Quote:
Originally Posted by bunny
I have no idea, but I don't need to - we only have this world and it seems like it could be better. Choosing the improved version seems consistent with a benevolent God. If this one can be improved then God is either not benevolent or was constrained in power in some way.
"Well he had to choose SOMETHING" isnt a defence if the one he chose can be improved. The 'there's no best' defense is usually that there are a whole bunch of equally good worlds - this being one of them. Unless you believe that the concept of improving the world is inherently nonsensical (which I reject on the grounds that I can perform a moral act - determined by whether or not I think the world will be better or not by doing it).
If one accepts the "no greatest possible world" hypothesis, then one should expect to live in a world that could be slightly improved upon even given an omnipotent omnibenevolent God.
In other words, if there is no "greatest possible world", that would mean that whatever world God chose there would necessarily be a world that could be slightly better. So if God was to look at the the world and say "this world could be a little better" then choose the new world, he would still be looking at a world that could be just a little bit better, ad infinitum. Therefore it is logically impossible for God (even an omnibenevolent one) to choose a world which could not be improved upon just a little.
So one should expect that the actual world is a world that could be improved upon just a little even given that an omnibenevolent God chose it.
Now, that only follows if you accept that there cannot be a "greatest of all possible worlds", which I am not sure that I accept.
Quote:
The argument that this IS the best of all possible worlds from God's ultimate perspective even if it seems to us like it can be improved is a 'mysterious ways' argument. The claim being that from God's perspective it is the best - we can't know why, but we have to trust him. (FWIW, my current resting place, intellectually depressing as it is).
I agree with each of these sentences except for the first (which I don't understand).
I don't see that this is appealing to God's mystery, only that with our limited capacity for knowledge and given chaos theory we should not expect to know whether or not something could have been different or that ultimate cause of X that one believes didn't have to exist necessarily was in fact that ultimate cause of X.
Again, given the butterfly effect, if this was in actuality the greatest of all possible worlds, would we know it? How different would if actually look from a world that is not the best of all possible worlds?