God and the Playpen: On the Feasibility of Morally Better Worlds
According to the free will defense, God cannot create a world with free creatures, and hence a world with moral goodness, without allowing for the possibility of evil. David Lewis points out that any free will defense must address the “playpen problem”: why didn’t God allow creatures the freedom req...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
MDPI
[2021]
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| In: |
Religions
Year: 2021, Volume: 12, Issue: 4 |
| Further subjects: | B
James Sterba
B Molinism B Hugh McCann B J.L. Mackie B Open Theism B Free will defense B theological compatibilism B Alvin Plantinga B problem of evil B David Lewis |
| Online Access: |
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| Summary: | According to the free will defense, God cannot create a world with free creatures, and hence a world with moral goodness, without allowing for the possibility of evil. David Lewis points out that any free will defense must address the “playpen problem”: why didn’t God allow creatures the freedom required for moral goodness, while intervening to ensure that all evil-doing is victimless? More recently, James Sterba has revived the playpen problem by arguing that an omnipotent and benevolent God would have intervened to prevent significant and especially horrendous evil. I argue that it is possible, at least, that such divine intervention would have backfired, and that any attempt to create a world that is morally better than this one would have resulted in a world that is morally worse. I conclude that the atheologian should instead attack the free will defense at its roots: either by denying that the predetermination of our actions is incompatible with our freely per-forming them, or by denying that the actual world—a world with both moral good and evil—is more valuable than a world without any freedom at all. |
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| ISSN: | 2077-1444 |
| Reference: | Kommentar in "Sixteen Contributors (2021)"
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Religions
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.3390/rel12040266 |