The Problem of Anvils

I will get to the falling anvils later. But first, here’s the problem of evil set in deductive logic form. My church’s small group dealt with this idea a few weeks ago, and I think it’s the best argument against the Christian God there is.

1. God is omnibenevolent.
2. God is omnipotent.
3. God is omniscient.
4. Evil exists.
5. An omnibenevolent and omnipotent entity would not allow evil to exist.
6. Therefore, God is not omnibenevolent, or God is not omnipotent, or God is not omniscient, or God does not exist.

There are some counterarguments to this which can be Googled easily, but I like Alvin Plantinga’s free will defense. There are two videos below that has him explaining a bit about it, and you can read more details on it here and here.

Some random thoughts/ideas:

1. That this universe contains a free moral agent is axiomatic. Therefore we know that God prefers at least one universe with free moral agency. If he prefers it once, what would make him not prefer it inside another universe?
2. Could God create a universe filled with automatons, with no free moral agency? We know he created one with at least one type of free moral agent (humans), we can assume he prefers free moral agency over automata in every universe created. Why would he create a universe he does not fully prefer? This is assuming propositions 1-3 above, and that there’s no law of diminishing returns with having too many free moral agents.
3. Could our free moral agency be an aspect of our being “made in the image of God”? Assuming God cannot choose wrongly, we can’t say God is a free moral agent since he cannot possibly choose wrong; the “freeness” aspect is a non-entity since every one of God’s actions is perfect. Therefore it’s faulty to say our free moral agency is an exact mirror-image of God’s property.
4. If every universe would have free moral agency, is it possible that there’s an instance that all free moral agents in a universe would always choose good? Probably not (see Plantinga’s trans-world depravity). To always choose good would imply perfection. The first morally evil choice is like an anvil dropping into the previously perfect universe, knocking things out of order.
5. If all universes are the way that God planned, with imperfect creations that have free moral agency, it implies that evil is an inevitability. But since God prefers creatures that are not automata it seems he prefers it more than the preference of evil not existing. God may have a hierarchy of preferences in this way, with the existence of a free moral agency at the top.