Heaven as an Argument Against God’s Existence--an article I am writing...
Abstract. The argument from evil against God’s existence is usually answered either by the “best of all possible worlds†or by the “free will†argument. These arguments, in return, are usually answered by showing their weakness when one considers in detail the state of our imperfect world. I wish to argue that a more thorough refutation of both these arguments can be seen by looking at the perfect world—heaven—theists accept.
One of the most famous arguments against God’s existence is the well known “problem of evilâ€: God is omnipotent; God is good; yet there is evil (or suffering) in the world. Ergo, either God is not omnipotent or he is not (completely) good.
This argument goes back to Epicurus, and is usually answered by theists in one of two possible ways. First, one can claim—with Leibniz—that pain and suffering notwithstanding, this is at least the best of all possible worlds. Second, one can claim that man has—and must have—free will to choose both good and evil, therefore, man—not God—creates evil, or at least moral evil, i.e., sin. (Note that the latter does not require that this world be either the best possible world or the best possible world with free will.)
On the other hand—and partially in order to mitigate this problem—believers typically accept the existence of heaven, a place where one’s soul goes after death to enjoy infinite bliss. What heaven is like is described in an astonishing variety of ways, but in the vast majority of cases it is perfect, totally lacking in both natural and moral evil.
Paradoxically, it is precisely heaven—not the natural world and not even hell—which undermines both the ‘free will’ and the ‘best of possible worlds’ retorts to the problem of evil. At the risk of being accused of “beating a dead Godâ€, I would like to explain why this is the case.
The existence of heaven is an obvious problem for the ‘best of all possible worlds’ defense. In the most general terms, the existence of heavens poses the following puzzle: heaven exists; it is better than this world; yet this world is supposed to be the best of all possible worlds. This is a contradiction, since—obviously—if heaven exists, it is also a possible world better than our own. So either heaven does not exist, or it is not better than the actual world, or this world is not the best of all possible worlds.
This seems to be an open-and-shut case against the “this world is the best of all possible worlds†scenario, unless one is willing to deny the existence of heaven, or to deny that heaven is better than the actual world—e.g., that the saints are punished after death, as well as the sinners. Both of these claims have rather obvious disastrous implications to Judeo-Christian religious dogma, the one we are dealing with here.
There way to avoid this problem is, as said above, to argue that for some very good reason, God decided to create on earth not the best possible world, but only a world that has some property P which God considers crucial in his infinite wisdom. Far and away the most popular opinion Iis that P is free will: man should (for some reason) have the ability to sin. Here, too, however, heaven creates a counterexample. The question to consider is: is there free will (the ability to sin) in heaven?
There are two choices: either the souls have free will in heaven, or they do not. If they do not, the free-will promoter is in a trap. On the one hand, he claims that free will is such an all-important quality for humanity that God considered all the horrors it caused through evil a good enough price to pay. On the other hand, he cannot really claim that having free will makes the actual world better than heaven because it allows free will, for the reasons above.
Be that as it may, the main positive argument against the existence of free will in heaven is that disembodied souls lack the ability to sin—sin being the product of the imperfect body. This seems, however, to fly in the face of the entire concept of sin in Christian theology. When the priest absolves you, he cleanses your soul of sin, for instance; one is warned is not to have a sinning soul at death, for that soul would be punished. While it still might be that the soul is only able to sin when connected to the body (in the same way that I can only move at 500 mph when sitting in a plane and not on my own), this, too, doesn’t ring true with tradition. The souls in hell in Dante’s Inferno, for instance, are at least capable of the sin of blasphemy; and Satan himself is supposed to have originally been a perfect being in heaven. If he could sin, why not the human souls there?
On the other hand, if there is free will in heaven, the question is whether or not there is evil there as well. This is not an obvious issue, for free will merely implies that one has the ability to sin; it does not imply that one will or does in fact sin. Consider a certain coin that is tossed, say, 1,000 times. The coin might very have the ability to land “heads†on each of those tosses—due to its symmetrical structure, the coin tossing procedure giving it enough angular momentum, etc.—but simply happen to land “tails†every time.
If there is sin in heaven (as opposed to mere free will) then is possible, for instance, that those in heaven will choose once more to rebel against God and be cast to hell for all eternity, a recreation of “Paradise Lostâ€. This seems odd. It certainly doesn’t fit with most descriptions of heaven as commonly understood.
The other possibility is that souls do have free will but do not sin, much like a tossed coin might have the ability to land ‘heads’ and ‘tails’ but just happens to land ‘heads’ every time. Another way to look at it is in terms of “possible heavensâ€: every time a soul in heaven is encountered with the choice of either sinning or not sinning, there are two possibilities, for it has free will: it will either sin or not. Heaven is the logically possible world where all the souls simply happen to choose not to sin in all cases.
But if that is the case, it begs the question: why isn’t earth like that as well? There is nothing in this discussion of free will in heaven that hinges on the fact that we are dealing with incorporeal souls, as long as (as we assume) they have free will. There also exists a logically possible world where all living persons simply choose not to sin every time they are faced with such a choice. So it seems that the very same argument that is necessary to save free will for heaven without allowing sin would, mutates mutandis, work on earth as well.
In summary, heaven seems a direct refutation of the claim that this is the best of all possible worlds, and an indirect one of the idea that free will explains evil on earth.
Abstract. The argument from evil against God’s existence is usually answered either by the “best of all possible worlds†or by the “free will†argument. These arguments, in return, are usually answered by showing their weakness when one considers in detail the state of our imperfect world. I wish to argue that a more thorough refutation of both these arguments can be seen by looking at the perfect world—heaven—theists accept.
One of the most famous arguments against God’s existence is the well known “problem of evilâ€: God is omnipotent; God is good; yet there is evil (or suffering) in the world. Ergo, either God is not omnipotent or he is not (completely) good.
This argument goes back to Epicurus, and is usually answered by theists in one of two possible ways. First, one can claim—with Leibniz—that pain and suffering notwithstanding, this is at least the best of all possible worlds. Second, one can claim that man has—and must have—free will to choose both good and evil, therefore, man—not God—creates evil, or at least moral evil, i.e., sin. (Note that the latter does not require that this world be either the best possible world or the best possible world with free will.)
On the other hand—and partially in order to mitigate this problem—believers typically accept the existence of heaven, a place where one’s soul goes after death to enjoy infinite bliss. What heaven is like is described in an astonishing variety of ways, but in the vast majority of cases it is perfect, totally lacking in both natural and moral evil.
Paradoxically, it is precisely heaven—not the natural world and not even hell—which undermines both the ‘free will’ and the ‘best of possible worlds’ retorts to the problem of evil. At the risk of being accused of “beating a dead Godâ€, I would like to explain why this is the case.
The existence of heaven is an obvious problem for the ‘best of all possible worlds’ defense. In the most general terms, the existence of heavens poses the following puzzle: heaven exists; it is better than this world; yet this world is supposed to be the best of all possible worlds. This is a contradiction, since—obviously—if heaven exists, it is also a possible world better than our own. So either heaven does not exist, or it is not better than the actual world, or this world is not the best of all possible worlds.
This seems to be an open-and-shut case against the “this world is the best of all possible worlds†scenario, unless one is willing to deny the existence of heaven, or to deny that heaven is better than the actual world—e.g., that the saints are punished after death, as well as the sinners. Both of these claims have rather obvious disastrous implications to Judeo-Christian religious dogma, the one we are dealing with here.
There way to avoid this problem is, as said above, to argue that for some very good reason, God decided to create on earth not the best possible world, but only a world that has some property P which God considers crucial in his infinite wisdom. Far and away the most popular opinion Iis that P is free will: man should (for some reason) have the ability to sin. Here, too, however, heaven creates a counterexample. The question to consider is: is there free will (the ability to sin) in heaven?
There are two choices: either the souls have free will in heaven, or they do not. If they do not, the free-will promoter is in a trap. On the one hand, he claims that free will is such an all-important quality for humanity that God considered all the horrors it caused through evil a good enough price to pay. On the other hand, he cannot really claim that having free will makes the actual world better than heaven because it allows free will, for the reasons above.
Be that as it may, the main positive argument against the existence of free will in heaven is that disembodied souls lack the ability to sin—sin being the product of the imperfect body. This seems, however, to fly in the face of the entire concept of sin in Christian theology. When the priest absolves you, he cleanses your soul of sin, for instance; one is warned is not to have a sinning soul at death, for that soul would be punished. While it still might be that the soul is only able to sin when connected to the body (in the same way that I can only move at 500 mph when sitting in a plane and not on my own), this, too, doesn’t ring true with tradition. The souls in hell in Dante’s Inferno, for instance, are at least capable of the sin of blasphemy; and Satan himself is supposed to have originally been a perfect being in heaven. If he could sin, why not the human souls there?
On the other hand, if there is free will in heaven, the question is whether or not there is evil there as well. This is not an obvious issue, for free will merely implies that one has the ability to sin; it does not imply that one will or does in fact sin. Consider a certain coin that is tossed, say, 1,000 times. The coin might very have the ability to land “heads†on each of those tosses—due to its symmetrical structure, the coin tossing procedure giving it enough angular momentum, etc.—but simply happen to land “tails†every time.
If there is sin in heaven (as opposed to mere free will) then is possible, for instance, that those in heaven will choose once more to rebel against God and be cast to hell for all eternity, a recreation of “Paradise Lostâ€. This seems odd. It certainly doesn’t fit with most descriptions of heaven as commonly understood.
The other possibility is that souls do have free will but do not sin, much like a tossed coin might have the ability to land ‘heads’ and ‘tails’ but just happens to land ‘heads’ every time. Another way to look at it is in terms of “possible heavensâ€: every time a soul in heaven is encountered with the choice of either sinning or not sinning, there are two possibilities, for it has free will: it will either sin or not. Heaven is the logically possible world where all the souls simply happen to choose not to sin in all cases.
But if that is the case, it begs the question: why isn’t earth like that as well? There is nothing in this discussion of free will in heaven that hinges on the fact that we are dealing with incorporeal souls, as long as (as we assume) they have free will. There also exists a logically possible world where all living persons simply choose not to sin every time they are faced with such a choice. So it seems that the very same argument that is necessary to save free will for heaven without allowing sin would, mutates mutandis, work on earth as well.
In summary, heaven seems a direct refutation of the claim that this is the best of all possible worlds, and an indirect one of the idea that free will explains evil on earth.
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I am working on a logical argument that not only do no gods exist, but that no god can exist... by definition. 
