God, evil, and occasionalism

Abstract

In a recent paper, Alvin Plantinga defends occasionalism against an important moral objection: if God is the sole direct cause of all the suffering that results from immoral human choices, this causal role is difficult to reconcile with God's perfect goodness. Plantinga argues that this problem is no worse for occasionalism than for any of the competing views of divine causality; in particular, there is no morally relevant difference between God directly causing suffering and God indirectly causing it. First, we examine Plantinga's moral parity argument in detail and offer a critical evaluation of it. Then we provide a positive argument, based on the doctrine of doing and allowing, to show why there is a morally relevant difference between God's direct and indirect causation of suffering.

Doing, Allowing, and Occasionalism

“…In the present article, I will, like Shea and Ragland, leave aside concurrentism and focus on mere conservationism and occasionalism. Although Shea and Ragland concur with the characterization of mere conservationism given above, they are concerned with weak occasionalism, which differs from occasionalism as being described above (Shea & Ragland (2018), 266). When arguing that ‘there is a significant disparity between occasionalism and mere conservationism with respect to God's causal role in suffering.’, Shea and Ragland refer to weak occasionalism ( ibid ., 279, 281).…”

“…Given the significance of the DDA to their argument, I will call their argument ‘the DDA Argument’. Shea and Ragland introduce the DDA Argument against the background of ‘the moral objection’ to weak occasionalism, which Plantinga first addressed in his article (Shea & Ragland (2018), 267; Plantinga (2016), 141). The moral objection to occasionalism may be described as the intuitive repulsion to the attribution of horrible acts to a ‘perfectly loving and perfectly good’ God (Plantinga (2016), 139).…”

“…We commonly do not think ‘that it would be no worse to murder to get money for some comfort such as a nice winter coat than it is to keep the money back before sending a donation to Oxfam or Care’, even though we appear to be allowing many to die by not donating (Foot (1994), 281; Woollard (2012), 449). By developing an argument based on the DDA, Shea and Ragland seem to seek a theoretical expression of the moral objection and thus exceed the intuitive level of argumentation (Shea and Ragland (2018), 279). As a result, the DDA Argument purportedly has the advantage of enabling Shea and Ragland to explain and justify the intuition underlying the moral objection more forcefully.…”

“…It appears, however, that they do not even attempt to fulfil either of them 5 . They explain in footnote 25 that they simply have no ample space ‘to provide a detailed formulation and defence of the doctrine’ (Shea & Ragland (2018), 283). This deficiency can also be sensed from their concise and unclear explication of the DDA.…”

“…In ‘God, evil, and occasionalism’ Matthew Shea and C. P. Ragland accept Plantinga's invitation (Shea & Ragland (2018)). They present a case against Plantinga by, first, arguing that his moral parity argument either commits the fallacy of equivocation or is guilty of an incoherency, both of which render his argument unconvincing ( ibid ., 275).…”