The free will of human beings is seen as thehighest good? as it will result in the development of morally excellent agents. For a person to be truly free they must be able to make decisions that will yield negative as well as positive results. Thus all the evil in the world is the result of decisions made by morally free agents. (Basinger, 1995)
             It is seen as a logical impossibility for God to create truly free agents who will never commit or cause evil. If God gives an agent the power of free choice between moral alternatives of right and wrong, the way in which an agent acts upon that power is beyond Gods reach. If God did intervene in a situation where evil would result, the agent involved would not truly have a free will of its own, and Gods ultimate justification for evil, namely moral excellence, would be undermined. (Basinger, 1995)
             The free will defence is a strong theodicy when looking at moral evils, the problem arises when theist try to apply it to natural evils. Some theists have tried to apply the free will defence in justifying natural evils in the same light as moral evils. There have been two main approaches in trying to do this, the first of which I am going to look at now.
             It seems common sense to most people that human beings have no control over natural occurrences that cause suffering or harm. One approach to natural evil through the free will defence goes against this commonsense view and states that human beings are ultimately to blame for natural evils. To a certain extent this view is justified, one could link a number of today'snatural? evils to human morality. For example one could argue that AIDS and Cancer are, in some indirect way, an epidemic because of human actions, or even natural disasters such as flooding and cyclones which wipe out thousands of people are the result of today's deforestation or CO2 problems and the ozone layer. But to say that all natural evils are the result of human's fre...