Free Will & it's Evil problems

The problem of evil is commonly broken into two different segments. There is the problem of “moral” evil, and the problem of “Natural” evil. Though they are somewhat related, they are not entirely the same, and they each have their own talking points.

The problem of moral evil and Free will

Here’s the logical Syllogism generally used to describe the moral problem of evil. This problem has been formulated in many different ways, but I believe the following captures the essence of the problem as it is proposed.

Premise 1 – God is all powerful and can stop evil from existing.

Premise 2 – God is all loving and does not want the people he created to do evil.

Premise 3 – The people he created do evil.

Given premise 1 and 2 an all loving and all powerful God wants to and could stop moral evil on this world.

Premise 4 – Moral evil has not stopped

Conclusion 1 –God is all loving and is incapable of stopping evil which would make him not all powerful

Conclusion 2 – God is Powerful enough to stop all evil and chooses not to which would make him not all loving

-Or-

Conclusion 3 – There simply is no God

Evil and Free will

Moral evil is evil done by people: examples would be murder, rape, or daytime television. The question of moral evil also often times comes along with questions about free will. Why does God allow people to do these horrible things? Why doesn’t he just stop them, or make it impossible for people to do these bad things? Surely, an “all powerful” God could do so.

As shown in “P1” the problem of evil seems to cause trouble for people often times, because they think that God, being “all powerful”, should have no problem stopping people from doing evil, without impeding on their free will. This misunderstanding seems to come from different concepts of the term “all powerful”. When we as Christians say that God is “all powerful” we are not saying he can do absolutely anything; rather we are saying God can do anything that can be done. So when the question is asked “can God make a rock so big that he can’t lift it?” The answer is no, because that cannot be done, it’s self contradictory(God cannot do anything and not do anything at the same time). A better term for His attribute of powerful would be “Maximally Powerful”.

Similarly, if you were try to say, “God can create free will beings that cannot make the wrong decision.” It would be equally illogical. But, why is this illogical?

To understand this we must first define free will. Free will is the ability to choose between available options. Pretty simple huh? Under this definition, we can see that if God made it so we could not choose an available option we would no longer have free will. Another interesting point is that making a good decision every time is a character trait, and character traits are developed by an individual, and cannot be given by an outside party.

Here’s an example: A man was walking down the street, and there was a woman he didn’t know hurt in a car accident on the other side of the street. The man had two major options at that point 1) he could help the woman 2) he could leave the woman there. Now without adding any extra variables into the equation, we’ll say that Helping the woman is “good” and leaving the woman is “bad”. Now if we were only capable of choosing option one, by definition we would not have free will.

As you can see in this example, on its face, there are no logical reasons that the man cannot choose either option. Both options are necessary given the situation, and nothing about choosing either option is logically impossible. In addition, we would have to be capable of choosing both options in order to have free will in any meaningful sense, but without the person having built the character to be a helpful person, he may not pick option 1.

The unfortunate consequence of creating a world where free will beings exist is that they have the ability to choose something different that what God may want them to choose. Inevitably, this means that some WILL choose to do evil. Sometimes we make bad choices because it’s the easier, sometimes because it just feels better to choose the wrong option. Whatever the reason as long as a bad choice is an available option we must be allowed to choose it, and there is no logical way for God to force us into a correct position without removing free will.

Next we will go into Moral evil and if it comports with the Christian Idea of Love.

Until then think, learn and prepare yourself to answer questions about the God you love.