Abstract
In a previous issue of this journal Michael Veber argued that God could not answer certain prayers because doing so would be immoral. In this article I attempt to demonstrate that Veber’s argument is simply the logical problem of evil applied to a possible world. Because of this, his argument is susceptible to a Plantinga-style defense.
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Notes
Those that believe prayer is efficacious often end up stating something like, ‘Well, if God exists and is omnipotent, then why couldn’t he answer prayer?’ Veber’s argument does not simply hinge on God’s ability to perform such an action, but on whether he could perform it given his moral perfection.
(Veber 2007, 184). It should be noted that the free will defense advocated by Alvin Plantinga, arguably the most prominent proponent of the free will defense, does not require all suffering to be the result of the suffering person’s free will as Veber seems to suggest. For example, a proponent of the free will defense might say that some infant suffered because of a decision made by another. As long as that decision is the result of a genuinely free will such suffering is consistent with a free will defense even though it did not stem from the individual actually suffering. While Veber’s dismissal of a free will defense to his problem seems to rest on this suggestion I will not pursue the point further and instead employ the same strategy as the proponent of the free will defense.
My aim will not be to present a version of the free will defense but to instead use the same strategy of the free will defense. In other words, the r I provide need not have anything to do with the free will defense at all.
This does not depend upon, but is consistent with, John Wesley’s famous quote, ‘God does nothing but in answer to prayer’ in ‘A Plain Account of Perfection’ Sec. 25, Q38, A5.
One might object that because it was a double-blind study α does not even know about the prayer. That may be true, but one could respond by saying the individuals responsible for conducting the study, those that actually prayed for α, and those that have read the results of the study all have been made more aware of God’s existence and his love for his creation.
This does not commit one to believing that the suffering is initially imposed so that God can then reveal his goodness to those suffering. This only suggests that God’s removal of the suffering without first being prompted to do so would remove an opportunity for that goodness to be revealed.
I thank Hugh Hunter, Russell Jones, Linda Zagzebski, and the anonymous referees for commenting on earlier versions of this paper.
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Franks, W.P. Why a Believer Could Believe that God Answers Prayers. SOPHIA 48, 319–324 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-009-0117-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-009-0117-4