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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Moral evil is entirely the fault of free creatures, not God. — Carmelics
    Home/Divine Attributes
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    Moral evil is entirely the fault of free creatures, not God.

    Divine Attributes
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Given libertarian freedom, our actions are up to us in that they are not brought about by independent events.
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    • 2.Moral evil owes its existence to our wills, not to God's will.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.God, as omniscient creator, foreknew every free act of evil that would occur before creating agents capable of those acts.
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    • 2.An agent who knowingly instantiates a causal order guaranteed to produce specific evils bears partial moral responsibility for those evils.
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    • 3.Therefore God's creative act cannot be entirely absolved of responsibility merely by the intervening freedom of creatures.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Mackie's 1955 argument holds that an omnipotent God could have created free beings who nonetheless always freely choose rightly.
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    • 2.If such a world is logically possible, God's failure to actualize it makes God culpable for moral evil that results from a lesser choice.
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    • 3.Plantinga's own 'transworld depravity' response depends on modal claims about counterfactuals of freedom that remain deeply contested in the literature.
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    Divine Attributes

    Related

    An agent who knowingly instantiates a causal order guaranteed to produce specifi...Given libertarian freedom, our actions are up to us in that they are not brought...God, as omniscient creator, foreknew every free act of evil that would occur bef...If such a world is logically possible, God's failure to actualize it makes God c...
    +4 moreShow less
    Mackie's 1955 argument holds that an omnipotent God could have created free bein...Moral evil owes its existence to our wills, not to God's will.Plantinga's own 'transworld depravity' response depends on modal claims about co...Therefore God's creative act cannot be entirely absolved of responsibility merel...

    Similar

    The nature of free creatures reflects more closely what we suppose to ...77%Yet evil is rife in the world.76%Moral evil owes its existence to our wills, not to God's will.75%God lacks the possibility of doing evil.74%

    Source

    AI-extracted2/3 agreementValid
    SEP: providence-divine
    Plantinga 1974, 30
    View source passageHide passage
    Given the nature of libertarian freedom, then, our actions are up to us, in that they are not brought about by independent events. And because this is so, according to free will theodicy, moral evil is entirely our fault. God is not to be blamed for it, because it owes its existence to our wills, not to his (Plantinga 1974, 30). God is, of course, responsible for the risk he takes in creating a world that contains beings with free will. But proponents of the free will defense can point to two reasons that could justify God in populating the universe with such creatures. First, they are an enha...
    Extraction notes

    Validity: The passage explicitly states that "moral evil is entirely our fault" because "it owes its existence to our wills, not to his," directly grounding this in the nature of libertarian freedom, which matches both premises and the conclusion.

    Confidence: Explicit argument in the text.

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit