157
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Line 66:
Line 66: + + + + +
→Free Will: God's love for us as particular persons
He thinks there is no reason to question the possibility of "transworld depravity," and thus concludes that his defense fends off the problem of evil. Many philosophers - both theistic and atheistic - agree with this assessment{{who says}}, although there is no settled consensus. The problem of evil will not likely go away so easily, as the matter of non-moral evils (diseases, predation and natural disasters, for instance) cannot be solved by Plantinga's defense alone.
He thinks there is no reason to question the possibility of "transworld depravity," and thus concludes that his defense fends off the problem of evil. Many philosophers - both theistic and atheistic - agree with this assessment{{who says}}, although there is no settled consensus. The problem of evil will not likely go away so easily, as the matter of non-moral evils (diseases, predation and natural disasters, for instance) cannot be solved by Plantinga's defense alone.
== God's love for us as particular persons ==
One proposed solution to the problem of evil argues that, although people in general could exist without evil, the particular people who now exist could not. The lives of all who now live are so deeply entwined with the evils of the past, that without all of those evils, or the bulk of them, everyone now alive would never have existed. In a perfect world, none of us would have ever been born; in a perfect world, people would still exist, but we would not be among them, nor anyone whom we love. If God loves people in general, the best thing He could have done for people in general would have been to create a perfect world for them to live in. But if God loves particular people — the particular people who now exist — the best thing He could have done for those particular people is to create a world containing whatever is necessary for their existence — in other words, the best thing God could do ''for us'' is to create the very world which now exists. God could have done better; but God could not have done better for us, only for other people.
We creatures really have no right to complain about God creating a world which contains evil, for without evil we would not exist — when we are complaining about God creating a world which contains evil, what we are really objecting to is our own existence, for God creating such a world is necessary to our own existence.
== The problem of evil for [[atheists]] ==
== The problem of evil for [[atheists]] ==