Jun  4 06:45:48 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 6-Jun-84 04:24:02 EDT
Organization: Univ. of Maryland, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 35

>>Admittedly off the subject, but it connects with the problem of evil:
>>this is exactly the way that many think that humans should have been
>>created, if God is indeed good.  One often sees this state [where you
>>voluntarily choose the optimal course for your life] denigrated by
>>Christians who want to weasel out of the problem of evil as that of being
>>a "mere automaton" (and thus for some reason not capable of "true"
>>worship, love, etc., so that God creates humans that will mostly fry
>>instead).  So, why aren't humans created that way in the first place?
>>					James Jones

A good question, and the point can be strengthened too.  It might seem that
the question has a simple answer:  humans aren't created that way (whatever
way would make them voluntarily choose good) because they can't be.  The
stipulation that the choice is voluntary contradicts the idea that they are
created in a way that makes them choose good.  In short, we have freedom VS
determinism, and we aren't created that way because we are made free.

This simple answer won't work:  the alleged contradiction is absent.  There
is no opposition between freedom and determinism; between being made good
and being made free.  Agency is simply the ability to conceive of a norm of
action and to guide one's action by it; freedom is the possession and
exercise of an optimal degree of such capacity.  A free being is one that
evaluates its action according to a best justified, consistent set of norms.
(I owe these points to Chin-Tai Kim, "Norms and Freedom", *Philosophical
Forum* 198(3?).)  Being made good would make us more free, not less.  The
question why we aren't created that way comes back with full force.

There is evil in the world:  this is a fact of our daily experience with
which any Theology must deal.  Appeals to free will do not explain this
fact, even if one ignores the (less obvious, but still real) fact that not
all evil in the world can be attributed to human agents.  We still need an
explanation for why we aren't created good.  Free will is a red herring.

				The aspiring iconoclast,
				--Paul Torek, umcp-cs!flink