The basic problem of evil is that the existence of evil in the world is incompatible with the Philosophy 101 conception of God, namely that God is all good, all-powerful and all knowing. After all, if God has these attributes, then He knows about all evil, should tolerate no evil and has the power to prevent evil. While some take the problem of evil to show that God does not exist, it can also be taken as showing that this conception of God is in error. For example, if God is not all powerful (perhaps because He is opposed by an equally powerful evil being), then evil would be compatible with God.
Not surprisingly, those who accept the existence of an all good, all powerful and all-knowing deity have responded to the problem of evil. One standard response is that God has granted us free will and this necessitates that He allows us to do evil things. This, it is claimed, gets God off the hook: since we are free to choose evil, God is not accountable for the evil we do.
In a previous essay I discussed the old claim by Republican Richard Mourdock’s that “Life is that gift from God. I think that even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something God intended to happen.” In that essay, I briefly discussed the matter of free will. In this essay I will expand on this subject. While this is callback to a debate from 2012, the victories of the anti-abortion view make this discussion relevant today.
For the sake of the discussion, I assume we have free will because I am interested in whether free will actually get God off the hook for the evil that occurs, such as rape and its consequences.
On the face of it, free will would seem to free God from being morally accountable for our choices. After all, if God does not compel or influence our choices and we are free to select between good and evil, then the responsibility of the choice rests on the person making the decision. It should also be added that God must be be excused from responsibility for allowing evil choices—after all, for free will in the context of morality there must be the capacity for choosing good or evil. Or so the stock arguments usually claim.
For the sake of the discussion, I will accept this second assumption. This does lead to an interesting question: does allowing free will require that God allow the consequences of the evil choices to come to pass? Could God allow people moral autonomy, yet prevent their misdeeds from bearing their evil fruit?
One way to consider this is that free will requires a person be able to make a moral decision and that this decision be either good or evil (or possibly neutral). After all, a moral choice must be a moral choice. On this approach, whether free will would be compatible with God preventing occurrences (like rape or pregnancy caused by rape) would seem to depend on what makes something good or evil.
There are a multitude of moral theories attempting to explain good and evil. For the sake of brevity, I will consider two: Kant’s view and the utilitarian view (as exemplified by John Stuart Mill).
Kant famously takes the view that “A good will is good not because of what it performs or effects, not by its aptness for the attainment of some proposed end, but simply by virtue of the volition—that is, it is good in itself, and considered by itself is to be esteemed much higher than all that can be brought about by it in favor of any inclination…Its usefulness or fruitlessness can neither add to nor take away anything from this value.”
For Kant, what makes a willing (decision) good or evil is contained in the act of willing itself. Hence, there is no need to consider the consequences of an action stemming from a decision when determining the morality of that choice. An interesting illustration of this view can be found in Bioware’s Star Wars the Old Republic game. Players are often given a chance to select between light side and dark side options, thus earning light side or dark side points which determine the moral alignment of the character. For example, a player might have to choose between killing or sparing a defeated opponent. Conveniently, the choices are labeled with symbols indicating whether they are light side or dark side—which would be useful in real life.
If Kant’s view is correct, then God could allow free will while preventing evil choices from having any harmful consequences. For example, a person could freely will that they commit rape and the moral choice would be noted by God (in anticipation of judgment day). God could prevent the rape from ever occurring—the rapist could, for example, have explosive diarrhea while trying to corner his intended victim in a changing room. As another example, a person could freely will the decision to commit murder yet find that her gun is empty when aimed at the intended victim. In short, people could be free to make moral choices while at the same time being unable to bring those evil intentions into actuality. Thus, God could allow free will while also preventing anyone from being harmed.
It might be objected that God could not do this because people figure out that they could never act on their evil decisions and hence people would (in general) stop making evil choices. Because there would be an effective deterrent to evil choices this would rob people of free will. For example, those who would otherwise decide to rape if they did not get explosive diarrhea every time they tried would stop choosing rape because they would know they would never succeed.
The obvious reply is that free will does not mean a person gets what they will—it merely means that the person is free to will. As such, people who want to rape could still will to rape and do so freely. They just would not be able to harm anyone as they would be disabled, in this narrative, by debilitating explosive diarrhea.
It is obvious that this is not how the world works—people are able to do all manner of evil. However, since God could make the world work this way if He was all powerful, this suggests that God does not exist He is not a Kantian (which would disappoint Kant). This leads me to the utilitarian option.
On the stock utilitarian approach, the morality of an action depends on the consequences of said action. As Mill put it, “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” As such, the morality of a willing would not be determined by the will but by the consequences of the action brought about by the willing.
If this is correct, then God would need to allow the consequences of the willing to occur for the willing to be good or evil (or neutral). After all, if the willing had no consequences, then it would have no moral significance on a consequentialist view like utilitarianism. So, for example, if a person freely wills to rape, then God must not intervene. Otherwise, He would be interfering with what determines the ethics of the willing. As such, if God did not allow the rapist to act upon His willing, then the decision to rape would not be an evil decision. If it is assumed that free will is essential to God being able to judge people for their deeds and misdeeds, then He would have to allow misdeeds to bear fruit so that they would be, in fact, misdeeds. On the usual view, He then punishes or rewards people after they die.
One obvious problem with this approach is that an all-knowing God would know the consequences of an action even without allowing it to take place. As such, God could allow people to will their misdeeds and then punish them for what the consequences would have been if they had been able to act upon their intentions. After all human justice punishes people even when they are prevented from committing their crimes. For example, someone who tries to murder another person is (supposed to be) punished for attempted murder when they fail. For many crimes, people do not get a free pass if they fail in the attempt.
It might be countered that God can only punish actual evil and not potential evil. That is, if the misdeed is prevented then it is no misdeed and hence God cannot justly punish. On this view, God must allow rape so He can toast rapists in Hell. This would require that God not consider an attempted evil deed as an evil deed. So, actual murder would be wrong, but attempted murder would not. This is contrary to human justice—but it could be claimed that human law and divine law are rather different. Obviously, humans and God take very different approaches: we sometime try to keep people from committing misdeeds whereas God never does. Rather, He is content to punish long after the fact—at least on the usual account of God.
A Philosopher’s Blog is Now on Substack!
You can subscribe and read for free.