How does Plantinga’s free will defense of God’s benevolence work?

What is the free will Defence as articulated by Alvin Plantinga?

Plantinga’s Free Will Defense goes as follows: “A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all.

What is the essence of the free will defense?

A free will defense tries to resolve the abstract, logical problem of evil. In other worlds, Plantinga was Page 3 Free will 3 not concerned with whether the propositions are true or not. Instead, what he did is to demonstrate that they are logically possible.

Does Alvin Plantinga believe in free will?

Plantinga rejects the compatibilist notion of freedom whereby God could directly cause agents to only do good without sacrificing their freedom.

What is the free will theodicy?

The Free Will Theodicy (FWT) attempts to defeat the Argument from Evil by claiming that the suffering of the innocent (SOI) is justified by the existence of free will (FW).

What is Alvin Plantinga’s modal argument for God’s existence?

The original argument basically examines God’s place as a necessary being and unfolds logically why He must exist. As we also learned, modal logic is a way of argument that shows how beings possibly and necessarily exist, thus leading to the conclusion that some beings must necessarily exist.

How does God have free will?

Free will is granted to every man. If he desires to incline towards the good way and be righteous, he has the power to do so; and if he desires to incline towards the unrighteous way and be a wicked man, he also has the power to do so.

Can you have free will without evil?

Free will is a great good, and it is impossible for God to give us free will without allowing evil. So, God allows evil to exist. Mackie considers three main objections to this argument, all of which are best understood as objections to one of 3 or 6.

What is the free will defense to the problem of evil?

One argument, known as the free will defense, claims that evil is caused not by God but by human beings, who must be allowed to choose evil if they are to have free will.

Is free will free?

And since both our body and the rest of the world appear in representation as matter, Schopenhauer inferred that the rest of the world, just like ourselves, is also essentially will. In Schopenhauer’s illuminating view of reality, the will is indeed free because it is all there ultimately is.

What are the 3 main arguments for the existence of God?

There is certainly no shortage of arguments that purport to establish God’s existence, but ‘Arguments for the existence of God’ focuses on three of the most influential arguments: the cosmological argument, the design argument, and the argument from religious experience.

How successful is the ontological argument?

There is no real evidence to show God’s existence and some statements are poor (such as existence being predicate). Therefore the Ontological Argument is unsuccessful in proving God’s existence.

Does the ontological argument work?

He argued that many theists would accept that God, by nature, cannot be fully comprehended. Therefore, if humans cannot fully conceive of God, the ontological argument cannot work. Anselm responded to Gaunilo’s criticism by arguing that the argument applied only to concepts with necessary existence.

What is ontology in simple words?

In brief, ontology, as a branch of philosophy, is the science of what is, of the kinds and structures of objects. In simple terms, ontology seeks the classification and explanation of entities. Ontology is about the object of inquiry, what you set to examine.

How does the ontological argument prove the existence of God?

As an “a priori” argument, the Ontological Argument tries to “prove” the existence of God by establishing the necessity of God’s existence through an explanation of the concept of existence or necessary being . Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury first set forth the Ontological Argument in the eleventh century.

Why the ontological argument fails?

If Kant’s view is correct then The Ontological Argument fails, if existence is not a real predicate that is added on to the subject then to deny existence you take away the whole subject. The principle of the Ontological Argument regards this as being as an attribute.

What is the ontological argument simple?

The ontological argument is an idea in religious philosophy. It is supposed to show that God exists. There are different versions, but they all argue something like: because we can imagine a perfect being, there must be a god. The idea is that existing makes a good thing better than one that’s only imaginary.

How does the ontological argument fail to prove the existence of God?

The Ontological Argument fails because it omits one small but powerful word: ‘If’. With unicorns: If there are unicorns, then they will be horses with horns. With God: If there is a God, then God will exist necessarily. 1 It is a deductive argument, so if it succeeds, it is a proof of the existence of God.

What are the objections to the ontological argument?

This blurring explains the common objections that the Ontological Argument attempts to define things into existence, which is impossible, or that the Ontological Argument assumes the existence of what it sought to prove, or that nothing about the content of the concept of God requires anybody to admit that God in fact …

What is the ontological argument for the existence of God what was Gaunilo’s criticism of that argument?

1 Gaunilo’s ‘Lost Island’ argument

What is ontological evil?

The ontological problem of evil suggests that we change our focus from the provinciality of this world to the whole scope of metaphysical possibility: if there is a God, his existence must be consistent with all of it.

Is ontological argument deductive?

The Ontological Argument is an a priori argument which attempts to prove God’s existence through the meaning of the word ‘God’ • It defines God as ‘that than which nothing greater can be conceived. ‘. It is also: • A deductive argument – the conclusion necessarily follows from the premises.

Why is it called the ontological argument?

ontological argument, Argument that proceeds from the idea of God to the reality of God. It was first clearly formulated by St. Anselm in his Proslogion (1077–78); a later famous version is given by René Descartes. Anselm began with the concept of God as that than which nothing greater can be conceived.

Who made the ontological argument?

St. Anselm, Archbishop

St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (1033-1109), is the originator of the ontological argument, which he describes in the Proslogium as follows: [Even a] fool, when he hears of … a being than which nothing greater can be conceived … understands what he hears, and what he understands is in his understanding.…

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