Theism and modal collapse
American Philosophical Quarterly 48:361-72 (2011)
| Abstract | God is traditionally taken to be a necessarily existing being who is unsurpassably powerful, knowledgeable, and good. The familiar problem of actual evil claims that the presence of gratuitous suffering in the actual world constitutes evidence against the existence of such a being. In contrast, the problem of possible evil claims that the possibility of bad worlds constitutes evidence against theism. How? It seems plausible to suppose that there are very bad possible worlds. But if God exists in every world, then God exists in those, too. And if God exists in very bad worlds, some say, God is culpable for not ensuring that they are better. In what follows, I consider this argument, survey some responses, and offer a novel solution. Along the way, I argue that theists should maintain that the actual world is a multiverse featuring all and only universes worthy of being created and sustained by God, and – more controversially – I suggest that theists should embrace modal collapse: the claim that this multiverse is the only possible world. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,664 |
| External links |
  Try with proxy. Try with proxy. |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesGuy Kahane (2011). Should We Want God to Exist? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 82 (3):674-696.
Bradley Monton (2010). Against Multiverse Theodicies. Philo 13 (2):113-135.
Bruce Langtry (2008). God, the Best, and Evil. OUP Oxford.
Mark Ian Thomas Robson (2008). Ontology and Providence in Creation: Taking Ex Nihilo Seriously. Continuum.
Paul Sheehy (2006). Theism and Modal Realism. Religious Studies 42 (3):315-328.
Klaas J. Kraay (2005). William L. Rowe's a Priori Argument for Atheism. Faith and Philosophy 22:211-234.
Klaas J. Kraay (2009). Can God Choose a World at Random? In Yujin Nagasawa & Erik J. Wielenberg (eds.), New Waves in Philosophy of Religion. Palgrave Macmillan.
James R. Beebe, Logical Problem of Evil. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Justin P. McBrayer (2010). Skeptical Theism. Philosophy Compass 5 (7):611-623.
Klaas J. Kraay (2010). Theism, Possible Worlds, and the Multiverse. Philosophical Studies 147 (3).
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-10-01Total downloads47 ( #23,073 of 549,013 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,261 of 549,013 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
