The Shangri-La example is great because not only does it show why the free will theodicy wouldn't work even if there was libertarian free will, it also shows why libertarianism is incoherent. According to libertarians, and agent is more free in virtue of making choices that are less in line with their own desires and moral goals. An agent who just always does whatever they determine they most want to do based on their values and preferences is supposedly not free.
“Nowadays, free will theodicies have largely fallen out of favor in the analytic philosophy world” what’s your evidence for this? I’ve been seeing a trend of substack articles on philosophy of religion recently that proceed by making sweeping statements about the state of the academic discourse which go completely unsubstantiated, followed by statements of over the top arrogance/overconfidence and a series of object level critiques that don’t really deliver the goods (but we don’t need to get into that).
I can name countless well respected contemporary philosophers of religion who advance free will theodicies. Rasmussen appeals to free will in responding to the problem of evil. So does Alex Pruss (who, by the way, published a paper on a new free will defense that works if you're a compatibilist, undermining one of your main arguments). So does Peter Van Inwagen. So does Dustin Crummett. Etc. so what exactly is the basis for the framing that academics have left behind the theodicy and that it remains mostly just a relic of popular discourse?
Maybe we're interpreting the term differently, but I don't take "largely fallen out of favor" to mean something has been totally repudiated or even that it's relatively uncommon, just that it's no longer as popular or central as it once was compared to something else - especially when taken with the next clause you didn't include, which very specifically expresses that.
If you're referring to Alexander Pruss' 2003 paper, that's an attempt to supplement Plantinga's free will defense, it is not a theodicy (a very important distinction) - but correct me if there's some other source I'm missing. The same is true of Van Inwagen's account, who has a complicated view but for his whole career has endorsed a skeptical/defense based approach to the problem of evil (Pruss, by the way, often takes a view in this vein). His view is also importantly different from classic free will theodicies in that its core justification involves a very different kind of account and adds in many moving parts that aren't part of classical free-will theodicies.
Crummett's new paper also isn't an attempt to provide or endorse a substantive or comprehensive theodicy, merely an argument that a certain kind of free will theodicy that appeals to simulators can fend off against some objections one might levy against one that appeals to malevolent spirits. He says this himself.
Generally in analytic philosophy of religion, the theodicies that are taken most seriously aren't in these papers (which as I noted aren't even theodicies for the most part) that don't generally quarrel with many contemporary forms of the PoE, but the most substantive accounts that have been given ie. Eleanor Stump's book, Swinburne's book, John Hick's book, Trent Dougherty's book, and so on. Early on, people largely focused on discourse around Mackie's problem of evil and Plantinga's solution was 'in vogue'. After evidential arguments from evil became more popular, 'free will' wasn't appealed to as much and many theists trickled over to skeptical theism, soul-making, or defeat-based theodicies. This was a highly significant turn in the field that you can see in its historical development from Plantinga, to Robert Adams/Marilyn Adams and Wysktra's work on the problem of evil. Indeed, when I took the problem of evil as an undergraduate this shift was an essential part of what we were taught about the development of the discussion in the field as part of the course. When you look at the most in-depth accounts that have been given like these, other than Swinburne's (which itself isn't purely based on free will), they aren't free will theodicies. Also, those few more in-depth versions of free will theodicies have been responded to in-depth in works that are generally well-received even by theists in the field, namely Draper's in-depth review of Swinburne's book and Laura Ekstrom's new book. Note that I'm not saying that this last point on its own shows that they have fallen out of favor (one can always disagree) but this is a relevant part of the development of the field that, in conjunction with what I've already noted, does indicate a shift from the discussions in the late 20th century and now. It's also notable that a) free-will is by far more popular amongst laymen than academic philosophers when discussing the problem of evil and b) libertarian free will is a mainstay of such theodicies, and there aren't many developments of how it would work across the most popular forms of compatibilism (that Pruss paper I noted is a defense and besides I don't see how it applies to standard deep-self views in compatibilism)
Of course, I agree that it would be wrong to say that free will theodicies are 'dead' or something but if we are being charitable saying they have 'fallen out of favor' is I think quite in-line with the historical trends in philosophy of religion. The vitriol here is strange - both on that point and that it makes 'object level' critiques, but we don't need to get into that.
I can't guarantee how long I'll be able to keep up with a protracted comment war as the responses grow longer and longer, but a few comments:
I don't think you were able to point to anything I said that was misleading, but ironically I found your reconstruction of Van Inwagen and Pruss' views sort of misleading. Neither are skeptical theists and neither are seeking to offer merely a defense- that is, a logically possible way of reconciling God and evil. Both take themselves to be successfully undermining the evidential problem of evil. True, Van Inwagen doesn't technically take himself to be offering a "theodicy" in the sense of a true explanation of why God allows evil, but he's not just offering a defense- he's offering a story that reconciles God and evil and is plausible enough to take the evidential force out of the problem of evil. And to that extent, the story that he offers is centered around the value and implications of free will. At best, your objection here just seems like hair splitting. Pruss, on the other hand, has on record said that "traditional theodicies" including the free will theodicy are "basically right". So to say that he doesn't endorse a free will theodicy is just false. The point about Pruss' free will defense being different from the classical free will theodicy strikes me as sort of irrelevant to what I said and something that I clearly already acknowledged in my initial comment. Also Crummett I'm pretty certain thinks that free will is likely central to addressing the evidential POE in exactly the same way as Van Inwagen, though his choice of subsumption theodicy is different than Van Inwagen's.
In terms of your longest paragraph, I won't really respond because I'm not arguing that free will theodicies haven't become "less central" to discourse around the POE- I mean that's what I'd expect even just given the fact that over time other theodicies than the free will theodicy will be developed. You say that on a charitable reading, this is all Both Sides Brigade means by "fallen out of favor", so you're confused why I'm objecting. But I don't think that's a "charitable" way to read the statement that free will theodicies have fallen out of favor, I think it's an inaccurate way. That's simply not what the idiom means, and any standard source will back me up here.
We discussed this on discord but the standard understanding of what Van Inwagen is doing in his own words is combining defense-based approaches and skeptical theism. From his book:
"The story I have told is, I remind you, only supposed to be a defense. Theist does not put forward the expanded free-will defense as a theodicy, as a statement of the real truth of the matter concerning the co-presence of God and evil in the world"..."Remember, the expanded free-will defense is a defense, not a theodicy"
"I have urged extreme modal and moral skepticism (or, one might say, humility) in matters unrelated to the concerns of everyday life. If such skepticism is accepted, then we have no reason to accept the evidentialist's premise that "an omniscient and omnipotent being will be able so to arrange matters that the world contains sentient beings among whom suffering, if it exists at all, is apportioned according to desert." and "Of course, these stories [the stories Van Inwagen uses] will (presumably) be false for all anyone knows, so they will not, or should not, create any tendency to believe that the probability of S on theism is not lower than
it is on HI, that it is about the same or higher. Rather, the stories will, or should, lead a person in our epistemic situation to refuse to make any judgment about the relation between the probabilities of S on theism and on HI."
He constantly uses the 'for all we know' clause, which is classic skeptical theism, and he is cited as a skeptical theist on the SEP page on skeptical theism. I acknowledged his view is complicated, so I agree that what he is doing is a product of his own distinct project - but what he very clearly says is that it *isn't* a theodicy - it's a modified version of a defense, as the reviews of his book will confirm (ie. see William Hasker's, who simply calls what he is doing a defense and criticizes its effectiveness for the very reason that it is a defense)
Why do I think this isn't splitting hairs? Because the usual view in philosophy of religion is that a 'theodicy' is entirely different from what Van Inwagen is doing, as he himself acknowledges - and so when we discuss 'free will theodicies' - what *you yourself said*, I took us to be looking at theodicies in the standard sense. As for Pruss, I never said he didn't endorse a free will theodicy - indeed, I asked if you had a citation for a paper I wasn't aware of. My point was the paper you yourself cited was explicitly a defense, as Pruss says in the paper: "I shall give a free-will based defense..."
A charitable reading of 'fallen out of favor in the analytic philosophy world' would be what views are largely defended in the literature, at least by my books. That's what I cited in my long paragraph, and I think it's the most relevant for what is mainstream in 'philosophy of religion' relative to that understanding (or even a standard understanding) of what is most relevant to whether a view has 'fallen out of favor'
As an analogy, theists often say that the logical problem of evil is 'dead' and philosophers of religion don't take it seriously (a far stronger claim than what was made here!). And this is despite the fact that many prominent atheist philosophers have endorsed such views not just as some personal aside, but actually argued for them in articles (Oppy, Sterba, and Schellenberg have all done so). However, if someone only made the claim that such arguments have 'fallen out of favor' - I wouldn't have a problem with that. Evidential arguments from evil are much more widely advanced.
I think what you said is misleading because you explicitly said many authors have "advanced" free will 'theodicies' and then cited people who haven't actually done that in the standard sense (which is the reasonable sense in which one would interpret that claim). This is a pretty explicit contradiction, far more relative to a sense in which any of my claims were 'misleading' - though I don't think any of them were.
1) while Van Inwagen does use the term "defense" to describe what he's doing he explicitly says that he means something substantially different by this term than what's typically meant by "defense". It can be misleading to use terms in a non standard sense without clarification. 2) I don't really think it's appropriate to call what Van Inwagen is doing "skeptical theism" without qualification because he appeals to mitigated modal/moral skepticism at some point in his response for animal suffering or that he uses phrases like "for all we know". I think it's clear that what Van Inwagen's doing is pretty different from standard skeptical theism. 3) I never said that Pruss advanced a free will theodicy in the paper you're referencing so I'm not sure why you're invoking that point- in fact, I literally said he advanced a "defense" in my original comment. 4) I think what you said is consistent with my claim that you're splitting hairs, since the fact that what Van Inwagen's doing isn't technically a "theodicy" as often defined in the literature but something extremely similar that has the exact same effect (undermining the evidential POE) doesn't make a practical or meaningful difference to the argument that's being had. 5) I should say it's not particularly uncommon for someone to use the term "theodicy" in the sense I was using it- for instance, wikipedia writes "in the philosophy of religion, a theodicy is an argument that attempts to resolve the problem of evil that arises when all power and all goodness are simultaneously ascribed to God. Unlike a defence, which merely tries to demonstrate that the coexistence of God and evil is logically possible, a theodicy additionally provides a framework wherein God and evil's existence is considered plausible." This is clearly in line with my usage, and you can find similar definitions/usages all over the place. 6) If by "fallen out of favor" you mean the view isn't prominently defended in the philosophy of religion literature, I take it that the claim that free will theodicies have fallen out of favor is false.
1) I have acknowledged, in all my previous comments, that Van Inwagen's understanding of a defense is slightly modified, though I don't think it's 'substantially different' - he simply thinks telling a story that is true 'for all anyone knows' even if it can't be known to be probable is enough to address the evidential argument from evil. I think this is the natural reading of his words in context: so long as a story reconciles suffering and theism and we can't rule it out as extremely improbable (ie. are epistemically limited from assigning it certain kinds of negative probabilities), the PoE is undermined - this is similar to the original notion of a 'defense' but with an extra assumption, and is part of what has come to be meant by it given his usage - so I'm not sure what else to say at this point. I agree with you it isn't the same as Plantinga's defense but an expansion of it, and it's also clear that he thinks we can just address all of the PoE at once rather than make distinctions between versions of it. The more important, overall point, is that this is very clearly not a theodicy, as is shown by the quotes I sent - and I was objecting to you saying that it was. 2) As for skeptical theism, what he is doing very clearly incorporates a variant of skeptical theism. That is why he says that he has said that his arguments should "lead a person in our epistemic situation to refuse to make any judgment about the relation between the probabilities of S on theism and on HI." That is why he is cited as offering a version of skeptical theism on the SEP page on skeptical theism. From a review of his book in the literature:
"Van Inwagen suggests this story is true ‘for all anyone knows’ and
that we cannot assign any particular probability to the likelihood that
this story is true. Imagine an urn which I have filled with 100 balls.
There could be any number of black balls (from 1 to 100), this num-
ber having been chosen randomly. The remainder are white balls. We
therefore have no way of knowing what the proportion of black to
white balls is, and hence no way of assigning a probability to the
hypothesis that the first ball drawn randomly from the urn will be
black. Van Inwagen suggests that our epistemic position with respect
to assigning this probability is similar to our epistemic position with
respect to the hypothesis that, given God exists, the above story is
true."
It's true, of course, that his skeptical theism is different from Wykstra's, just as Wkystra's is different from Bergmann's. But to say that it is inaccurate or in any way misleading to imply that his story is partially skeptical theistic in nature is completely ludicrous. And I never said what he was doing is without qualification 'skeptical theism', I said he had a complicated view that combined "skeptical/defense based approaches" - I think that's exactly in line with what he does! And again, I have acknowledged in all my previous comments the unique nature of his project, so you are arguing with no one here: it is you who said he offered a free will theodicy when he did not, and then called what I said misleading when I used exactly the language he did and have clarified in pretty much every comment the nuance of that language. Notably, most scholars in the field don't even make the clarifications I do - Trent Dougherty, William Hasker, and Timothy Pritchard, for instance, straight up call him a skeptical theist or say he is engaging in a defense. 3) I see that you said this, and my point is that given that it *is* a defense and not a theodicy, it wasn't dialectically relevant to your claim that free will theodicies haven't fallen out of favor!
Your entire point about what a theodicy is and whether I'm "splitting hairs" is itself undermined by Van Inwagen's own words, who explicitly says what he is doing is not a theodicy. If your point is that Van Inwagen thinks it can do the work of a theodicy, that's false in one sense but true in another: Van Inwagen acknowledges that what it can't do is actually show that Pr(S|Theism) is the same or greater than Pr(S|~theism) or that it's even likely or something we should think is true on theism - but because of his unique view on arguments and the skeptical theism he incorporates that you keep denying, he does think this is enough to undermine the EPoE. Now, you cited this as a theodicy initially, and this is what I objected to. You seem to be saying that it's splitting hairs to say this shouldn't count because it has the same 'effect' of a theodicy or is similar in picture to one. But that's just ridiculous - skeptical theism, if true, also has that 'effect' but it clearly isn't the same. And continuing to insist that Van Inwagen's picture fits with what a theodicy is when he repudiates that many times over as does pretty much everyone who writes about it, and given the very important differences between the two pictures that I think I've done enough to outline, is futile. There's no point going over how we should interpret a quote from wikipedia when Van Inwagen says verbatim in his book that given standard usage in the field, what he is doing is *not* a theodicy and he does not intend it as one.
Therefore, of your examples so far, it has turned out that there isn't a prominent contemporary defense of the free will theodicy by Pruss, Van Inwagen, or Crummett in the literature - at least given the citations I know about and that you have provided - which was precisely my point to begin with.
I already told you my understanding of 'fallen out of favor': I don't take it to mean 'dead' as in it has no defenders, but that it it isn't *as* prominently defended as before. For instance, it would be perfectly natural to say that behaviorism has 'fallen out of favor' in psychology even though it has contemporary defenders. And, this is the usage that OP clarified they were using - and since they aren't a random person and are generally respected in this space - I think you ought to have showed them more charity. It was you who came in with over the top and unwarranted vitriol.
The Shangri-La example is great because not only does it show why the free will theodicy wouldn't work even if there was libertarian free will, it also shows why libertarianism is incoherent. According to libertarians, and agent is more free in virtue of making choices that are less in line with their own desires and moral goals. An agent who just always does whatever they determine they most want to do based on their values and preferences is supposedly not free.
“Nowadays, free will theodicies have largely fallen out of favor in the analytic philosophy world” what’s your evidence for this? I’ve been seeing a trend of substack articles on philosophy of religion recently that proceed by making sweeping statements about the state of the academic discourse which go completely unsubstantiated, followed by statements of over the top arrogance/overconfidence and a series of object level critiques that don’t really deliver the goods (but we don’t need to get into that).
I can name countless well respected contemporary philosophers of religion who advance free will theodicies. Rasmussen appeals to free will in responding to the problem of evil. So does Alex Pruss (who, by the way, published a paper on a new free will defense that works if you're a compatibilist, undermining one of your main arguments). So does Peter Van Inwagen. So does Dustin Crummett. Etc. so what exactly is the basis for the framing that academics have left behind the theodicy and that it remains mostly just a relic of popular discourse?
Maybe we're interpreting the term differently, but I don't take "largely fallen out of favor" to mean something has been totally repudiated or even that it's relatively uncommon, just that it's no longer as popular or central as it once was compared to something else - especially when taken with the next clause you didn't include, which very specifically expresses that.
This is quite misleading:
If you're referring to Alexander Pruss' 2003 paper, that's an attempt to supplement Plantinga's free will defense, it is not a theodicy (a very important distinction) - but correct me if there's some other source I'm missing. The same is true of Van Inwagen's account, who has a complicated view but for his whole career has endorsed a skeptical/defense based approach to the problem of evil (Pruss, by the way, often takes a view in this vein). His view is also importantly different from classic free will theodicies in that its core justification involves a very different kind of account and adds in many moving parts that aren't part of classical free-will theodicies.
Crummett's new paper also isn't an attempt to provide or endorse a substantive or comprehensive theodicy, merely an argument that a certain kind of free will theodicy that appeals to simulators can fend off against some objections one might levy against one that appeals to malevolent spirits. He says this himself.
Generally in analytic philosophy of religion, the theodicies that are taken most seriously aren't in these papers (which as I noted aren't even theodicies for the most part) that don't generally quarrel with many contemporary forms of the PoE, but the most substantive accounts that have been given ie. Eleanor Stump's book, Swinburne's book, John Hick's book, Trent Dougherty's book, and so on. Early on, people largely focused on discourse around Mackie's problem of evil and Plantinga's solution was 'in vogue'. After evidential arguments from evil became more popular, 'free will' wasn't appealed to as much and many theists trickled over to skeptical theism, soul-making, or defeat-based theodicies. This was a highly significant turn in the field that you can see in its historical development from Plantinga, to Robert Adams/Marilyn Adams and Wysktra's work on the problem of evil. Indeed, when I took the problem of evil as an undergraduate this shift was an essential part of what we were taught about the development of the discussion in the field as part of the course. When you look at the most in-depth accounts that have been given like these, other than Swinburne's (which itself isn't purely based on free will), they aren't free will theodicies. Also, those few more in-depth versions of free will theodicies have been responded to in-depth in works that are generally well-received even by theists in the field, namely Draper's in-depth review of Swinburne's book and Laura Ekstrom's new book. Note that I'm not saying that this last point on its own shows that they have fallen out of favor (one can always disagree) but this is a relevant part of the development of the field that, in conjunction with what I've already noted, does indicate a shift from the discussions in the late 20th century and now. It's also notable that a) free-will is by far more popular amongst laymen than academic philosophers when discussing the problem of evil and b) libertarian free will is a mainstay of such theodicies, and there aren't many developments of how it would work across the most popular forms of compatibilism (that Pruss paper I noted is a defense and besides I don't see how it applies to standard deep-self views in compatibilism)
Of course, I agree that it would be wrong to say that free will theodicies are 'dead' or something but if we are being charitable saying they have 'fallen out of favor' is I think quite in-line with the historical trends in philosophy of religion. The vitriol here is strange - both on that point and that it makes 'object level' critiques, but we don't need to get into that.
I can't guarantee how long I'll be able to keep up with a protracted comment war as the responses grow longer and longer, but a few comments:
I don't think you were able to point to anything I said that was misleading, but ironically I found your reconstruction of Van Inwagen and Pruss' views sort of misleading. Neither are skeptical theists and neither are seeking to offer merely a defense- that is, a logically possible way of reconciling God and evil. Both take themselves to be successfully undermining the evidential problem of evil. True, Van Inwagen doesn't technically take himself to be offering a "theodicy" in the sense of a true explanation of why God allows evil, but he's not just offering a defense- he's offering a story that reconciles God and evil and is plausible enough to take the evidential force out of the problem of evil. And to that extent, the story that he offers is centered around the value and implications of free will. At best, your objection here just seems like hair splitting. Pruss, on the other hand, has on record said that "traditional theodicies" including the free will theodicy are "basically right". So to say that he doesn't endorse a free will theodicy is just false. The point about Pruss' free will defense being different from the classical free will theodicy strikes me as sort of irrelevant to what I said and something that I clearly already acknowledged in my initial comment. Also Crummett I'm pretty certain thinks that free will is likely central to addressing the evidential POE in exactly the same way as Van Inwagen, though his choice of subsumption theodicy is different than Van Inwagen's.
In terms of your longest paragraph, I won't really respond because I'm not arguing that free will theodicies haven't become "less central" to discourse around the POE- I mean that's what I'd expect even just given the fact that over time other theodicies than the free will theodicy will be developed. You say that on a charitable reading, this is all Both Sides Brigade means by "fallen out of favor", so you're confused why I'm objecting. But I don't think that's a "charitable" way to read the statement that free will theodicies have fallen out of favor, I think it's an inaccurate way. That's simply not what the idiom means, and any standard source will back me up here.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fall%20from%20favor
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/fall+out+of+favor
Etc.
We discussed this on discord but the standard understanding of what Van Inwagen is doing in his own words is combining defense-based approaches and skeptical theism. From his book:
"The story I have told is, I remind you, only supposed to be a defense. Theist does not put forward the expanded free-will defense as a theodicy, as a statement of the real truth of the matter concerning the co-presence of God and evil in the world"..."Remember, the expanded free-will defense is a defense, not a theodicy"
"I have urged extreme modal and moral skepticism (or, one might say, humility) in matters unrelated to the concerns of everyday life. If such skepticism is accepted, then we have no reason to accept the evidentialist's premise that "an omniscient and omnipotent being will be able so to arrange matters that the world contains sentient beings among whom suffering, if it exists at all, is apportioned according to desert." and "Of course, these stories [the stories Van Inwagen uses] will (presumably) be false for all anyone knows, so they will not, or should not, create any tendency to believe that the probability of S on theism is not lower than
it is on HI, that it is about the same or higher. Rather, the stories will, or should, lead a person in our epistemic situation to refuse to make any judgment about the relation between the probabilities of S on theism and on HI."
He constantly uses the 'for all we know' clause, which is classic skeptical theism, and he is cited as a skeptical theist on the SEP page on skeptical theism. I acknowledged his view is complicated, so I agree that what he is doing is a product of his own distinct project - but what he very clearly says is that it *isn't* a theodicy - it's a modified version of a defense, as the reviews of his book will confirm (ie. see William Hasker's, who simply calls what he is doing a defense and criticizes its effectiveness for the very reason that it is a defense)
Why do I think this isn't splitting hairs? Because the usual view in philosophy of religion is that a 'theodicy' is entirely different from what Van Inwagen is doing, as he himself acknowledges - and so when we discuss 'free will theodicies' - what *you yourself said*, I took us to be looking at theodicies in the standard sense. As for Pruss, I never said he didn't endorse a free will theodicy - indeed, I asked if you had a citation for a paper I wasn't aware of. My point was the paper you yourself cited was explicitly a defense, as Pruss says in the paper: "I shall give a free-will based defense..."
A charitable reading of 'fallen out of favor in the analytic philosophy world' would be what views are largely defended in the literature, at least by my books. That's what I cited in my long paragraph, and I think it's the most relevant for what is mainstream in 'philosophy of religion' relative to that understanding (or even a standard understanding) of what is most relevant to whether a view has 'fallen out of favor'
As an analogy, theists often say that the logical problem of evil is 'dead' and philosophers of religion don't take it seriously (a far stronger claim than what was made here!). And this is despite the fact that many prominent atheist philosophers have endorsed such views not just as some personal aside, but actually argued for them in articles (Oppy, Sterba, and Schellenberg have all done so). However, if someone only made the claim that such arguments have 'fallen out of favor' - I wouldn't have a problem with that. Evidential arguments from evil are much more widely advanced.
I think what you said is misleading because you explicitly said many authors have "advanced" free will 'theodicies' and then cited people who haven't actually done that in the standard sense (which is the reasonable sense in which one would interpret that claim). This is a pretty explicit contradiction, far more relative to a sense in which any of my claims were 'misleading' - though I don't think any of them were.
1) while Van Inwagen does use the term "defense" to describe what he's doing he explicitly says that he means something substantially different by this term than what's typically meant by "defense". It can be misleading to use terms in a non standard sense without clarification. 2) I don't really think it's appropriate to call what Van Inwagen is doing "skeptical theism" without qualification because he appeals to mitigated modal/moral skepticism at some point in his response for animal suffering or that he uses phrases like "for all we know". I think it's clear that what Van Inwagen's doing is pretty different from standard skeptical theism. 3) I never said that Pruss advanced a free will theodicy in the paper you're referencing so I'm not sure why you're invoking that point- in fact, I literally said he advanced a "defense" in my original comment. 4) I think what you said is consistent with my claim that you're splitting hairs, since the fact that what Van Inwagen's doing isn't technically a "theodicy" as often defined in the literature but something extremely similar that has the exact same effect (undermining the evidential POE) doesn't make a practical or meaningful difference to the argument that's being had. 5) I should say it's not particularly uncommon for someone to use the term "theodicy" in the sense I was using it- for instance, wikipedia writes "in the philosophy of religion, a theodicy is an argument that attempts to resolve the problem of evil that arises when all power and all goodness are simultaneously ascribed to God. Unlike a defence, which merely tries to demonstrate that the coexistence of God and evil is logically possible, a theodicy additionally provides a framework wherein God and evil's existence is considered plausible." This is clearly in line with my usage, and you can find similar definitions/usages all over the place. 6) If by "fallen out of favor" you mean the view isn't prominently defended in the philosophy of religion literature, I take it that the claim that free will theodicies have fallen out of favor is false.
1) I have acknowledged, in all my previous comments, that Van Inwagen's understanding of a defense is slightly modified, though I don't think it's 'substantially different' - he simply thinks telling a story that is true 'for all anyone knows' even if it can't be known to be probable is enough to address the evidential argument from evil. I think this is the natural reading of his words in context: so long as a story reconciles suffering and theism and we can't rule it out as extremely improbable (ie. are epistemically limited from assigning it certain kinds of negative probabilities), the PoE is undermined - this is similar to the original notion of a 'defense' but with an extra assumption, and is part of what has come to be meant by it given his usage - so I'm not sure what else to say at this point. I agree with you it isn't the same as Plantinga's defense but an expansion of it, and it's also clear that he thinks we can just address all of the PoE at once rather than make distinctions between versions of it. The more important, overall point, is that this is very clearly not a theodicy, as is shown by the quotes I sent - and I was objecting to you saying that it was. 2) As for skeptical theism, what he is doing very clearly incorporates a variant of skeptical theism. That is why he says that he has said that his arguments should "lead a person in our epistemic situation to refuse to make any judgment about the relation between the probabilities of S on theism and on HI." That is why he is cited as offering a version of skeptical theism on the SEP page on skeptical theism. From a review of his book in the literature:
"Van Inwagen suggests this story is true ‘for all anyone knows’ and
that we cannot assign any particular probability to the likelihood that
this story is true. Imagine an urn which I have filled with 100 balls.
There could be any number of black balls (from 1 to 100), this num-
ber having been chosen randomly. The remainder are white balls. We
therefore have no way of knowing what the proportion of black to
white balls is, and hence no way of assigning a probability to the
hypothesis that the first ball drawn randomly from the urn will be
black. Van Inwagen suggests that our epistemic position with respect
to assigning this probability is similar to our epistemic position with
respect to the hypothesis that, given God exists, the above story is
true."
It's true, of course, that his skeptical theism is different from Wykstra's, just as Wkystra's is different from Bergmann's. But to say that it is inaccurate or in any way misleading to imply that his story is partially skeptical theistic in nature is completely ludicrous. And I never said what he was doing is without qualification 'skeptical theism', I said he had a complicated view that combined "skeptical/defense based approaches" - I think that's exactly in line with what he does! And again, I have acknowledged in all my previous comments the unique nature of his project, so you are arguing with no one here: it is you who said he offered a free will theodicy when he did not, and then called what I said misleading when I used exactly the language he did and have clarified in pretty much every comment the nuance of that language. Notably, most scholars in the field don't even make the clarifications I do - Trent Dougherty, William Hasker, and Timothy Pritchard, for instance, straight up call him a skeptical theist or say he is engaging in a defense. 3) I see that you said this, and my point is that given that it *is* a defense and not a theodicy, it wasn't dialectically relevant to your claim that free will theodicies haven't fallen out of favor!
Your entire point about what a theodicy is and whether I'm "splitting hairs" is itself undermined by Van Inwagen's own words, who explicitly says what he is doing is not a theodicy. If your point is that Van Inwagen thinks it can do the work of a theodicy, that's false in one sense but true in another: Van Inwagen acknowledges that what it can't do is actually show that Pr(S|Theism) is the same or greater than Pr(S|~theism) or that it's even likely or something we should think is true on theism - but because of his unique view on arguments and the skeptical theism he incorporates that you keep denying, he does think this is enough to undermine the EPoE. Now, you cited this as a theodicy initially, and this is what I objected to. You seem to be saying that it's splitting hairs to say this shouldn't count because it has the same 'effect' of a theodicy or is similar in picture to one. But that's just ridiculous - skeptical theism, if true, also has that 'effect' but it clearly isn't the same. And continuing to insist that Van Inwagen's picture fits with what a theodicy is when he repudiates that many times over as does pretty much everyone who writes about it, and given the very important differences between the two pictures that I think I've done enough to outline, is futile. There's no point going over how we should interpret a quote from wikipedia when Van Inwagen says verbatim in his book that given standard usage in the field, what he is doing is *not* a theodicy and he does not intend it as one.
Therefore, of your examples so far, it has turned out that there isn't a prominent contemporary defense of the free will theodicy by Pruss, Van Inwagen, or Crummett in the literature - at least given the citations I know about and that you have provided - which was precisely my point to begin with.
I already told you my understanding of 'fallen out of favor': I don't take it to mean 'dead' as in it has no defenders, but that it it isn't *as* prominently defended as before. For instance, it would be perfectly natural to say that behaviorism has 'fallen out of favor' in psychology even though it has contemporary defenders. And, this is the usage that OP clarified they were using - and since they aren't a random person and are generally respected in this space - I think you ought to have showed them more charity. It was you who came in with over the top and unwarranted vitriol.
https://kaiserbasileus.substack.com/p/to-grok-free-will