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Likewise, nothing “frustrates” and “angers” God more than our self-destruction. If He didn’t care about us, He would never become “angry.” He gets “angry” only because He wants us to benefit fully from life, and we don’t let that happen.
Not only don’t we know with certainty in any specific situation why good or bad things occur, we don’t even know who is truly righteous or wicked according to God’s system of judgment… A man with a long, white beard who spends hours poring over holy books is not necessarily righteous, nor is someone whom we see doing negative things necessarily wicked by God’s standards.
There is a wonderful saying, “Don’t pray to have an easy life. Pray to be a strong person.”
Some people ask how we can trust God to provide when there are millions of people, including innocent children, who starve every day. One answer is that the Lord made the world imperfect, and we help perfect it by taking care of His needy children. The Lord provides more than enough food for everyone, but He wants us to earn merit by distributing what we have to those who lack. He gives humanity more than enough resources to feed the poor, clothe the naked, and take care of the needy. We have only ourselves to blame when people go hungry because we haven’t distributed the blessing that He gave us, or because cruel and selfish people hoard what is supposed to be shared.
Many dying people would like to talk about death but don’t because it makes most listeners uncomfortable. While you can’t prevent people from dying, you can be enormously helpful by letting them share their regrets, fears, unrealized dreams, and so on. It is very comforting to know that they don’t have to face their fears alone. Ask if there’s anything they’d like to talk about, then listen. If you feel uncomfortable seeing them cry, discuss their fears, or talk about death, don’t say things like, “I see this is upsetting you. Let’s talk about something else,” or, “You’re a good person, you have nothing to be scared about. You’ll go straight to heaven,” or “Don’t get yourself upset by thinking about this,” or, “Why are you talking about nonsense like death? Of course you’ll get better.” It’s not your responsibility to take away people’s fears; they’ll feel comforted just sharing their feelings and getting support to work things out themselves. Let the person know how much you appreciate their sharing feelings and how willing you are to listen whenever they want to talk. Don’t try to “fix” their feelings and cheer them up with superficial responses or philosophical platitudes. If they regret their mistakes, suggest that they redress them as best they can with God or with the appropriate people… While some dying people want to talk about death, others want to be cheered up. Let the person be your guide.
In the past two decades, over two million American Jews have been spiritually exterminated through assimilation and intermarriage. Like the fish in Rabbi Akiva’s parable, we can survive only by maintaining our religious integrity and relying on God’s protection, not by assimilating to gain security, wealth, and comfort. People who are upset by the Nazis’ destruction should ask themselves what they are doing to stem the Jewish spiritual Holocaust that continues worldwide today. It has claimed more than ten million Jewish souls since World War I.
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A Modified Free-Will Defense: A Structural and Theistic Free-Will Defense as a Response to James Sterba by Elif Nur Balci
1. Introduction
2. Discussion and Argument
3. A Reappraisal of Plantinga’s Free-Will Defense
“What is relevant to the Free Will Defense is the idea of being free with respect to an action. If a person is free with respect to a given action, then he is free to perform that action and free to refrain from performing it… It is within his power, at the time in question, to take or perform the action and within his power to refrain from it.”5
“Neither a defense nor a theodicy, of course, gives any hint as to what God’s reason for some specific evil-the death or suffering of someone close to you, for example-might be. And there is still another function—a sort of pastoral function”… Probably neither will enable someone to find peace with himself and with God in the face of the evil the world contains. But then, of course, neither is intended for that purpose”.
“…suffering and misfortune may nonetheless constitute a problem for the theist; but the problem is not that his beliefs are logically or probabilistically incompatible. The theist may find a religious problem in evil; in the presence of his own suffering or that of someone near to him he may find it difficult to maintain what he takes to be the proper attitude towards God. Faced with great personal suffering or misfortune, he may be tempted to rebel against God, to shake his fist in God’s face, or even to give up belief in God altogether. But this is a problem of a different dimension. Such a problem calls, not for philosophical enlightenment, but for pastoral care.”.
“What happens is that the freedom of the assaulters, a freedom no one should have, is exercised at the expense of the freedom of their victims not to be assaulted, an important freedom that everyone should have.”.
4. Structural Understanding of Free-Will Defense
5. A Theistic Ground in the Structural Free-Will Defense
“A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all… He can’t give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so.”.
“The heart of the Free-Will Defense is the claim that it is possible that God could not have created a universe containing moral good (or as much moral good as this world contains) without creating one that also contained moral evil. And if so, then it is possible that God has a good reason for creating a world containing evil.”.
5.1. A Free-Will Defense with a Divine Justice Perspective
5.1.1. A Justice-Centered Free-Will Defense
“Say, O Prophet, “O humanity! The truth has surely come to you from your Lord. So whoever chooses to be guided, it is only for their own good. And whoever chooses to stray, it is only to their own loss. And I am not a keeper over you.” (10:108)8.
“…the one who is compelled (mulja’) not to do a bad or evil act does not perform it actually, because he/she is compelled, and not because it is evil. Yet, it was proved that deserving praise and award follows restraining from doing evil because it is evil, not for anything else…”.Quoted by (Attar 2010, p. 93)
“if there is a justification for the moral evil in the world that renders it compatible with the existence of God, it has to be in terms of securing some other good, or goods… If we are successful in finding such a justification, we will have a defense of the degree and amount of moral evil in the world. But it will not be a Free-Will Defense”.
“Can we meaningfully imagine a chess piece, for example, one that plays the role of a rook, independently of a chess game? No, we cannot. This is because, in the absence of other pieces, a chessboard, and two players, we wouldn’t know how to think about its moves, its position, etc. In other words, we can only comprehend a chess piece like the rook in conjunction with all other constituents of the game, just like we can only understand the number three in relation to the rest of the natural-number-structure”.
5.1.2. Evil in Terms of God’s Power
“They said that if God could do ugly deeds, it would be obligatory for him to do it. We say: Not every person capable of evil has to do it. Do you not see that we sometimes sit even though we can stand and sometimes remain silent even though we can speak? How do you deduce that the omnipotent must do what is necessary in any case? For example, God can cause the apocalypse right now, but we cannot say that He is not able to do so just because He did not do it.”.
“Your Lord does not wrong anyone. If He cannot do this, it would not make sense for Him to boast of not doing oppression. Just as… it does not make sense for a disabled man to boast of not climbing walls and giving up raiding his neighbors’ houses because he is not mighty, so is the situation here.”.
5.1.3. Evil and the Theory of Aslah
“They said: Surely, the fact that God knows the evil and oppression in the life of this world, and that He has the power to prevent them, but does not prevent them, indicates that He has willed them. The thing that indicates this from the sensible world is this: Surely if the king does not prevent any evil that he knows from his people and army, although he has the power, this attitude indicates that he wants the evil to happen.”.
“Because even though they know that Jews and Christians under the leadership of both imams and Muslims do not prevent them from going to synagogues and churches, it does not mean that they want them to continue… We do not find it appropriate that omnipotent God should prevent unbelievers from disbelief as long as they continue their responsibilities. Because here is the abolition of responsibility and the annulment of deserving praise and blame. How can their saying “God can prevent them” be true in this situation? He does not do this so that the responsibility would not be lifted and the reward and punishment would not be canceled.”.
6. Conclusions
Balci, E.N. A Modified Free-Will Defense: A Structural and Theistic Free-Will Defense as a Response to James Sterba. Religions 2022, 13, 700. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13080700