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Satisfactory accounts of divine creation

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Abstract

Multiverse theorists provide controversial, unique but unified accounts of divine creation that result in the Anselmian God creating a best world. On what conditions should theists endorse this or any account of divine creation? One available way is to evaluate how well they resolve some intractable problems in philosophical theology. I argue that multiverse accounts do not resolve these problems to a greater degree than some alternative account of divine creation. I conclude that we should endorse the alternative account over multiverse accounts.

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Notes

  1. I take it his cut-off line is synonymous with threshold t.

  2. For an argument against a multiverse solution to the problems of evil, see Almeida (2015) and Almeida (2017b).

  3. Turner (2014) concedes that God is not free in this way. That concession, indeed, solves the problem of divine freedom.

  4. For prominent ways in which to describe a good-making object of worlds, see Swinburne (1991) and Plantinga (1977). For a prominent way in which to describe bad-making actions in worlds, see Mackie (1955). For recent explanations of good-making and bad-making properties, see Almeida (2017a), Kraay (2010, 2018). For initial explanations of how God’s value might contribute to the value of the world, see Plantinga (2004). Kraay (2018) may hold a similar view about how God’s goodness somehow contributes a positive value to worlds, see p. 6.

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Correspondence to Marshall Naylor.

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Naylor, M. Satisfactory accounts of divine creation. Int J Philos Relig 88, 249–258 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-020-09752-0

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