Online research in philosophy

In an impressive series of books and articles, Alvin Plantinga has developed challenging new versions of two much discussed pieces of philosophical theology: the free will defense and the ontological argument.' His treatment of both subjects has provoked a tremendous amount of critical comment. What has not been generally noticed', however, is that when taken together, Plantinga's views on these two subjects lead to a very serious problem in philosophical theology. The premises of his version of the ontological argument, when combined with the presuppositions of the free will defense, appear to entail that God is not free to choose between good and evil and thus is not "good" in the distinctively moral sense of this word. In the present paper, I shall explain how this problem arises, and explore two different ways of trying to deal with it.

1. The Down Under Logical Disproof of the Theist's God 1.1 Plantinga's Attempted Refutation of the Logical Disproof 1.2 Plantinga Refuted and God Disproved: A Preview 2. Plantinga's Formal Presentation of his Free Will Defense 3. First Formal Flaw: A Non Sequitur Regarding the Consistency of (3) with (1) 4. Further Flaws Regarding the Joint Conditions of Consistency and Entailment 4.1 A Non Sequitur Regarding the Entailment Condition 4.2 Telling the Full Story in Order to Satisfy the Entailment Condition 4.3 Two Non Sequiturs Involving the Consistency Condition 4.4 The Russell Scenario: A Refutation by Logical Analogy 5. Plantinga's Leibnizian Definition of Omnipotence 5.1 Logical Consequences of the Definition 5.2 Why Leibniz Didn't Lapse 5.3 A Fatal Equivocation Over the Scope of Transworld Depravity 5.4 It Was All "Up to God" 5.5 The Distinction Between Absolute and Consequential Modalities 5.6 Plantinga's Ploy 5.7 Plantinga's Modal Muddle 5.8 Interlude on the Prevalence of the Modal Muddle 5.9 Back to Plantinga's Modal Muddle 5.10 Interim Verdict 6. Judgment Day: God Almighty and All Knowing Not Morally Perfect..

Alvin Plantinga thinks Leibniz made a mistake. Leibniz claimed that God could have created any possible world, but Plantinga thinks this view amounts to a lapse in judgment on Leibniz =s part. = Plantinga terms this mistake ALeibniz= Lapse,@ and his rejection of this Leibuizian claim plays an important role in Plantinga =s free wili defense against the problem of evil. I will argue that Plantinga fails to show that Leibniz lapsed in thinking about which worlds are actualizable by God; in particular, his argument for this claim is not sound. If I am right, the last lapse is on Plantinga.

It used to be widely held by philosophers that God and evil are incompatible.1 Not any longer. Alvin Plantinga's Free Will Defense is largely responsible for this shift. Indeed, Robert Adams avers that "it is fair to say that Plantinga has solved this problem. That is, he has argued convincingly for the consistency of [God and evil]."2 And William Alston writes that "Plantinga...has established the possibility that God could not actualize a world containing free creatures that always do the right thing."3 You might expect praise like this from Christian philosophers. You might not expect it from William Rowe, one of the foremost atheistic philosophers of our day, but this is precisely what we find. Rowe writes.

In a recent discussion, Susan Anderson argues that Alvin Plantinga’s version of the Free Will Defense has not shown that the existence of God is neither precluded nor rendered improbable by the existence of evil. She grants Plantinga that God cannot control free actions and that only free actions have moral worth but denies that this entails that God cannot insure a world containing only moral good. God could do so, she argues, simply by taking away the freedom of persons when he foresees they would sin if allowed to act freely. Anderson also believes that Plantinga must assume that God is a benevolent being who attempts to bring about the greatest net good if he is to justify the evil we experience, both she argues that such an assumption is dubious. I argue that both of these arguments contain fundamental misinterpretations of Plantinga’s Free Will Defense and, accordingly, that neither presents a serious objection to it.