Response to Free Will Arguments

It is often said that all the misery and suffering in the world is not God's fault, but is the fault of human sin, which God must allow, lest he violate our free will—that is, our freedom to do good or evil. Of course, those who argue this have to come up with yet another ad hoc excuse for why God doesn't set right the mistakes of his children, as any responsible parent would, and yet another ad hoc excuse for why he doesn't stay their hands before they really hurt somebody with their folly, and yet another ad hoc excuse for why he is a silent no-show (since you can't claim THAT is the fault of human sin), and on and on. By now we have added several completely unproven assumptions about God, without any basis in evidence. Never mind that it is wholly irrelevant (and thus wholly invalid as a defense) if you adopt a compatibilist account of free will, as I think one must.

But even if you adopt a libertarian view of free will (despite it being incoherent and unintelligible), this defense still fails, and for two obvious reasons. For one thing, most misery in the world cannot even in the wildest of imaginations be blamed on humans—as noted above, much of it is inherent in the design of the universe, inherent even in the design of human and animal bodies. Most of it is needlessly endured by animals who have no free will and can hardly be blamed for 'sinning' and thus hardly deserve to suffer. And a whole lot of it comes from "Acts of God", not acts of men: earthquakes, floods, plagues, genetic defects, and on and on.

Moreover, we routinely restrain or prevent people from doing evil. We lock them up, we hire cops to capture, stop, even shoot them if necessary. We regard it as a morally acceptable, even a morally obligatory thing to act in self defense or to come to someone else's aid when they are being victimized by another. We regard it as an unqualified good to set up institutions and procedures that prevent people from doing or wanting to do evil acts. And we know for a fact most evil is done in ignorance, and thus we strive to educate people as well as possible. We also punish and reward by many different means so as to encourage good and discourage bad behavior. If all this is good for us, even morally obligatory, and is not a "violation" of the free will of evil doers, it is absurd to say it is wrong for a god to do it, that it violates free will only when HE does it but not when WE do.

I have actually heard someone say "But God would do it too well!" Yes, they actually said that, even though it is absurd to think we can have a society that was too fair. One wonders, again, what heaven could possibly be like, or why we would want to go there, if there is such a thing as too nice a place to live. If heaven is better than this place, then God has no excuse not to make this place better, too. And even assuming there is such a thing as too much niceness and justice, who better to give us exactly the amount that is right, but an all-knowing, all-powerful, superintelligent being? Are we to say that we are already there, that more justice than we have now, more good than we have now, would be too much, would somehow take away our free will? If you really believe that, then you should oppose with fierce horror any attempt to improve crime control or prevention, or the justice system, or our medical system, or medical abilities and technologies, or any compassionate enterprise whatever, including soup kitchens and Doctors without Borders. For all these things would be unconsciously violating our free will. Yet that is clearly absurd.

So you must face facts: the world could be a better place, should be a better place, yet it isn't. Therefore, there cannot be any compassionate God to make it so—for if there were, he would have done so already.

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Expanding on the fantastically absurd argument that God can do nothing, not a single thing, because to do so would be doing too much, and would violate our free will (even though our doing more somehow doesn't), the "Free Will Defense" is used in another astonishing way. God must remain silent and inactive and leave no good evidence of his existence, because if he gave any more, the evidence would be so convincing he would violate your free will. That is, you could not choose to disbelieve, so your belief would not be freely given. This suffers from all the same objections, and is even more absurd than the first free will defense. Even from the start, it makes no sense, God should only care about our free choice to love him, not our freedom to believe he exists. After all, how can we make a reasoned and informed choice about whom to love if we can't even figure out who exists?

This also totally fails to explain the misery-inducing flaws in the very design of nature itself, or the suffering of animals, and is entirely invalidated by compatibilist free will. But even if you come up with another excuse to explain away the flaws in nature's design and yet another for the suffering of animals, and illogically adopt a libertarian view of free will, you are still stuck in a quagmire of absurdity. For every argument entails that convincing evidence deprives us of free will. But there are a great many things for which we have convincing evidence. Are we to destroy that evidence, avoid it, so as to stay free? Don't you want convincing evidence before committing yourself to something? To assume we don't, to assume it is ever a good thing to believe a claim on unconvincing evidence, is to take a position on method that is wholly unlivable and inherently absurd, inverting all rationality, and divorcing faith from reason. It would mean that teachers, scientists, lawyers, are routinely committing unspeakable crimes against humanity, depriving everyone of their free will by providing convincing evidence to believe their claims.

There can be no merit in a belief that is held for bad reasons, in a loyalty that is given on uncertain knowledge of to whom you are pledging it, in a trust that is placed in something wholly unproven. And there can be no evil in telling a man what he needs to know to save himself and be happy, and proving to him, like Mr. Scrooge, that it is true. If you believe a man is obliged to prove a claim to you before believing it, then you cannot believe it is in any way wrong for a god to do so. If you believe it is a good thing for a preacher, an apologist, a missionary to give me more evidence and better reasons to believe, then you cannot believe it wrong for a god to do so. Otherwise, missionaries must be villains, and apologetics a wanton violation of man's free will. These are absurd conclusions. Therefore, this defense is absurd.