Recent events have got me thinking quite a bit now.
Looking at the world, it is impossible to ignore the fact that we humans are a pretty rotten bunch. Massacres as so common-place that unless they are hyped or otherwise of personal concern, they no longer register on the world’s radar of Issues Of Great Concern.
Having said that, God, in almost all religions that believe in God (a case may be made that belief in God is not essential in Buddhism, despite it being a religion), is perfect, loving, and caring. It is also stressed that God is concerned with our mundane lives as well as the greater issue of our salvation/spiritual elevation or progression. Also emphasized is the fact that God is involved in what happens in the world. God is portrayed as omnipotent, omniscient, and ever so involved. As a matter of fact, many religions believe that everything that happens, happens by the decree, will, or permission of God.
How, then, do people justify the fact this all-powerful, all-knowing God lets humanity, expressedly a treasured creation by/of God and the pinnacle of creation(if not evolution), get away with such monstrosity as genocide and regular massacres? How can people believe in a God who permits this suffering or, if you look at it another way, causes this suffering (for were it not for the will/decree/permission of God, such suffering would not take place)?
This is more than simply “Why do bad things happen to good people?” It stretches into the very roots and being of humanity as naturally prone to inflict and unfortunately having to endure such inexpressible suffering affecting not only individuals but entire peoples. How can people believe in a God who is not more actively trying to shape humanity up, getting rid of the cancerous elements that pollute us, bringing down swift justice and comfort? How can people believe in a God who leaves humans to suffer without just cause?
We can also add the whole issue of natural disasters, illnesses and diseases and disorders that cause untold suffering to those who must experience them and to those who love the afflicted, and so on, and so forth - you get the picture: a world full of unavoidable suffering, pain, loss, heartache that is still supposedly ruled or run by a supposedly loving, caring, involved supreme all-powerful all-knowing Being.
(Please, no anti-God comments: I want to see what people who believe in God have to say, what theological/religious/spiritual arguments there are for this.)
Pantheism (the belief that the Divine is equivalent to That Which Is, or Reality) can explain evil. Monotheism cannot.
Pantheism (my personal version)
The origin of the universe is the principles of pattern and number (“Source,” if I may borrow Wayne Dyer’s term). These principles, in effect, bring consciousness into being; they use us (and many other beings) to think. Source itself is not capable of thought and consciousness.
As the principles themselves do not think, they cannot investigate a potential world before they bring it into being. This allows a measure of “natural evil” (things like natural disasters, slight contradictions in human nature, etc.) to exist. A great deal of evil is thus explained. It is nobody’s fault, and it is not malicious. This world was not created to be perfect.
Once a universe, or partition of Reality, comes into being, the amount of evil (willed or unwilled) possible therein is limited. This is explained easily by the fact that self-destructive things destroy themselves and other-destroying things are stopped by others. Whereas that which we call “good” is self-reinforcing and other-reinforcing.
Hence, the great tendency of any partition of reality will be the furtherance of sat-chit-ananda (being-consciousness-bliss). I call this the Great Vector. It is the good. That which furthers this vector is good. That which willfully furthers the vector we call “loving” or “good.” That which thwarts the vector we call bad or evil. That which willfully thwarts the vector we call wicked or malicious or just plain evil.
There is also a malicious force in the universe that tries to use the energies of the Great Vector against it (by acting on minds alone; it is not the origin of potential evil). It is not a consciousness (like Satan), but it can act with a kind of machine-like intelligence. My guess is that it also finds its origin in the principles of pattern and number and exists in every actual and potential system. My hunch is that it draws its power from the “background fear radiation,” so to speak, of minds’ understanding that the good could be other than it is.
We must conclude that such a force exists based on our experience. Senseless evil such as the Holocaust and serial killers, if we face them with an open mind, clearly communicate to us a palpable evil that we can barely comprehend, and which we cannot ascribe to the ordinary contradictions in human nature that cause us grief. Once we recognize this “Dark Side of the Force,” we must then ponder its origin and M.O., which, admittedly, are mysterious.
Monotheism
There is one God who creates all things and has absolute power over doing so. He is, in a word, omnipotent.
It therefore follows that God is the cause of all things and, thereby, the cause of all evil things. Whereas the Source is also the cause of all evil things, because it is not conscious, no malice can be ascribed to it. But because God cogitates before he creates, as it were, the existence of evil must be seen as his own choice.
Monotheists try to get around this with various devices, none of which work:
A. “God brings good even out of evil.” Maybe so, but it is still preferable to bring an equal amount of good into being without having to use evil in the first place. If God is omnipotent, he can do so.
B. “This is best of all possible worlds.” Leibniz’ argument. Since God is perfect, he could only create the world that was best. Heck, he wrote a whole book about this called Theodicy. Voltaire spoofed this idea mercilessly in Candide. At any rate, the argument fails the red-face test: We can easily imagine a world that is better than the one we live in. The idea that this world of ours somehow extracts the maximum amount of goodness from its spacetime is not just ludicrous, it’s also quite sad. (For example, we would somehow have to believe that the Huns’ ravaging of Asia and Europe somehow made possible a better world than would have been possible, that the Third Reich did the same, etc. Obviously, these contentions are impossible of proof and ultimately must rest on the faith that God would only allow such uber-atrocities if he could derive greater good from them.)
C. “We cannot understand God’s ways.” A cop-out, pure and simple.
D. “God cannot create a perfect world, since only he is perfect. Evil is a lack of the good, not a positive force in itself.” This is about as good as the monotheist can do. It makes mathematical sense, in a way, that if there is only one true perfection (God), then the world cannot also be perfect. However, there is no reason why the world could not be infintessimally imperfect. That is, it needed have the extreme evils that it does.
As for evil being merely a lack, the extreme evils of the 20th century (and certainly many before them) reveal that there is a genuine Force of Evil that seeks to use consciousness as an active agent against the Good.
Although my little version of Pantheism cannot completely explain the existence of evil, it accomplishes the following things:
It explains how evil is compatible with Reality and the Divine. This is the most important part. Consciousness is a product of the Source, not its cause. Hence, the Source did not “choose” what types of universes would come into being.
It explains, quite simply, why evil is as powerful as it is and no more (it is not self- or other-reinforcing).
It moves towards explaining the origin and M.O. of evil, by postulating that it is also born of the principles of pattern and number. Further, it recognizes what most of us perceive: that evil acts as an actual force, with a degree of malevolent intelligence. It is not merely a philosopher’s “lack of the good.”
Aeschines, excellent response. Thank you. Even though it was a bit complex, it was easy to follow and comprehend.
Any more who would like to chime in? Certainly, there must be more people who have an explanation reconciling the concept of a Supreme Being and this world full of evil. A gnostic might be nice: I’ve heard they have some interesting things to say.
There is also a malicious force in the universe that tries to use the energies of the Great Vector against it (by acting on minds alone; it is not the origin of natural evil).
Historically speaking, this is not true. It’s a common concept in the West, but my suspicion is that belief in its universality is a sort of culturally-specific myopia. I’d suspect that polytheism, monolatry, and animism among them make up the overwhelming majority of human religions.
For an example that’s fairly likely to be familiar, have a look at the Greek pantheon. They’re a catankerous bunch, aren’t they? Squabbling amongst themselves, keeping secrets from each other, engaging in petty disputes, getting into wars using mortal pawns. Some of them are generally speaking benefactors of humanity (like Prometheus); others are patrons of individuals, families, or tribes (see Athena’s protection of Odysseus, not that it got him out of having Poseidon pissed at him); some are fickle, others aren’t. And so on.
Honestly, for many of us polytheists, the whole ‘problem of evil’ thing makes no sense: the gods are pretty limited outside of their realms of focus, so having the favor of one doesn’t prevent the dislike of others; the gods aren’t in complete agreement on everything, so they’ll get into pissing matches which will have fallout in the mortal realms; further, the gods aren’t idealised entities in the first place.
Further, the problem of a single god controlling the whole shebang doesn’t exist in a really heavily polytheistic system of thought. The ancients tended towards “These are the gods of this place. Those people over there, they have different gods, because those are the gods of that place.” If their neighbours had a cool god, they’d often start worshipping across the borders as it were, and influence would wax and wane as a result. (And this would drive Christian missionaries nuts. They’d feel like they’d converted a whole heap of pagans, come back a few years later, and find a Jesus statue in a place of honor . . . next to Thor and Frigga and Freyr . . .)
Now that I’ve pontificated about context . . .
Within my religion there’s the idea that what may have been an ideal, perfect beginning requires maintenance. It gets dusty, y’know? That maintenance is the responsibility of both gods and humans; when folks slack off on keeping the universe running right, things start getting gummed up. The more people have been slacking off correct behaviour, the worse things get.
There are many levels to ‘correct behaviour’ – the three standard ones are self, community, and cosmos, but each of these can be broken down further. All of them are essential; one can’t fulfil one’s responsibilities to one’s family with so much self-sacrifice that the self is broken and claim ‘correct behaviour’, for example. One can’t put off one’s individual responsibilities on the gods and say ‘fix it for me’, either; they’re entirely likely to respond with something like, ‘I’m not going to follow you around and wipe your ass all the time, kid. Take some responsibility.’ They will often help, but there’s no magic wand-waving to make entropy go away, and there’s no magic wand-waving to make people who don’t care about maintaining the system go away either.
No. Logically, an omnipotent being can create other beings where does not control the exact outcome, if He so chooses. You’re simply falling into the Calvinist trap there. You are eligabvle to choose as you will. God does not force you to do anything, he never did and never will.
The world’s only evils are found in humankind, and human choices. Getting eaten by a tiger or killed by a hurricane is unpleasant, but not evil, and should be terribly feared. The winds and the storm and the beasts all contribute toward the glory of God in their own way. It is our own foolishness for getting in the way.
As far as I can concerned, man makes his own nature and environment. We choose to live in danger, with risk. And that’s fine. But too many people choose to blame others (or Fate, or God) for their mistakes. They always have. “Why did God put that Tornado here?”. Eve the insurance agfencies call them “Acts of God”. But God didn’t laughingly fling a tornado at your house: you built a house where the tornado goes and has been going for thousand thousand years.
Evil, one mgiht say, does tend to feed on itself. Humans often may be influenced by the powre of Satan, but too many poeple are far too willing to obey him. He does not appear in fire and brimstone, but the demiurge; the devil of your mind, or a casually smooth businessman. But it remains ultimately void: nothing but error.
I agree in principle, but I don’t believe it could truly be said that every death or injury caused by accident of nature could rightly be blamed on our own foolishness for getting in the way; some natural dangers occur completely without warning.
If God had wanted a world of angels, He would have created one. If he wanted a world full of automotons only doing good, then He would have created that. But He created a world of human beings, and, more importantly, human beings with free will.
God gave us free will so as to allow us to achieve as much good as humanly possible. A robot programmed to only do good is not performing any great feats when he does good - that’s what he was programmed to do. It’s like giving people credit for breathing. By giving us free will, He gave us the opportunity to do good and earn reward for it. I earn reward for doing good because I have to overcome urges to do the opposite. I have to overcome whatever forces are compelling me to not do good (laziness, greed, etc.) and do the right thing. And it’s in the overcoming of those urges that one earns his reward. The Mishnah in Avos puts it very succintly: “According to the effort is the reward.”
That being said, however, once you have true free will, you have to have the possibility of evil. “Free will” without the possibility of evil is not free will at all. So, in order for the world to be a place where goodness means something, it must also be a place where evil means something as well. And so, that means that it has to be a world where Hitler exists and Stalin exists and terrorists exist.
Good, without evil, is not really good at all. God wants us to improve ourselves and strive to be good. But without the possibility of going in the other direction, then there is no real benefit from being good.
That’s an excellent question. Let me try to rephrase it for you a bit:
Why would a Good, Omnipotent God allow people who are doing bad to do so? Why wouldn’t He step in with his Mighty Hand and smite the evildoers? Why didn’t bolts from the blue come down and strike down Hitler?
The answer to that question is again, the preservation of free will. If lightning would strike someone every time they sinned, would there be any sin? Would someone really have free will if they were immediately punished for the act that they did? Of course not - no more than you really have “free will” not to hand over your wallet to a mugger pointing a gun at you. This means that God has to allow evil people to act - to preserve free will. To do otherwise would destroy the very purpose of Creation.
Ultimately, I can’t answer you why God does the things He does. I don’t know why God causes a volcano to bury Pompeii. I don’t know what “sins” accounted for the people of Indionesia to be hit with the devestation of Krakatoa in 1883. I haven’t a clue as to why things such as cancer, SIDS, cystic fibrosis, diabetes and seemingly random lightning strikes exist. God has His own books and I believe that He balances them in the end.
trandallt asked me in this thread a month and a half ago about what justification there is for a child “who lives a short, brutal, nasty life and dies in great fear and agony?” I’ll reprint my answer here:
This is neither a philosophically sound approach to responsibility nor a commonsensical one.
In terms of philosophy, although I agree that the hypothetical foreknowledge of God is compatible with his not being responsible for what occurs, his will as classically defined (Aquinas, etc.) is not. For whatever God wills must come into being, and nothing can come into being that he does not will. And the very definition of responsibility (or culpability, in the case of something negative) is that the outcome is willed by the agent in question.
Besides, God is 100% responsible for natural evil, as he (in the Christian conception) is sole agent in creating it. Pain, disease, and inconsistencies in human nature are all his works.
On a commonsensical level (which is not to say philosophically unsound), you’re responsible for something if you have the power to prevent it and do not do so. God has the power to stop all evil in this world (while presevering free will, as I shall prove), yet does not do so. This is the classic argument from evil, and that guitar kills monotheists (figuratively speaking).
God forces us to do a lot. I didn’t choose to be born and have my heart beating every day and have “temptations” and whatnot. I am not the agent of my own existence, and God bears responsiblity for that. It’s perfectly simple.
Well, disasters have been termed “natural evil,” and they are bad things, and God is responsible for them. It is true that they are not products of hate or malice.
First, free will is a concept without a foundation. We can’t identify a unified and separate function of consciousness called “the will,” so it’s pointless to argue whether it’s free or not or God gave it to us or not. Now, you are free (so to speak) to make “free will” a part of your system of faith, but it just isn’t going to mean too much. (BTW, I am not necessarily saying that the concept of the will is complete garbage, but at this point in our knowledge it is rooted entirely on introspection; that is, it’s on very shaky ground.)
We love dogs even though we perceive that they don’t really think about what they do before they do it. They’re just “nice.” Isn’t that good enough? Would we love our pets more if they faced and resisted a constant temptation to rip our faces off?
Having “free will” (if we will accept the hypothetical for a moment) is in no wise incompatible with freedom from evil impulses and desires. Would you agree that every human being on this planet has what you call “free will”? Good. Would you also agree that the vast majority of people on this planet are without the desire to kill a lot of people? Most people simply don’t want to be Ed Gein. And why not? Because God created in us a tendency toward love, not toward hate. It therefore follows that God could have eliminated the desires and impulses that motivate serial killers without reducing our “free will” one iota. But he didn’t. Following this line of argument further, God could have, at the beginning, simply have not put in our natures the anger, jealousy, envy, etc., that cause so much pain and evil.
In short: If we grant that all people have free will, then had God created only those people whose natures do not lead to evil, then we would have a world without malice but with just as much free will as before.
Or, according to Christianity, earn damnation for it. Hardly a bargain.
So God as rat-keeper, doling out meet rewards and punishments to his animals, is preferable to God as automaton-maker? I sure don’t get that.
At any rate, pantheism is infinitely perferable to the dismal conception of Christianity: We are the Divine, completely responsible both for our own spiritual progress and that of the world. We are both the creators and the created. The law of karma assures, inexorably, that whatever good or evil we do will come back to us; yet, we can always come back from our setbacks. It is the truly positive perspective.
Patently untrue, as I have demonstrated. Evil (that is, malicious evil) requires both the ability (“free will”) to do an action and the desire to do it. God could have given us “free will” without the negative desires.
Horrendous logic! So, was the existence of “free will” not proven until the 20th century and the advent of Hitler and Stalin. How much evil is necessary? Couldn’t a drunken fistfight back in the year 1345 been enough evil to suffice?
Ah yes, possibility, but actuality is not needed. I agree that evil is probably a necessary evil (pun intended), mathematically speaking.
This is grotesquely mixed up. First of all, in the Bible God often does punish people immediately after they do something wrong. Think Onan, Ananaias, Lot’s wife, etc.
Second, why does would immediacy of punishment affect the level of “free will”? Your religion threatens us with damnation (and certainly doesn’t exclude the possibility of punishment here on earth). So if God hold the “hell gun” to our heads, our will is free, but if he smites us instantly for our misdeeds, that isn’t free? For the record, I have never heard this argument about free will and why God can’t punish evildoers right away; it’s your own concoction.
I should have stated up front (and forgive me for not doing so) that I was speaking from the Judaic POV. Of course I was speaking within the context of my faith (or any faith that posits the existance of God in the Judaic sense). Since God Himself is not provable, but taken on faith, I understood it that the concept of free will must be taken on faith as well.
No, it’s not good enough. Again, if God intended to create a world full of dogs, He would have done so. Instead He created a race of beings who have free will and are responsible for their actions. Dogs are not responsible for their actions. We weren’t created to be God’s pets.
Fallacious argument. Killing is not the only evil. Just because most people don’t have an inclination to kill doesn’t mean that they don’t have inclinations toward other evils. And, in truth, people (as a whole) have similar inclinations to good (otherwise, the same argument that I applied to “all good” people would apply to “all evil.”)
To take your argument back to the ultimate conclusion - He could have created us without all these negative traits - but then we wouldn’t be human - which is what He wanted.
How can you have free will without evil? A world where only good exists is not a world with free will.
Well, I’m not a Christian and don’t believe in eternal damnation (except for the truly Hitleresque).
Because we’re not interested in the self-improvement of rats. God is, however, improved with our self-improvement.
If you want to be a pantheist, then so be it. I’m not going to argue for Christianity.
How so? I can create a robot and program it to never harm me. I could also build guns into it. Sure it has the ability to harm me (by shooting me) but not the will (since it’s programmed to NOT shoot me). Does the robot have free will in this regard? Of course not. To make a decision you have to have both - the ability and the desire.
Of course there was free will before the 20th century. Don’t be obtuse. I chose terrorism because that is (at least in my opinion) one of the “ultimate” evils “available” in our day and age. Had you asked me this question 300 years ago or 300 years from now, I might have given you a different example based on the “evil” of the time and place.
Those are the exceptions, rather than the rule. As a general rule, (even in Biblical times) God did not send bolts from the blue every time someone killed, slept with his neighbor’s wife, stole, lied, etc.
There are two major differences between that would make the immediacy of a punishment effective as a suppressor of free will the remoteness of it not nearly as much so.
Firstly, people may doubt whether or not there really is a punishment in the afterlife (or even that God may repay his evil in this life).
Secondly (and probably more prevelantly) people often do things that will “cost” them later despite the fact that they know it to be “wrong.” Smokers smoke, even though they know it may well kill them. People who are overweight continue to eat badly, knowing the serious health consequences. People still rob and kill, even though they know that there is a good chance of ending up in jail for years on end. There are countless other examples as well. The reason that people do these things is because of the “remoteness” of the punishment. The punishment may not come for months or years. OTOH, you don’t see too many people going out of their way to eat or drink poisionous mushrooms, which can lead to death in minutes (unless, of course, they’re trying to commit suicide).
That’s OK, I think my points apply to any of the Big 3 monotheistic religions.
I disagree. I think the question of “free will” involves not only philosophy but a good deal of empirical science as well, inasmuch as it is a theory about how the human mind works. Now, if we wish to limit the concept of “free will” (for the sake of debate) to the notion that God does not directly manipulate men’s minds and bodies, I can go for that.
The argument is sound. God is responsible for human nature, as he created it. He could have made it less negative than he has but chose not to.
Incorrect. There are some people on the planet who display almost no negativity at all. Are they less than human? Had God made us all from that mold, we would be much better off–right? On the other hand, God could have made us all natural-born serial killers. Would we have been more “human” in that case?
I’ll pose the question again: How much evil is necessary to verify or make actual “free will”? If the level we have in the world today was not necessary, then it is gratuitous and God bears responsibility for that.
If so, he could have made us all healthier (physically and mentally) and happier. But he chose not to–why?
Incorrect. I am free to become a serial killer but I never even consider it an option–no desire there whatsoever. If everyone in the world were like me, then we would have no serial killers. Would you claim at that point that none of us had free will because none of us wanted to be serial killers? If we extrapolate to every type of vice (no desire to kill, no desire to steal, etc.), then we would have a world of good people who still had free will. Things would be better.
This logic is something odd. Those punishments are purposely put in place to influence people, to deter them from committing crimes. Those punishments are not supposed to be “remote.” If God were to smite us every time we did something wrong, it would be the same thing, deterrent. And I think it would be pretty effective and quite beneficial to mankind. So one is left asking why God doesn’t do so. Free will has nothing to do with it, since the monotheistic religions do hold that God has established punishments for sin. The question is why he chooses an ineffective regime of punishments.
My view is that God either is impotent or doesn’t care. If God exists. If you actually look at the universe you will see how abnormal organic life is. As far as we can currently tell organic life doesn’t exist anywhere else.
Suffering is a product of an advanced nervous system. If you objectively look at the whole Universe or even our own entire Galaxy you’ll see that an advanced nervous system is extremely abnormal. Gas clouds are normal, stars are normal, and hydrogen is normal. Advanced nervous systems are a severe abnormality. Maybe ‘this’ is why suffering exists, because God didn’t plan ahead and see that organic life would spring up. This would mean god wasn’t all knowing or all powerful but its a thought. Maybe God’s priorities don’t even involve nervous systems or organic life considering how abnormal they are. If you consider that 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of existence involves astrophysics and 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% involves advanced nervous systems why should/would God care about us?
And humanity isn’t that bad. More lives have been saved with antibiotics and agriculture than have been killed in all wars in human history.
Also as far as I can tell pain and suffering are just warnings telling us to choose one path over another. The psychological work of Martin Seligman and other happiness researchers has also shown that happiness is (aside from the genetic component) due to the ability to look at your life and think you are on the right path.
Suffering - wrong path. Happiness & fulfillment - right path. Its simplistic and doesn’t take genetics into consideration but it is largely true if you think about it. Why should God stop suffering? Its just a tool to maintain one path over another. If we didn’t have physical pain we would die. I recently read a story about a woman who didn’t feel pain. Even though she lived in the 1950s where medicine was far more advanced than it would be in the wild she still died in her 30s after 100s of hospitalizations.
Much of emotional pain also serves a purpose too. Imagine a world without shame, where there were no emotional consequences to quitting your job, or giving up on your life, or moving away to another town, or being kidnapped. Have you seen how people act on PCP or alcohol? Imagine a whole world of people acting like that 24/7, with no inhibitions or reasons not to violate societies laws or their own internal agendas. True, the means of maintaining the right path could’ve been nicer but sadly it is not.
True, there are some people that display almost no negativity. But you don’t know what’s in their hearts and their makeups. Maybe these people did harbor very negative thoughts/feelings/emotions and worked very hard to purge them from their systems. Maybe they are still fighting those urges now. You don’t know that and you can’t make a statement about what they display and presume that they don’t have anything negative in their natures.
I would presume that in order to have true free will, the potential for evil must be exactly the same as the potential for good.
You’re right, He could have. As to why He does the things He does, I refer you back to my previous answer and the thread I linked to earlier.
Again, you go to the worst examples. Serial killing is not the only evil out there. Granted, you never had a desire to be a serial killer. But were you ever tempted to steal something? Ever found yourself in a situation where telling a lie would have been much more convenient than telling the truth? Ever had a situation where you did something that was self-destructive even though you knew you shouldn’t do it? I’m sure that at least one of those applies to you (or another situation that I didn’t mention). Just because you have no desire to be a serial killer doesn’t mean that free will doesn’t exist.
Again, because He wanted to allow for free will. If punishement was immediate, swift and sure then yes, there would be deterrance, but also a loss of free will. You don’t see too many people chowing down on poisionous mushrooms because we know that the “punishment” will be swift, sure and immediate. OTOH, people do chow down double cheeseburgers because the “punishment” is remote and people have the ability to “blind themselves” to it.
God doens’t want a world where everyone is afraid to act. He wanted a world where we could freely choose between good and evil and we cannot freely make that choice if we know that God is going to smite us the second we commit the sin. By having the punishment remote, we can “blind ourselves” to the punishment and commit the sin if we so choose.
Even so. But the level of negativity in one’s nature is not the only factor that will determine how much negativity a person “releases” into the world. Consider:
The prevalence of negative/antisocial desires and impulses at various levels. Some people are very antisocial yet would never commit murder. Some people are very social yet have the desire to kill (serial killers are often superficially sociable).
The discernment of right from wrong. Some people just don’t get the difference.
The desire to fight negative desires and impulses. For example, someone might have very few negative desires, yet understand that they are negative, yet then have no desire to fight them when they come.
The ability to fight negative desires. Some people might have the desire to fight the impulses but not the willpower.
The ability to perform the negative act. Some people might even give into the negative impulse yet not have the strength, intelligence, etc., to carry out the act.
So, in committing an evil act, there are many dimensions. And in each dimension God could have a damping effect if he so chose. I think in most “God and free will models,” the picture is this: Free will would be violated if the impulse came but God would not physically let you perform the action. But I am saying that, even in this model, free will would be intact if the impulse were never to come in the first place.
To disagree is to say that every person must experience every negative impulse at all times in order to enjoy free will. But it is clearly not the case that they do. You say later on that there must be an equal potential for good and evil for free will to exist. but it is also clear that most people do not have an equal potential. Although it is true that all people have some negativity in them, most people do not have the desire to commit major evils.
Then are we to conclude that most people do not have free will?
The point about serial killers is that here is a desire completely useless, even to the killer himself. God could easily have excluded such desires from human nature without our even knowing the difference.
According to the logic here, free will is something that can be taken from a person by concrete actions. That is, if God were to alter his “punishment policy,” then our free will would diminish or be gone completely. But this, I think, is an incorrect understanding of “free will,” even in the classic sense. “Free will” means that God does not directly determine our actions. It does not mean that he has to hold back when it comes to swift punishments.
By the way, look at your example again. Do we not have “free will” with regard to poison mushrooms? Or does the fact that we don’t want to eat them mean we are not free to eat them? I think your example undermines your argument, not supports it.
And I’ll ask it again: Are God’s punishments intended to deter us or not? If not, then why does he tell us that we will be punished?
But we are not blind to the punishment and are dissuaded, then do we still have free will?
That’s certainly not what I said. Two people can become fat; one by gorging on sweet chocolate and the other on salty snacks. Sure their appetites and urges may be different, but it can have a similar effect.
So too here. Not everyone has the urge to become a mass murderer. Not everyone has an urge to steal. Not everyone has the urge to commit rape, incest, etc. But just as we all have to learn to control our eating appetites (whatever they may be), we must all learn to control our “appetities” for whatever urges we have.
You certainly can make that case. Again I was speaking in the Judaic sense. One could, I suppose, make the argument that you are making.
You certainly can eat them. But most people don’t because they are aware of the immediate consequences that come from such an act. As a result, the degree of free will involved is certainly diminished or removed entirely.
I believe that it is the threat of punishment that is meant to deter us. The punishment itself, OTOH, is (IMHO) a consequence of the action.