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Alvin Plantinga's free-will defense is a logical argument developed by the American analytic philosopher Alvin Plantinga and published in its final version in his 1977 book God, Freedom, and Evil. [1] Plantinga's argument is a defense against the logical problem of evil as formulated by the philosopher J. L. Mackie beginning in 1955.
In the philosophy of religion, a theodicy (/ θ iː ˈ ɒ d ɪ s i /; meaning 'vindication of God', from Ancient Greek θεός theos, "god" and δίκη dikē, "justice") is an argument that attempts to resolve the problem of evil that arises when all power and all goodness are simultaneously ascribed to God.
[2] [3] [34] Generally, a defense refers to attempts to address the logical argument of evil that says "it is logically impossible – not just unlikely – that God exists". [3] A defense does not require a full explanation of evil, and it need not be true, or even probable; it need only be possible, since possibility invalidates the logic of ...
Plantinga stresses that this is why he does not proffer a theodicy but only a defense of theistic belief. [16]: 33 Philosopher Richard Swinburne also says that, in its classic form, the argument from evil is unanswerable, yet there may still be reasons for not reaching its conclusion that there is no God. [17]
Carneades could be the true author of the paradox attributed to Epicurus.. There is no text by Epicurus that confirms his authorship of the argument. [3] Therefore, although it was popular with the skeptical school of Greek philosophy, it is possible that Epicurus' paradox was wrongly attributed to him by Lactantius who, from his Christian perspective, while attacking the problem proposed by ...
The phrase "the best of all possible worlds" (French: Le meilleur des mondes possibles; German: Die beste aller möglichen Welten) was coined by the German polymath and Enlightenment philosopher Gottfried Leibniz in his 1710 work Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme et l'origine du mal (Essays of Theodicy on the ...
John Hick used the term "soul-making" in his theodicy Evil and the God of Love to describe the kind of spiritual development that he believes justifies the existence of evil. This defense is employed by Michael Murray, [31] who explains how, in his view, divine hiddenness is essential to soul-making. It may seem that it is not hard to imagine a ...
Free will in theology is an important part of the debate on free will in general. Religions vary greatly in their response to the standard argument against free will and thus might appeal to any number of responses to the paradox of free will, the claim that omniscience and free will are incompatible.