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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
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    321,452
    Perspectives
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    42
    The argument that some evil is logically necessary for a ... — Carmelics
    Home/Problem of Evil
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    The argument that some evil is logically necessary for a greater good that outweighs it is not immune from challenge.

    Problem of Evil
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Alvin Plantinga's free will defense requires actual evil as a logical precondition, yet Mackie argued God could create beings who always freely choose good.
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    • 2.If libertarian free will requires genuine alternatives including evil choices, then a world of free creatures who never sin may be metaphysically impossible.
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    • 3.However, as J.L. Mackie noted, omnipotence plausibly includes the power to create beings with freedom who nonetheless always choose rightly, undermining the necessity claim.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Soul-making theodicy (Hick) holds that moral virtues like courage require genuine suffering, but virtues can be defined dispositionally without requiring their actual exercise.
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    • 2.A being with the settled disposition toward courage in counterfactual suffering scenarios would possess the virtue without actual evil having occurred.
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    • 3.This shows the logical necessity claim fails: the greater good of virtue does not strictly entail the actual instantiation of the evils meant to produce it.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • The examples typically advanced of cases where some evil is logically necessary for a greater good that outweighs the evil are not really convincing upon close examination.
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    Topics

    Problem of Evil

    Related

    A being with the settled disposition toward courage in counterfactual suffering ...Alvin Plantinga's free will defense requires actual evil as a logical preconditi...However, as J.L. Mackie noted, omnipotence plausibly includes the power to creat...If libertarian free will requires genuine alternatives including evil choices, t...
    +3 moreShow less
    Soul-making theodicy (Hick) holds that moral virtues like courage require genuin...The examples typically advanced of cases where some evil is logically necessary ...This shows the logical necessity claim fails: the greater good of virtue does no...

    Similar

    If some evils are logically necessary for greater goods, a morally per...84%Some evils are such that their actuality, or at least their possibilit...84%It seems possible that there might be evils that are logically necessa...83%A perfectly good being would not want to eliminate evils that are logi...82%

    Source

    AI-extracted3/3 agreementValid
    SEP: evil
    View source passageHide passage
    Neither of these lines of argument is immune from challenge. As regards the former, one can argue that the examples that are typically advanced of cases where some evil is logically necessary for a greater good that outweighs the evil are not really, upon close examination, convincing, while, as regards the latter, there is a serious problem of making sense of libertarian free will, for although there is no difficulty about the idea of actions that are not causally determined, libertarian free will requires more than the mere absence of determinism, and the difficulty arises when one attempts...
    Extraction notes

    Validity: The passage explicitly states that the line of argument regarding evil being logically necessary for a greater good can be challenged on the grounds that the typically advanced examples are not convincing upon close examination, which matches the extracted argument's premise and conclusion.

    Confidence: Clearly presented as a line of challenge in the text.

    Details

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