How Did Evil Come into the World? A Primordial Free-Will Theodicy

Free will and the problem of evil

According to the free-will defence, the exercise of free will by creatures is of such value that God is willing to allow the existence of evil which comes from the misuse of free will. A well-known objection holds that the exercise of free will is compatible with determinism and thus, if God exists, God could have predetermined exactly how the will would be exercised; God could even have predet...

Natural Evil and the Free Will Defense

Recently Richard Swinburne has argued that the well-known Free Will Defense can provide an explanation of God's permitting moral evil (i.e., evil intentionally brought about by human agents) only if there is also natural evil (i.e., evil not intentionally brought about by human agents). 1 Ultimately his argument aims to show that there must be natural evil if we are to have the knowledge we nee...

How will robots integrate into our world?

New coworker: The workplace robot Baxter from Rethink Robotics, on display here at the Science Museum London, can learn to carry out a wide variety of tasks and is safe for use next to human colleagues. (Photo: Michael Gross.) The Science Museum in London, UK, currently hosts a diverse crowd of around 100 very special guests from near and far. Harry from Japan plays the trumpet; Baxter from the...

Will the world come to a horrible end?

Science serves its readers as a forum for the presentation and discussion of important issues related to the advancement of science, including the presentation of minority or conflicting points of view, rather than by publishing only material on which a consensus has been reached. Accordingly, all articles published in Science-including editorials, news and comment, and book reviews -are signed...

WNV: where in the world did that come from?