A Critique of the Free Will Defense

Carlos R. Kometter
November 13, 2017

There is no doubt that there is suffering and evil in the world. You could tuned your
TV or your smartphone on a news channel, and there is a good chance that you will find
that something bad, such a crime or a natural disaster, has happened. The problem of evil
says that the existence of an omnibeing god, a god who is omnipotent, omniscient, and
omnibenevolent, is impossible because there is evil in the world. A version of this argument
by Mitchell S. Green goes as follows:1

(A1) Suppose that the omnibeing exists.

(A2) Being omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, the omnibeing would prevent
any evilmoral or physicalthat could be prevented.

(A3) There exists many evilsboth moral and physicalthat could be prevented.

(A4) The omnibeing is either not omniscient, or not omnipotent, or not omnibenevolent.

(A5) The omnibeing does not exist.

In this paper I will introduce the free will argument against the problem of evil and explain
its premises. Then I will describe my argument against the free will argument. I will conclude
by defending my argument against a rebuttal.

1 The Free Will Defense

Proponents of the existence of an omnibeing sometimes argue that the source of evil is
our freedom to make choices. If the omnibeing does not allow the existence of evil, this
would mean that he would not be able to grant us with free will. The free will argument
against the problem of evil can be summarize as follows:2

(B1) A free living being is capable of acting good and evil.

(B2) A world with free living beings is more valuable than a world without them.
1
Mitchell S. Green. Engaging philosophy : a brief introduction. Hackett Pub. Co, 2006, pp. 5354. isbn:
087220796X.
2
Alvin Plantinga. God, Freedom, and Evil. Eerdmans, 1989, p. 30. isbn: 9780802817310.

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 (B3) If a world with free living beings is more valuable than a world without them,
then an omnibeing would create a world with free living beings.

(B4) An omnibeing is not capable of creating free living beings, and at the same time
forcing them to act good.

(B5) Thus, the existence of evil is compatible with the existence of an omnibeing.

Premise B1 comes from the usual definition of free will: the ability to choose, think, and
act voluntarily.3 A person with free can choose whether to have coffee or tea for breakfast;
he can choose whether to go on a vacation on the Caribbean or stay home. He can also
choose freely to steal something or murder someone. A living being with free will implies
that he or she has the ability of choosing to do right or evil.
B2 can be explained from the common belief that what make humans superior from
the majority of animals is our free will. Since free will give humans more value than other
animals, it is assumed here that a world with free living beings is more valuable than a world
without them.
B3 follows from the definition of the omnibeing: omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenev-
olent. Having these properties, an omnibeing knows what is best and will always choose what
is best. Since a world with free living beings has more value than one without them, the
omnibeing will choose to create free living beings.
B4 follows from the incompatibility of forcing a person to perform an act and at the same
time grating him or her with free will. If an omnibeing forces a person to do always right,
then that person would not have free will. He or she could not choose freely to do evil, thus,
she would not have free will.

2 Against the Free Will Defense

I will now argue that the free will argument is unsound by presenting my argument
against B4. As I mentioned in 1, the motivation of B4 is that the onmibeing cannot force
a person to do always right without taking away his or her free will. Just as a person with
free will has the ability to choose to do community service, that person also has the ability
to choose to commit a crime. Forcing a person to do either always good or evil is the same
as taking away their free will.
The main problem with B4 is that it assumes that a world with free living beings that
always choose freely to do right is impossible. I will show that this is not true by the
following example. During the events of pre-fertilization of sexual reproduction, hundreds
of millions of spermatozoa race towards the ovum (or ovums) to fertilize it. Each potential
spermatozoon-ovum pair have its own future with its timeline. This timeline is the set of all
events throughout the lifetime of the person. It contains every decision and action that the
person will choose freely. Since the omnibeing is omniscient, it must know the timeline of
each hundreds of millions of spermatozoon-ovum pairs. It must know whether a person will
perform actions of good or evil even before fertilization. Since the omnibeing is omnipotent
3
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. In: (Nov. 2017). url: http : / / www .
dictionary.com/browse/free-will.

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and omnibenevolent, it would choose the spermatozoon-ovum pairs which would develop in
a person who always choose freely to do right and not evil. By forcing specific spermatozoon
to fertilize the ovum, the omnibeing is not taking away anybody free will. Spermatozoa and
ovums do not have free will, then the omnibeing can force them to do as the omnibeing
pleases. Thus, it is not true that the omnibeing cannot create a world with free living beings
who always do right.

3 A Response: No Future Timelines

In this section I will defend my argument against a possible rebuttal. Proponents of the
free will defense might say that my definition of omniscient is wrong. By the definition that
I used in 2, an omniscient entity knows everything about the past, the present, and the
future. They might say that the omnibeing cannot know about the future because the future
does not exist yet. Since the future does not exist yet, the omnibeing cannot know whether
a living being will do right or evil at any point in his or her life. Thus, the omnibeing cannot
choose a specific spermatozoon-ovum pair, because it cannot know its future.
I will assume that this defense of B4 is true because it does not save the free will defense.
It only trades one problem for another. If the omnibeing cannot know about the future, then
it cannot know what will be more valuable in the future. Since the omnibeing cannot know
the future value of things, then it cannot know that a world with free living beings has more
value than a world without them. Thus, B2 is false.
They might defend this by arguing that the omnibeing does not need to know the future
to know what will have more value. They might also give the following example. Imagine a
bomb squad technician with the task of defusing a bomb. He realizes that he is front of a
new type of bomb that he has never seen before, and he does not know how to proceed. If
the technician were omniscient, he would know everything about the past and the present.
He would know every single detail about the bomb and how to defuse it. Even though he
would not know anything about the future, he would still be able to choose how to proceed.
Just as the omniscient technician would be able know what is best, the omnibeing would be
able to know the value of a world with free living beings.
I agree that the omniscient technician would be able to know how to defuse the bomb
without having to know the future. But he knows how to defuse it because the bomb already
exists in the past and in the present. If the bomb were to exist in the future, the technician
would not know about the future existence of the bomb or how to defuse it, because he
cannot know anything about the future. For the same reason that an omnibeing cannot
know about the future because the future does not exist yet, the omnibeing cannot know
that a world with free living beings is more valuable, because he has not created free living
beings yet. Since there is no knowledge about free living beings before creating them, there
is no way to know if free living beings would be extremely evil or extremely good. Then, the
best decision is the neutral decision: to not create free living beings at all. Thus, assuming
that the omnibeing does not know anything about the future does not save the free will
defense.