a Response to Pavelich's “The Moral Problem with the Free Will Defense Against the Problem of Evil”

In Andrew Pavelich’s 2017 paper, “The Moral Problem with the Free Will Defense Against the Problem of Evil,” he outlines several criticisms of Plantinga’s “Free Will Defense” (FWD) against J.L. Mackie’s Problem of Evil (PoE).

I enjoyed the read, but disagree quite a bit with Pavelich. I personally don’t find Mackie’s PoE to be very convincing largely because of Plantinga’s work and some of my own reasoning. I (as I’ve previously stated) find arguments from natural evil/suffering far more effective, precisely because of their avoidance of the FWD.

In his paper, Pavelich critiques several facets of the FWD, but I’ll mainly be focusing on III. (Mitigation by Heaven and Hell) which I personally find decidedly weak. The reason I’m focusing on passage III is because I believe the FWD heavily hinges on some sort of afterlife, and because the conversation which opened my eyes to this paper largely stemmed around the importance of the afterlife for the FWD.

For some background, my general view is that plausibly, God would create a world with limited, contingent creatures operating under their own free will. Because these creatures are able to make their own choices and are limited in intellect and moral goodness (due to their contingent, non-divine nature), they are able to commit evils and cause harm and chaos. Once creatures die, there is some sort of afterlife where the wicked are punished, and the merciful are rewarded. I’m not entirely sure what specific afterlife view I’d like to commit myself to, but for PoE responses I’m not sure the specifics matter too much.

I agree that if all that there is is the life we have and the Earth that we inhabit, this would be strange for a perfect creator, because the costs of free will would be quite high with limited benefits, and the scale of justice could plausibly be quite skewed. This is why I hold the afterlife view to be so crucial to the FWD. It’s a game changer. Yes, in this life the world is plagued with many moral evils as a result of humanity’s actions (in addition to the moral goods, of course), but the theistic view seems far more plausible when there is some sort of afterlife where evildoers are punished and the benevolent are rewarded, for it is in the afterlife where the scales are ultimately tipped towards justice. This view to me seems quite strong in response to PoE based on purely human evils (natural evils are, of course, an entirely different matter, as I have previously mentioned). 

Pavelich begins section III with a brief overview of the involvement of Heaven and Hell in the FWD. Pavelich then argues that such a reward system is, at the very least, intuitively wrong when compared with a more everyday analogy. Pavelich then brings up an example where a parent fails to intervene when their child brutally attacks their other child. In this analogy, many years later, after the parent’s death, they leave the beaten child with their entire estate, and the attacker with nothing. Pavelich’s point, as he states, is that “overall we must acknowledge that morality is more than just punishment and compensation; it really does require action in the moment. Punishment or compensation after the fact only make moral sense if the original actions really should have been prevented” (Pavelich 4).

Pavelich admits this appeal is purely intuitive, but he holds that it is a common intuition nonetheless. But it seems to me that Pavelich may be mistaking the nature of punishment, especially in the context of the afterlife, which differs greatly from that used in everyday human life.

First of all, Pavelich argues that it seems to defeat the purpose of punishment when it is not in a form of deterrent, in which case it is most effective immediately after the act and publicly, in order to deter further evils. Now B.F. Skinner would certainly agree, but I’m not certain that punishment in the afterlife is exactly of this type of nature. Instead of being some sort of an everyday practical deterrent of future evils, punishment in the afterlife is rather an ultimate act of justice (or a “balancing of the scales”), where someone is judged based off of their cumulative actions (and nature) from their entire life, by an all-knowing, perfectly-just being.

This seems quite plausible, that such a system would be far more just. People will not be judged on one action, but will have an entire life of actions, thoughts, and beliefs. It is on this basis that God would judge, not necessarily on a case-by-case basis, immediately after the fact and in a public setting.

Pavelich then finishes section III by criticizing the aim of appeals to the afterlife: “to say that God makes up for it in the afterlife is not to give a response to the problem of evil; it is a way of mitigating evil once an answer is given” (Pavelich 5). I suppose I agree with this conclusion, though I find it somewhat strange. Is this a criticism of the appeal? The FWD defense is the direct answer, and the afterlife is a crucial component to that answer. Perhaps it isn’t the main component, but it is one that is doubtlessly crucial, and (in my opinion) is a cherry-on-top of sorts to the defense, that a perfectly just God would rectify the evils that result from free choices and would reward the good.