In his article “Evil and Omnipotence” J.L Mackie discusses the challenge to
religious belief known as the problem of evil. What is this problem? According
to Mackie “[p]erhaps the most important proposed solution to the problem of
evil is that evil is not to be ascribed to God at all, but to the independent
actions of human beings, supposed to have been endowed by God with freedom of
the will”(Mackie, 93). Explain how the existence of free will is thought by
many theists to solve the problem of evil. Mackie raises several objections
against the free will solution. We also examined some related objections in
class (Couldn’t we all have been made a bit more in Mother Theresa’s mold?
Couldn’t God have arranged things so that humans find evil less tempting than
they currently do? If it is possible to imagine a heaven in which people do no
do evil, doesn’t this show that there can be free will without anyone’s
doing evil?). Pick the one (or two) objection(s) that you believe is (are) the
most effective objection(s). How might a theist reply? Would Mackie, or any
other non-theist, have a convincing counter-reply? Explain your answers The
quest to find out who we are, where we came from, where we will go after we die
and what, if anything, controls our world has fascinated mankind throughout the
centuries. Famous philosophers have devoted their whole lives to developing
theories, and yet the closest any have come to success has been to not have
their theories disproved. One of such theories is the challenge to religious
belief known as evil. J.L. Mackie was one of the major philosophical opponents
of religion in the twentieth century. Mackie claims that theism is logically
inconsistent, thus irrational, in the combining of these three judgments: 1. God
is omnipotent. 2. God is wholly good. 3. Evil exists. “The problem of Evil, in
the sense in which I shall be using the phrase, is a problem only for someone
who believes that there is a God who is both omnipotent and wholly
good.”(Mackie pg. 90) If God were truly omnipotent, he could prevent all and
every evil. If he were wholly good, he’d prevent all and every evil that he
could prevent. So if God was omnipotent and wholly good, he’d prevent every
evil, hence there’d be no evil. But in reality, evil does exist. So does this
mean that no omnipotent-God exists, which would then cross the lines of
religion. The problem that we are faced with is not either a scientific problem
nor a practical problem, but it is a logical problem. Logically there is a God,
and he is both omnipotent and wholly good, in which technically there should be
no evil. Some theists feel the existence of free will; can solve the problem of
evil. If free will were allowed, there would be decisions and actions in which
God could not know due to the person’s choice. This would limit God’s
omnipotence, which is unacceptable to some. Free will is the mind’s ability to
choose with intelligence. That doesn’t mean that our choice has all the
freedom in the world. Our choices cannot and obviously should not be totally
free from our knowledge, values and perceptions of everyday life and the things
around us. Our choices are not free from past thoughts and decisions or from
outside influences. The freedom in freewill is not the dismissal of these
influencing factors: our self-awareness, our imagination, our ability to seek
out knowledge and project the future, and our awareness of and observing our own
thinking. This is our source of freedom. The proper understanding of free will
is that choices are not free from influences, but free to make intelligent
choices. Free will is a measure of self-determination that people feel
themselves to possess and by which they make moral judgments. Mackie raises many
objections to the free will solution. Some theists also state Evil results from
the abuse or our free will, but its better to have free will and sometimes act
wrong, than to be robots and act right all the time. Mackie replies that a good
God would allow our free good choices but stop our free bad choices. Mackie also
states, “Humans always freely do the right thing” which is logically
possible and so an omnipotent God could bring it about that humans always freely
do the right thing. “Perhaps the most important proposed solution of the
problem of evil is that evil is not to be ascribed to God at all, but to the
independent actions of human beings, supposed to have been endowed by God with
freedom of the will”(Mackie pg 95) This solution is combined with the theory,
“The universe is better with some evil in it than it could be if there were no
evil.” Certain evil’s lead to higher goods, an example would be pain a first
order evil, that leads to sympathy which is a second order evil. This is a
logical example of a world with some evil in it; certain evils are highly
unjustified such as cruelty. Cruelty, second order evil, has no third order good
to lean upon, so it is proven unnecessary and unjustified. Mackie also says the
notion of free will is incoherent. If it is possible to imagine a heaven in
which people do not do evil, doesn’t this show that there can be free will
without anyone’s doing evil? I strongly agree with this objection, if one can
visualize a place where no evil exit then there should be a place with any evil.
But this place that we have found can only be reached after death. We are
talking about Heaven, and you can only go to heaven after you die. So such a
place may exist but not in your lifetime, only your afterlife. A theist would
reply to this objection, that if there is heaven then there must be a God. In
which God does exist, and there is a place where you can go and there is no
evil. But to achieve this you must live your life wholly good. Mackie see that
the more common theistic view is that God cannot do what is logically
impossible. But in reality there is evil, some theists say, lower evils such as
pain and suffering are required to achieve higher-order goods such as sympathy
and heroic benevolence.