The problem of evil

My first semester introduction to philosophy was basically a whole year on the idea of free will. 

The concept was used as an ad hoc solution to the problem of evil. If God is omniscient and all good, how do you explain the presence of evil. Well, people have free will. 

I think psychologically I need free will, just to keep equanimity, but philosophically I don't believe in it.

Here is some evil God permitted:

How do you tidy up the evil below?

Unrelated, I just learned: One of the experiments the japanese did during ww2 at unit 731 was cutting off limbs of living, waking people without anesthesia and sowing those limbs onto other prisoners.

They also infected male prisoners with various infectious diseases then forced them at gunpoint to rape pregnant prisoners to see if the disease would transmit to the baby.

Researchers from unit 731 were given immunity by the US in exchange for knowledge gained from their experiments. The Soviets tried 12 for war crimes. The accounts of victims from the trial and elsewhere were labeled as communist propaganda.

Unit 731 facilities are operated as a tourist destination in Harbin, China. The same city that annually gets pics to the front page for it's internationally famous Snow and Ice Festival.

Then there's the German version of that called Operation Paperclip.

Russia had Laboratory No. 12.

World War Two is a pretty good counter example to all knowing, all good God.

In the late 60's in South Carolina, when my mother was in college, people would run out screaming from her philosophy classes that pointed out the problem of evil.

Free will and addiction

(Source)

In the disease model of addiction, it is nice in that it counters some of the heaping moral blame. Blame the victim is fairly standard in the good old USA, another self defeating philosophy amongst many. You can find a few articles on line about the disease model of addiction and free will.

The good old USA, we have a kind of wacky political bifurcation, either you follow that party line or this party line, and neither the twain shall meet. Either you believe in personal responsibility and ignore other social factors, or you look at other social factors, and you don't harp on personal choice. I feel like you can do both, and we don't need to entrench into partisan sniping.

The physiological element to addiction makes it very rewarding, and to quit is hard, mere exertion of will doesn't really make it so.

In Buddhism, we work to transcend our conditioning and not be reactive, to be creative. There's probably a percentage of free will, creativity, and we're looking to increase the percentage.

There's a lot emphasis on improving condition, creating the conditions that will lead to enlightenment. Improving conditions is an important way of working towards moving toward enlightenment.

Once someone is addicted, and you have the cycle where more and more is required to get the high as you habituate to the drug. Moral judgements don't stop people from using, it contributes to feeling bad about yourself and that leads to more use. Recovery has to be a choice, moving out of attraction and not just avoidance.

There's also a generic element in our genome. Before for water treatment, putting wine into your water killed bacteria and having the gene helped you to survive.

Addiction is very complicated. Free will and blame are in an interesting dance with the issues of addiction.

My first philosophy class was about free will. The Christians who want it because they need it to solve the problem of evil were heavily invested in it. How can an all knowing and all powerful god make something bad happen. The answer is free will. But if you don't have that commitment, the need to have it is less. On the other side, the materialists, who think only the stuff of physics exists, they have a need to defer to physicist, which is a much more muddy picture at this point, but could be an anti-free will position, determinism.

I like the idea of free will, even if it's not true, at least psychologically. Focusing people on their choices can help one to actually reflect on them, and in error analysis. If determinism is true, then I can't help but like the idea of free will.

The magical thinking involved in substance abuse is amazing. Working with substance abuse is interesting in that often times mental health professionals want to ceed that territory to substance abuse counselors. There are some that cross over, and the MICA tradition addresses both issues.

BTW, my sons interrupted me a million times while I was writing this post, so I apologize for any incoherence.