Sunday, 22 March 2009

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  A Rave Concerning Good, Evil, and Freedom: Part the Eleventh

  Extending the Metaphor

  Recapping David Ray's Griffin's objections from the last part of this rave.

  • Given all the evil (and in particular suffering) in this world that can be traced to libertarian freedom, things would have been better without it.
  • Even if libertarian freedom is an overriding good, surely God could have arranged things or intervened so that it did not cause as much suffering as it has.

  And, let's add a third objection of Griffin's that I did not include,
  

  • There seems to be much suffering which human freedom does not appear to have caused (eg., suffering of animals or natural disasters—see also the works by William Rowe on this point).

  One might object to last of these by appealing to the biblical story of the Fall and that human sin so disrupted nature that it now inflicts disaster upon the innocent. Assuming that one's antagonist accepted the story of the Fall as historical (and there is not prima facia reason why she should) one has simply pushed this third objection to be a special instance of the first two. Does human freedom really justify natural evil if God could have made us much as we are with this freedom? Plantinga's suggestion of inserting such spiritual agents as fallen angels meets with a similar sort of objection, though in this case it is not just human freedom that is at issue. Plantinga's one advantage is that one need not argue over the historicity of the creation account in Genesis. Plantinga has stated that his free will defense need not be plausible, simply possible.

  Or does it? Granted that Plantinga's free will defense might well show that there is no logical contradiction between God's existence and evil, appeals to the Fall or fallen angels has an ad hoc air to them. Moreover, as the logical objection move over to an evidential one (as Griffin's has), the rejoinder moves from mere possibility to plausibility. By “plausible” I mean that the defense hangs together without appeal to extra suppositions that spin around on their own like so many epicycles without any organic unity with the argument as a whole.

  Here I would like to adapt a couple of point Peter van Inwagen made in his treatment of the problem of evil. Van Inwagen argues that human freedom requires a certain amount of biological sophistication and complexity, these in turn require a certain environment and both require a certain amount of development. For these to arise a lot of unfortunate events and conditions get built in. One has predators and prey, aggression, death and decay. One also has trade-offs in the physical realm which intrudes on the biological. Fire become part of the natural life-cycle of some species (as is the case for certain conifers) and others have adaptations which work against them in these cases (most mammals would undergo exquisite agony in a forest fire by the very adaptation that allow them to otherwise thrive). John Polkinghorne makes much the same point. As vast as this universe is, it is finite, both in extent and depth. Since everything is limited, there are trade-offs. In short, worlds that both exhibit a plenitude of being and are devoid of evil may not be possible.

  This leads to how van Inwagen address the second objection listed above. Universes may be more delicate that they appear. Perhaps St. Augustine's point that creation was in one moment and the rest (as illustrated in Genesis) is a development of makings. If so, miracles (if not taken with great care) might wreak more havoc than good. So then, instead of arguing that we would be better off with some of the evils we suffer or horrors than not, van Inwagen shifts ground by suggesting that we might be worse off if God made it a policy to intervene.

  To the above, I would like to add that perhaps it might be the case that if God was going to make beings with the sort of deliberate capacities that we enjoy that freedom was not an option. Specifically, I would like to suggest that while humans enjoy a very wide range of choice based on their ability to appreciate the value of various goals and the means to obtain those goals, that other creatures enjoy a certain (though more limited) sort of freedom. Thomas Aquinas distinguished between rational, sensitive, and vegetative (or nutritive) souls (humans, animals, plants) the former being more or less supersets of the latter and dependent on the functions of the latter. Without going into the particulars of Thomism, I should think insofar as creatures are able appreciate the good, they are free in some sense. Is there a reason to cut this off at the biological? I don't see why. The border between what is alive and what is not is a bit fuzzing. Perhaps that suggests a gradation in freedom. If so, freedom is part and parcel with actual being (I will grant that much to process philosophy). However, for this suggestion to make any sense, I will have to again look at what I have been long putting off, an examination of just what freedom is. That, however, shall have to wait.

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