Should God Not Have Created Adam?

Abstract

The free will defense shows that God cannot be held responsible, in general, for the existence of manmade evil. But, I argue, the defense fails to exculpate God if it can be shown that there are ways God could have fashioned human nature, consistent with our freedom (or increasing it), that would have resulted in our being less evil. I discuss two such ways. The second half of the paper considers various defenses of the free will defense against this challenge, including two more general responses to the argument from evil due to Wykstra and Marilyn McCord Adams.