http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_P...e_will_defense link to argument

In order for his argument to stand, we need to suppose that God’s power is limited. He is not capable of creating a world where free will truly exists unless in that world humans are not limited in their capability to commit evil. I suggest that this argument requires that God not only isn’t Omnipotent but that he is also not Omniscient if we are to maintain that he is Omnibenevolent.

According to the Christian scriptures when man chose evil in the Garden he was instantly sold into sin, and as Paul describes in Romans, the human condition became such that those things which a man wants to do he can not find in himself the ability to do, and those things that he does not want to do he can not help but do. Also Paul speaks multiple times of mankind being a slave to sinful desires. I suggest this implies that while man may have been created with a free will which allows the choice of good or evil, once that evil was chosen, man no longer qualifies as a being with free will but is instead a slave, and the world is no longer a place where free will is said to exist. It is this slavery to sin which subjects mankind to the sort of evils which Plantinga’s argument is intends to reconcile with the existence of a good and loving God. So if God created a world in which the choice of evil could not be limited, and the consequence of choosing evil is horrendous evils for mankind, then God could not have known (omniscient) what the consequence of creating free willed creatures in this type of world would be and still be an Omnibenevolent being because his foreknowledge would implicate him as one who offered us up to this fate.

I contend that a being who is not omnipotent nor omniscient requires us to change drastically our ideas of who God is, or maintain them and discard Plantinga's argument.

You should probably show the argument you're addressing. I don't have Plantinga's book in front of me, but here is the core as I remember it:

1) It is possible that free-willed persons are such that they all choose to do some evil.
2) In order for a world to have moral goodness, it must have free-willed persons.
3) Therefore, it is possible that in order for the world to have moral goodness, it must also have some evil.
4) Therefore, it is possible that in order for god to create a morally good world, that world must have some evil in it.
5) Therefore, if an omnimax god would create a morally good world, it is possible that an omnimax god would also create a world with evil in it.
6) An omnimax god would create a morally good world.
7) Therefore, it is possible that an omnimax god would create a world with evil in it.
8) Therefore, it is not impossible that an omnimax god would create a world with evil in it.

And hence the logical problem of evil fails. Notice that this god is fully good, knows everything there is to know, and can do anything that an omnipotent god can do. The limitation on her power ends up being this--Plantinga claims that an omnipotent being cannot actualize any possible world she chooses. This is not because these other possible worlds are impossible, but because what differentiates them from other possible worlds are self-willed choices made by actors other than God, and so by their nature they cannot be actualized by God.

Concerning omnipotence, the key comment in that wiki article is: Here there are two questions to ask about omnipotence. First, what definition of omnipotence do you endorse, especially in light of these paradoxes? Second, what is the nature of God's failure to actualize certain kinds of worlds? Is it because it's logically inconsistent, is it because it's metaphysically impossible? Or rather do you think it is possible for God to actualize these worlds, so that he is omnipotent, but perhaps not benevolent?

Your omniscience point is not very clear and not related to Plantinga's argument. If libertarian free will is true, then nobody is 'ultimately' a slave to sin, you still have a choice no matter how much you're driven by your passions.

Okay. I just started studying formal logic and argumentation so be patient with me. I read Plantinga's defense and it doesn't feel right, so I'm just working through if that feeling is valid or not.

1 No one wills that evil would be done to them
2 When evil is done to someone it is done against their will
3 Evil is done to people against their will
4 So Free will is not compatible with evil
5 because of 4 If Gods intention is to create a world where free will exists it can not have evil in it
6 If God creates a world with evil in it God either does not know the consequences of allowing evil
7 Or God is not benevolent.
8 Plantinga's argument is for a benevolent God
9 Plantinga's argument must include a god with limited knowledge

(1) is most likely false, especially on Christian accounts of evil. However, the main error in this argument is (4). You seem to think that this is a consequence of the prior premises, but it is not, at least not on standard accounts of free will. To have a free will is to be able to make free-willed choices. However, it is compatible with having a free will that things happen to you that you do not want to happen, or even that you are not able to achieve all of your desires.

For instance, let's say that I want to be a billionaire. I then freely choose certain actions with the aim of achieving that goal, but ultimately fail to achieve it. Does that mean that I don't have a free will?

Your thoughts on 4 make sense.
Can you explain what makes you think 1 is likely false?

Just to get clear on what Plantinga's defense is doing. He's giving a response to the logical problem of evil. The logical problem of evil comes from these propositions (from the article you cited):

"1. An all-powerful (omnipotent) God could prevent evil from existing in the world.
2. An all-knowing (omniscient) God would know that there was evil in the world.
3. An all-good (omnibenevolent) God would wish to prevent evil from existing in the world.
4. There is evil in the world."

The claim is that all four propositions cannot be true (the logical problem), and since 4 is evidently true, some or all of 1-3 are false. Plantinga's argument is that this claim is incorrect; that it's at least possible that all four propositions are true, and this possibility is what his free will defense aims to establish.

This is Plantinga summarizing his argument (also from the article):

So here I'd say notice that he doesn't mention omniscience (that's why I said earlier that your omniscience point doesn't seem relevant to Plantinga's argument). It does seem odd to me that a consequence of an argument would be that God can fail at knowing that free will enabled creatures are capable of doing evil. For example, one thing we can say about God's knowledge is that he is at least as knowledgeable as humans, and humans know that free will can lead to evil. But maybe that's not necessary, you could have a God who is like a jolly good bodybuilder who doesn't know the limits of his own strength and crushes people to death when he hugs them. At any rate, it's not relevant that it's possible that God isn't omniscient, what's relevant is if it's true that it's possible that God could be omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent and that evil exists.

The way you're getting to omniscience is that God created free will and you are assuming that free will is not compatible with evil (I agree with OriginalPosition, 4 is an assumption/premise not an intermediate conclusion). You argue that if free will is not compatible with evil (and God created free will), then God is either not omniscient or not benevolent . In 8 you say "Plantinga's argument is for a benevolent God" so we conclude that God is not omniscient. The problem here is that 8 is not the conclusion of Plantinga's argument, that is to say, he's not giving an argument that "God is benevolent". The argument is that it's possible that God is benevolent and omnipotent and that evil exists. The only part of your argument that ends up being relevant to Plantinga's conclusion is your premise that free will is not compatible with evil, but you need an argument for that and you need to say how that proposition defeats Plantinga's solution (and this is partially a lost cause, it seems pretty sensible that if you're significantly free, you can make bad/evil choices).

Many Christians will think that (1) is false because they believe that humans have a "sin nature." This means that their nature is such that they desire to do evil or have evil done to them. This might sound weird if you think of evil as only being suffering, but these Christians will typically understand "evil" as meaning something more like, " disobedience of God's will." So, for instance, a desire to live your own life according to your own rules would be an evil desire on this account. Rather, you should desire to live according to God's rules.

A test case for this would be sexual morality. A secular morality that prizes personal autonomy and pleasure will see nothing wrong with consenting adults having sex together if they so desire. However, for Christians, sex has spiritual ramifications relating to God's will in such a way that this desire can be a desire to ignore God's will and so evil.

However, I think (1) can be wrong even on non-Christian grounds. For instance, I think that people can desire to have evil done to them out of ignorance or false beliefs. For instance, I think that it is wrong to raise children to not appreciate the diversity of human thought by exposing them to many ways of looking at the world. However, many of the children who are raised to have a narrow outlook on the world think that this is the right thing to do and even go on to raise their own children in this way.

This doesn't seem quite right to me. Plantinga doesn't seem to be claiming that God is not aware that these free-willed beings can or even will commit evil. Rather, he is claiming that God cannot create free-willed beings who have actual moral choices and at the same time prevent them from choosing to do evil. I don't see any limitation on his knowledge here--only on his power (though not in a way that lessens omnipotence). Thus, it seems like God is creating these beings knowing that they will or can commit evil, but also knowing that this evil is a necessary consequence of them being able to be morally good.

I agree; I was saying that the conclusion of OP's 9 step argument was that God is not omniscient, and that this conclusion was not relevant to Plantinga's defense. I think my wording was a little unclear there, I quoted Plantinga's summary and then said something like "seems odd to me that a consequence of an argument could be that God is not omnisicient" but the 'consequence of an argument' was referring to the conclusion of OP's argument, not Plantinga's.

I always find such arguments to use the words "good" and "evil" without clear definitions of these terms (perhaps they developed them and are simply not quoted ITT or others). This is important because I am not convinced there is any clear notion of good and evil and that most attempts to define these terms - such as in accordance with the bible - are not well defined.