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When someone does a terrible thing that seems senseless, such as murdering children, others will try to explain it. Some will say the person is mentally ill because a sane person would not do something so terrible and senseless. Others claim the person is evil because non-evil people would not do something so terrible and senseless. Both views are attempts to explain and understand what occurred. As might be imagined, the distinction between being evil and being mentally ill is a matter of concern.

There is the issue of responsibility and the correct way to respond to someone who has done something terrible. If a person acts from mental illness rather than evil, then it is reasonable to see them as not accountable to the degree they are ill. After all, if something terrible occurs because a person suffers from a physical illness, the person is generally not held accountable. For example, my running friend Jay told me that a person driving on his street had an unexpected seizure apparently due to a stroke. Their foot stomped on the gas pedal and the car rocketed down the street, smashing into another car and coming to a stop in someone’s back yard. The car could have easily plowed over my friend, injuring or killing him. However, since the person was not physically in control of his actions (and he had no reason to think he would have a seizure) he was rightfully not held morally accountable because he did nothing wrong. If a person had intentionally tried to murder my friend with his car, then that would be evil. Unless, perhaps, the driver was mentally ill in a way analogous to that seizure. In that case, the driver might be as innocent as the stroke victim.

There seem to be at least two ways that a mentally ill person might be absolved of moral responsibility to the degree they are mentally ill. I must note that I am writing as a philosopher about accountability. I am not a psychiatrist or psychologist and hence have no expertise to talk about mental illness as illness.

First, someone might be suffering from perceptual and interpretative disorders so they perceive and interpret reality incorrectly.  For example, a person suffering from extreme paranoia might think that Jay intends to steal his brain, even though Jay has no such intention. In such a case, it would be reasonable to not see the person as evil if he tries to “protect” himself from Jay. In contrast, someone who wanted to kill Jay to rob his house or just for fun would seem to be acting from evil. Put in general terms, mental conditions that distort a person’s perception and interpretation of reality might lead them to do harm even though their moral reasoning might be normal. 

Following Thomas Aquinas, it seems sensible to consider that such people might be following their conscience as best they can, only they have distorted information to work with in their decision-making process and this distortion results from mental illness.

Second, the person might be suffering from a disorder of judgment so that their ability to reason is defective due to a mental illness. The person might (or might not) have correct information, but their reasoning results in judgments that would be regarded as evil if made by a “normal” person. For example, a person might infer that because someone is wearing a blue hat that person should be killed.

One obvious concern is that “normal” people are bad at reasoning and commit fallacies with alarming regularity. As such, we need to distinguish bad reasoning from reasoning that would count as being mentally ill. One point worth considering is that bad reasoning could be fixed by education whereas a mental illness would not be fixed by learning, for example, logic.

A second obvious concern is discerning between mental illness as a cause of judgments and evil as a cause. After all, evil people can be seen as having a distorted sense of judgment when it comes to moral values. In fact, some philosophers (such as Kant and Socrates) regard evil as a mental defect or a form of irrationality. This has some intuitive appeal—after all, people who do terrible and senseless things seem to have something wrong with them. Whether this is a moral wrongness or health wrongness is, of course, the question.

One reason to sort out the difference is figuring out whether a person should be treated (cured) or punished (which might also cure the person). As noted above, a person who did something terrible because of mental illness would (to a degree) not be accountable and hence should not be punished (or the punishment should be tempered). For some it is tempting to claim that the choice of evil is an illusion because there is no free choice. Perhaps we do what we do because of the biochemical and electrical workings of the bodies that are us. As such, people should not be punished but repaired. Of course, there is a certain irony in such advice: if we do not have choice, then advising us not to punish makes no sense since we will just do what we do. Of course, the person advising against punishment would presumably have no choice but to give such advice.

 

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Each mass shooting brings the problem of evil once again into the media spotlight. While the specifics change with each horrible incident, the basic question remains the same: why does God allow evil to occur? I have considered this matter in various other essays, but here I will look back at what two prominent members of America’s religious right said back in 2012 as their remarks are still relevant. As I have noted in another essay on gun violence, while the names change, almost nothing else does.

Is response to the killings at Sandy Hook, former governor and one time presidential contender Michael Huckabee said “We ask why there’s violence in our schools but we’ve systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage because we’ve made it a place where we don’t want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility means, accountability.”

While Huckabee’s remark was taken as claiming God allowed the massacre because American public schools do not have religious activities (such as prayer) and religious education (as opposed to teaching about religion), there is an alternative interpretation.  Rather than claiming that God was being spiteful and allowed children to be slaughtered because He was experiencing divine anger, Huckabee might have meant that the killings at schools occur because public schools failed to offer the right religious education and experience. One could argue that if people received the correct religious education in public schools, then such killings would be less likely to occur.

The idea that the correct moral education reduces bad behavior was developed extensively in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. As such, if Huckabee claimed school shootings are caused by a failure of moral education, this has some degree of plausibility. Of course, whether putting Christianity into public schools would reduce violence in America is another question. While people like Huckabee claim that society has grown worse as it has allegedly “removed God”, Steven Pinker argued in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature that violence has been on the decline. Crime statistics also show a reduction in violent crime, although there was an upward trend after the valley of the last pandemic. While correlation is causation, this does raise an interesting question especially since Thomas Hobbes noted that a major cause of violence is disputes over religion.

Turning back to the problem of evil, Huckabee’s explanation did not address this concern effectively. While it might explain why people do bad things, it does not explain why God would have allowed the slaughter at Sandy Hook. Bryan Fischer did, however, take this on directly.

Speaking about Sandy Hook, Bryan Fischer said “And I think God would say to us, ‘Hey, I’ll be glad to protect your children, but you’ve got to invite me back into your world first. I’m not going to go where I’m not wanted. I am a gentlemen.”

Fischer’s explanation was straightforward: God is too polite to go where He is not invited and hence, He allowed the slaughter of children. This is an odd but interesting claim, especially since it makes God a bit like a vampire: He must be invited in on Fischer’s view.

On the face of it, Fischer seemed to claim that God’s etiquette trumps His morality so that He would allow evil rather than be impolite. This is an implausible claim as can be shown with an analogy. Suppose I was accustomed to stopping by a friend’s house to get a drink from his garden hose while on my summer runs. But then his wife gets the house during the divorce. While she does not dislike me, she asks me to no longer use the hose. Suppose I am running by one day and she and her daughter are being attacked in her backyard. While I could easily defeat the attacker and save them, I just keep running because I am no longer invited to use the hose. That would be morally wrong of me—I should at least do something. Also, if my reason for not acting is that I am not invited, then there are two obvious responses. First, it is intuitively plausible that my moral duty to help people in danger outweighs my moral duty to not be impolite. Second, it seems reasonable that my friend’s ex-wife and daughter would be happy to invite me to help them. Obviously, since I am a decent person, I would rush to help them. If God is at least as good as me, He would do the same. Also, God has nothing to worry about—the attacker would pose no threat to Him. God is, after all, supposed to be omnipotent.

Another point of interest is that Fischer suggests  God would be glad to protect children if He were invited back. If He were right about this, this would seem to indicate that God would protect children in such circumstances. However, he seems to be exceptionally wrong about this. After all, God has allowed people of faith to die. He even has allowed children to be murdered in His churches. As such, the idea that God would protect children if we only asked him seems to be absurd. People have obviously asked and God has done nothing.

Of course, it could be countered that people have failed to properly invite God—that is, God would have helped if they had asked in the right way. Going back to the analogy given above, this would be like me running past by friend’s ex-wife and daughter and refusing to stop because their cries for help were not worded properly or otherwise defective. However, I would obviously help them regardless of how they requested aid—that is what a decent person would do. As noted above, presumably God is at least as good as I am, so if I would help regardless of the wording of the invite, so would God.

What is striking is that some Trump supporters claimed that God saved Trump from an assassination attempt. But they could not, obviously, claim that God saved Charlie Kirk from the assassination attempt that killed him. Atheists would argue that God was not involved in either incident because He does not exist. But those who believe that God intervenes must struggle to provide an explanation as to why God allows the slaughter of children and the murder of Charlie Kirk while He saved Trump.

Overall, Huckabee and Fischer did not give an adequate response to the question of why God allowed the slaughter to occur. To be fair and balanced, this is unsurprising as no one has solved the problem of evil. But the problem remains.

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After one of my philosophy classes, a student asked me if water is wet. Being a philosopher, I had to apply some thought to this question. On the one hand, this is an easy question to answer as it just requires looking up the definition of “wet.” The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “wet” as consisting of, containing, covered with, or soaked with liquid (such as water). So, by the dictionary definition, water is wet since it consists of liquid. Unless it is ice, then it is solid and would not be wet in that state. Unless it was subject to wetting.

Wetting is the ability of a liquid to maintain contact with a solid surface by displacing another substance or material – either a gas, or other liquid not miscible with the wetting liquid – due to the differential strength of intermolecular interactions with the surface. So, there can be no wetting of liquid water by liquid water, but there can be a wetting of solid water (ice) by liquid water.  

On the other hand, dictionary definitions do not settle substantial disputes. For example, the philosophical debate over what it is to be a person is not resolved by looking in a dictionary. Nor is the dispute over the definition of “art.”  So, there can be a philosophical debate about whether liquid water has the quality of being wet, but this requires working out a philosophical definition of “wet.” It might turn out that the dictionary definition suffices as the philosophical definition. That is, there is no meaningful dispute over “wet” that requires a deeper definition as is required in disputes over what it is to be a person or what it is to be art.

As always, a philosopher could turn to looking at the matter by using an analogy, with fire as a good choice. If we ask, “is fire hot?” the answer would seem to be that it is, and it also makes other things hot. But if we ask, “is fire burnt?” then it would be reasonable to answer that while fire burns other things and can make them burnt, fire itself it not burnt. If wet is like hot, then water is wet. If wet is like burnt, then water would not be wet. This does not exhaust the possibilities as the question “is water wet” does point towards interesting questions about qualities.

 

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While we Americans praise religious freedom, we have a long history of religious bigotry. The oldest is the anti-Catholicism the colonies inherited from the British that endured at least until the election of Kennedy.

The most American religious bigotry is anti-Mormonism which is bigotry by Americans against a religion originating in America. The most recent is anti-Muslim (or Islamophobia). Because of the work done by past bigots, there is a well-established anti-religion rhetorical playbook that is being used by those stoking anti-Muslim sentiments today.

As a philosopher I analyze this sort of playbook for a variety of reasons. One is from the standpoint of critical thinking, and the goal is to reveal the rhetorical tools in use. On the side of good, this allows you to understand the mechanics of the tools within a historical context so you can defend yourself against being swayed by mere rhetoric and appeals to bigotry. While I do worry that an evil person might learn this playbook from me, they can obviously just pick up the basics from bigots posting on, for example, Facebook or X.

Another reason is that I have not given up hope that I can help people overcome bigotry and bias by exposing how this playbook has been used. While I would like to think that showing that the same playbook used against American Muslims today was (and is) used against American Mormons and American Catholics would be especially effective with people who are not anti-Mormon or anti-Catholic, recent discussions have made me doubt this. It seems that some people have either embraced anti-Muslim bigotry based on what they think is an “inner truth” that cannot be disproven by facts and logic or they are happy to be opportunists exploiting a bigotry they know is unfounded. This is like my experience with trying to counter the racist playbooks by showing how they were used against Italian and Irish immigrants. In general, if someone is a racist, this is not going to sway them—even if they have Irish or Italian ancestry. But let us turn to a breakdown of the American anti-religion playbook.

The first rhetorical strategy is to claim that the targeted religion is not a real religion but an ideology or conspiracy. The goal is to strip members of the faith from the constitutional guarantees of religious liberty and protection from discrimination based on faith. In the case of anti-Catholicism, American Catholics were (are) accused of “Popery”, which is being loyal to a foreign monarch and hence Catholicism is not a true religion.

In the case of anti-Mormonism, the church was characterized as a commercial and political organization led by a military authoritarian. In the case of anti-Muslim, Islam is claimed to be not a religious faith but an ideology.

The second strategy is to claim that members of the target religion are engaged in a stealthy infiltration of the United States and that they are a demographic threat. This usually manifests as claims that “they” are using high birth rates, migration, and deception to replace “real” Americans and take over the country from within.

The main goal of this rhetoric is to cast peaceful participation in American society such as voting, seeking office, or simply moving to an area as attempts to subvert the United States and take over. When anti-Catholicism was at its peak, Americans were warned that the poor from Ireland were being sent to overwhelm “real” Americans at the ballot box. In the case of anti-Mormonism, Mormons were accused of voting in blocs as directed by the church. In the case of the current anti-Muslim view, Muslims are alleged to be using deception and demographic growth through reproduction and immigration to take over in a “jihad.”

The third rhetorical tactic is to claim that members of the targeted religion are a moral threat to Western civilization. This often manifests as claims that followers of the faith have domestic practices that degrade women, destroy the traditional American family and corrupt American/Western culture. Those making this claim present their faith, culture or party as the sole protector of women, children and “true” civilization against the “barbaric” customs of the target religion.

In the case of anti-Catholicism, there were works of anti-Catholic propaganda such as the fraudulent Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk in 1836 and claims of sexual abuse and imprisonment of women in convents. To be fair and balanced, the Catholic Church does have an abundance of real scandals that it should be criticized for. In the case of anti-Mormonism, there was a focus on polygamy and presenting Mormon women as captives that needed to be freed.  To be fair and balanced, Mormonism does have a history of violence. As does Christianity in general.

In the case of anti-Islam, there are sensationalized claims of honor killings, claims about forced marriages, and claims of forced coverings that are aimed at “proving” Islamic culture is inherently oppressive to women. Ironically, these claims are sometime made by Christian misogynists who want to take away women’s right to vote.

Interestingly, there have been historical crossovers in bigotry. In the 19th century Joseph Smith was called an “American Mahomet” (Mohammad) allowing critics to use anti-Muslim bigotry against Mormons. During the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan lumped Catholics and Muslims together as “un-American non-Protestants” who owed their allegiance to foreign powers.

When you see the playbook of religious bigotry used against our fellow Americans who are Muslim, I hope you remember that this is an old playbook that uses the same tactics against any religion that is being targeted. The bigots were wrong before and they are likewise wrong now. We should, of course, guard against religious extremism of any form that truly endangers America, such as Christian Nationalism.

 

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This is the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. This event profoundly changed America and has been routinely exploited by politicians to wage a war on terror and to create the modern surveillance state we now live in. A direct line can, of course, be drawn back from Trump’s war against Iran to this attack. This war has resulted in more deaths and the expenditure of billions of dollars.

While thousands died in the initial attack on 9/11, thousands more have died over the years due to exposure to the debris and toxins from the destroyed buildings. While Republicans often invoke September 11 to serve their purposes, we should remember that in 2010 they opposed the Zadroga Act.  This act provides health monitoring and aid to the first responders, volunteers, and survivors of the September 11 attacks.  As would be suspected, although billions had already been spent on the war on terror, Republicans expressed concerns over the cost of helping the heroes they praise when it is advantageous to mention them. In 2015 the act expired and Republicans opposed an extension, although it eventually passed as part of a spending bill. In 2019 comedian Jon Stewart “blasted” lawmakers in a hearing for the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund.

Stewart has been the famous public face of the efforts to help those who survived September 11 but are struggling with health issues caused by the attacks. Appropriately, Stewart also appeared with New York City Mayor Mamdani when he announced that the city would release over 170,000 pages of air quality records  via a web portal. As one would expect, it has been alleged that city officials lied about the air quality and thus helped cause the illnesses of many New Yorkers. As one would also expect, the worry  was that telling the truth would expose the city to lawsuits.

While it is obviously right to blame the terrorists for the deaths they caused, we must also remember that efforts to help those harmed by the attacks were resisted by Republicans and that people have died because officials in New York lied to them about air quality. These records were concealed across multiple administrations including that of Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg.

It might strike some as ironic that the first Muslim mayor of New York City is the one to release these records and, as one would expect, many Republicans are appealing to Islamophobia and attacking him in particular and other Muslims in general.  As an example, in my adopted state of Florida I hear politicians promising to protect us from Sharia Law, presumably by imposing their conception of “Christian” law. But one might wonder, how does the USS Lincoln tie into this?

The carrier USS Lincoln was infamously deployed for nearly nine months, and this was marked by the rusting of the vessel and the suffering of the crew. While war is obviously a difficult time, the crew suffered food shortages, broken plumbing and a lack of basic supplies. This caused, as one would imagine, exhaustion and mental health issues. Pete Hegseth, who had happily gone on a $93 billion dollar spending spree including $7 million for lobsters, followed Trump’s lead and said the reports about the Lincoln were fake or misrepresented. The right-wing media and MAGA also joined in, attacking the sailors. Heroes are only heroes when they are useful for propaganda.

The Lincoln was deployed to launch attacks during Trump’s seemingly endless war on Iran, which has resulted in deaths and cost billions of dollars. The way the crew of the Lincoln was treated mirrors how those harmed by 9/11 were treated and, of course, the billions of dollars burned up in the war on Iran are just another addition to the endless and highly profitable war on terror. Republicans are happy to use the legacy of 9/11 and praise the military when it suits their purposes. They are happy to spend billions on war and a surveillance state (as are Democrats). But they have no love for the heroes when it comes time to care for them and begrudge spending that helps them. And this is part of the terrible legacy of 9/11.

 

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When I look back at over a decade of writing about gun violence, I am struck by the fact that I keep writing essentially the same thing. This is not because I am a lazy writer. This is because almost nothing changes other than the names. Those who oppose gun control have a script they follow after each mass shooting, and it contributes to ensuring that nothing changes.

Immediately after a mass shooting, some people demand more gun control. In response, those who oppose gun control respond with thoughts and prayers. They then say that now is not the time to discuss gun violence. Are they right?

On the one hand, this might be reasonable After all, strong emotions can impede good reasoning, and laws should be well crafted. There is an abundance of fallacies “fueled” by emotions that lead people astray from good reasoning, even when they are acting in good faith. Examples include appeal to anger, appeal to pity, and appeal to fear. In these fallacies, something that creates an emotional effect (anger, pity or fear) substitute for a logical reason to accept a claim. People are more likely to commit such fallacies when they have strong feelings. For example, a person’s anger about and fear of violence might lead them to think a bad law is a good idea.

A reasonable concern is that people will make poor decisions about laws or policies while feeling strong emotions and these decisions can have negative consequences or lead to ineffective solutions.  One can argue that better decisions would be made after emotions have cooled down and we should make laws and policies when our reasoning is at its best. As would be expected, the same people who advise a waiting period for discussing gun violence are quick to press for laws they favor when something happens that supports their political narratives, such as when a migrant commits a crime or has a traffic accident.

On the other hand, waiting to discuss gun violence has downsides. First, concern about gun violence fades over time as people are distracted and their emotions cool. So, a delay might not lead to a more reasonable discussion of gun laws and policies but to no real discussion at all. This is illustrated by the usual media cycle: there is a focus on the shooting for a few days and then coverage fades until the next incident. So, it seems reasonable to push for serious discussion when people are paying attention.

Second, there is the worry that the call to wait is not motivated by a desire  to have calm reflection but a tactic to take advantage of the media’s and the public’s short attention span. If the discussion can be held off long enough, people will forget (as noted above) and the status quo will continue.

While I favor a rational discussion, this can be done without waiting until people have mostly lost interest. As such, the time to discuss the matter seriously is now. And always has been.

While we consider ourselves the dominant species, we face dangers from other species. While some are large animals such as lions, tigers and bears our greatest foes tend to be tiny. These include insects, bacteria and viruses.

While we have struggled to eliminate threats new advances in technology and science have provided additional options. One of these is genetically modifying species so they cannot reproduce, thus potentially resulting in their extermination. As might be suspected, insects such as disease carrying mosquitoes and screwworms are a prime target. One approach to wiping out mosquitoes was to genetically modify mosquito eggs so adults carry “extermination” genes. The adult males are released into the wild and reproduce with native females. The offspring have the modified gene which causes the female mosquitos to be unable to fly. The males can fly normally, and they continue to “infect” the local population until (in theory) it is exterminated. There are also other ways such exterminations might be conducted, although we seem to be best at exterminating benign species. As might be imagined, the extermination option raises ethical concerns.

One concern is that intentionally exterminating a species seems morally dubious. However, this concern can be countered on utilitarian grounds. After all, if an organism (such as an insect or virus) is harmful to humans and does not have an important role in the ecosystem, then its extermination would seem morally justified because this would create more good than harm. Naturally, if a harmful species were also beneficial, then the calculation becomes more complicated and such extermination could be wrong if it would do more harm than good.

The utilitarian approach can be countered by appealing to another approach to ethics. For example, it could be argued that such extermination is simply wrong regardless of the beneficial consequences to humans. It can, however, be pointed out that species go extinct naturally and, as such, perhaps a case could be made that such exterminations are not inherently wrong. The obvious counter would be to point out that there is a moral difference between a species dying of natural causes and being destroyed by us. The distinction between killing and letting die comes to mind here.

The extermination of a harmful species can be acceptable, provided that the benefits do, in fact, outweigh the harm of extermination. Getting rid of, for example, the HIV virus would be morally acceptable—as far as we know, it has no benefits and only causes harm. There are some beneficial viruses, such as some bacteriophages.  In the case of mosquitoes, the concern would be the role it has in the ecosystem, and the impact of its extermination. If, for example, a disease carrying mosquito was an invasive species and its elimination would not impact the ecosystem in a negative way, then it would seem to be acceptable to exterminate it. Naturally, if the extermination is local and the species remains elsewhere, then there are less grounds for moral concern. After all, I have no moral objection to the extermination of the roaches, termites, fleas and other bugs that attempt to reside in my house—there are plenty of these critters in the wild and they would pose a threat to my health and house if they were allowed to dwell with me. But there is a concern that selective extermination could spread. For example, while terminates do pose a threat to my house, I would not want them controlled by means that could bring about the extinction of termites—they are an important part of the ecosystem.

A second point of concern involves methodology. While humans have attempted to wipe out species by killing them the old-fashioned ways (like poisons and gun), the use of genetic modification could be of special moral concern.

There is, of course, the usual concern with “playing God” or tampering with nature. However, as is always pointed out, we routinely accept such tampering. For example, by using artificial light, vaccines, surgery and such we are “playing God” and tampering with nature. As such, the idea that “playing God” is inherently wrong seems dubious. Rather, what is needed is to show that specific acts of “playing God” or tampering are wrong.

There is also a reasonable concern about unintended consequences, as exemplified by the use of DDT which had a host of undesirable effects. I do not, of course, think that modifying mosquitoes will create 1950s style giant mosquitoes that will rampage across the land. However, there are reasonable grounds to be concerned that genetic modification might have unexpected and unpleasant results, and this possibility should be seriously considered when modifying species to exterminate or control them.

A final point I will address is a practical one, namely that even if a species is exterminated by genetic modification another species might take its place. In the case of mosquitoes, it seems likely that if one type of mosquito is wiped out, then another one will move into the niche and the problem, such as a mosquito transmitted illness will return. Naturally, if there are good grounds to believe that the extermination would be effective and ethically acceptable, then this would be another matter.

 

 

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As a runner, martial artist and philosopher my view of the will is shaped mostly by my training and competitions. Naturally enough, I see the will from my own perspective and in my own mind. So, as Hume noted in his discussion of personal identity, I must consider that other people might see their will as very different, or they might not believe that they have a will at all.

As a gamer, I model reality in terms of game rules and statistics—I am approaching the will in the same manner. This is, of course, like modeling reality in other ways, such as using mathematical models.

In my experience, my will functions as a mental resource that allows me to control my actions. By using my will, I can prevent other factors from forcing me to act or not act in certain ways. For example, I can use my will to counter pain or hunger. Or that feeling that I need to check social media. In game terms, I see the will as being like “hit points” that get used up in the battle against these other factors. As with hit points, running out of “will points” results in defeat. Since this is rather abstract, I will illustrate this with two examples.

On August 22 I did the last of the four-part summer trail series. This was a 6-mile trail race in the Florida heat. I had re-injured my foot the week before at another cross-country race, so this run was extra challenging.  As I raced, it became increasingly painful and fatiguing. The pain and fatigue were “trying” to stop me. I wanted to keep running and doing this required expending those will points. This is because without my will the pain and fatigue would stop me before I am physically incapable of running anymore. As long as I have will points to expend, I could keep running until I collapse. At that point no amount of will can move the muscles and my capacity to exercise my will in this matter would also be exhausted. Naturally, I know that training to the point of exhaustion would do more harm than good, so I will myself take a rest day each week even though I still want to run. I also know from experience that my will can run out, and I can give in to fatigue or pain before my body is physically failing.  These occurrences are failures of will illustrate that the will can obviously run out or be overcome.

After my run, I had my breakfast and faced the temptation of a chocolate bar and whoopie pies I had made earlier that week. I really like sugar and there was a conflict between my wanting sweets and my choice not to shove lots of extra calories into my whoopie pie port. My hunger, of course, “wants” to control me. But, of course, if I yield then I am not in control—the desire is directing me against my will. Of course, the hunger is not going to “give up” and it must be controlled by expending will and doing this keeps me in control of my actions by making them my choice. Or so it seems on this narrative.

There are many competing narratives to the will in philosophy. For example, Hobbes’ account of deliberation is that competing desires (or aversions) “battle it out”, but the stronger always wins and thus there is no will or choice. For Spinoza, everything that happens must happen as it does, there is no choice or chance. Philosophers who are less dead have other accounts of the will, some involving whatever scientific view of the brain was in at the time they wrote.

 

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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.

 

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When a shooting makes the news, someone will often claim that those killed would still be alive if the person who killed them did not have a gun. A talking point response to this is to point out that by this reasoning, if OJ Simpson did not have a knife, then the people who were allegedly killed by him would still be alive.

This talking point does, in a mean way, make a reasonable point. After all, people can kill without guns. Knives have been used to kill people.  Other tools have been used in violence as well, including such bizarre ones as frozen animals (or their parts). As such, getting rid of guns would not eliminate murders or suicide. From this some people conclude that nothing new should be done about guns.

Guns make killing easier as they are tools designed for that task. As such, if people did not have guns, they would have to use other means of killing, most of which make killing people more difficult. This would reduce the number of killings in the same way that if there were no cars, then Americans would be less likely to go places. If a person must work harder to accomplish a task, they are usually less likely to attempt that task.

It is also worth considering that a gun makes impulse killing easier. After all, a person can point the gun and pull the trigger and this allows  little time for thought. If people had to use slower means of killing, they might pause between the impulse to kill and the act of killing. Then again, this might have little impact. After all, a person can stab with a knife almost as fast as shooting a modern gun.

People also correctly point out that a gun can do a lot of damage, making death more likely than with many alternative means of violence. For example, a gun will usually do more damage than a club or a fist.  But there are weapons that can match guns in lethality, such as a knife, crossbow or automobile. But these are harder to use, thus reducing the chances that someone will be able to kill other people, especially many other people. There are obvious reasons, for example, that no one uses a crossbow to attempt a mass shooting. But to be fair and balanced, a person can hurt many people by driving a car into a crowd or slashing people with a knife.

But it does make sense that getting rid of guns would reduce the number of deaths in the United States. However, there is the question of the significance of the impact and the costs associated with eliminating guns. After all, getting rid of automobiles would significantly reduce deaths, yet most Americans would argue that this would not be worth the cost. The usual trump card people play is the Second Amendment, arguing that gun ownership is a legal right. But the obvious reply is that Constitutional rights (including gun rights) are limited and the Constitution can be amended. In the Free State of Florida, for example, the rulers of the state routinely pass laws limiting First Amendment rights, although these sometimes do get overturned.

Another talking point is that “when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns.” A more recent social media variant seems to argue that gun control laws should not be passed because criminals will just ignore them. The obvious problem is that this reasoning can be applied to anything and thus lead to absurdity. For example, if meth is illegal, then only criminals will have meth. While that is true, it does not give us a good reason to not try to control meth.

A final point of consideration is the usual talking point that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” This is true. After all, people do not (in general) kill just because they have guns. Rather, they use guns to kill because they have a reason (or think they have a reason) to kill. As such, banning guns would not address the foundational cause of violence, since taking away guns would not take away the reasons people kill. So, one might conclude, guns should not be banned like comedians Trump dislikes. But this is more of an argument in favor of addressing the root causes of gun violence than a good argument against banning guns. While the right is often happy to blame mental illness, they generally do not support meaningful efforts to address the mental health crisis in the United States or other causal factors behind gun violence.  

 

 

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