Quote:
Originally Posted by Mightyboosh
I don't agree that my definition of perfect is 'unwarranted' but clearly my argument relies on it. So I'll try to defend it.
In the same way that ontological argument assumes that there can only be one 'maximal being', that there couldn't be multiple equally maximal beings because by definition there can only be one value of maximal and anything else is non-maximal, I'm assuming one value of 'the most perfect it's possible to be', I think it's just another way to express the ontological argument. And it follows that the maximally perfect being creator could only have created something that is not only maximally perfect itself, but composed of perfect elements. There can't be the option of a perfect outcome that was achieved through imperfect steps because no imperfection is possible. A perfect being can't create, or allow to happen, something imperfect.
So nothing could be anything other than what it is and we couldn't have acted in any other way than how we did (and will), as he made it in that moment of creation, no matter what choices we think we have and god having foreknowledge is not even an issue or a conflict to be resolved because how could he not know what he decided would be.
Maybe, because he's perfect, the alternative imperfect ways that reality could have been didn't even enter his thoughts, reality sprang, fully formed and perfect, immediately into existence.
Three points.
1) The ontological argument is an argument you reject, so why do you assume it here? In my experience, most Christians, including major theologians like Aquinas, also reject it. I don't even think the ontological argument really does make the assumption that there is only a single perfect being. Many people using it make your assumption, but it seems like an unwarranted one imo.
2) You should disambiguate your attacks here. The free will defense really does defeat the claim that a perfect god must create a perfect universe (assuming the possibility of libertarian free will).
Imagine two universes. In one universe, everyone always does exactly what God desires, but they do so by God forcing them to do so. In a second universe, everyone always does exactly what God desires, but they do so by their own free choice. Which of these universes is better or are they the same?
Well, since many moral theories claim that moral blame or praise should accrue not to just doing the right thing, but to
choosing to do the right thing (eg Kantianism), it seems like the second of these universes, at least on some construals of moral value, is better. However, it is logically impossible for God to force someone to
freely (in the libertarian sense) choose to do good. Thus, it is not within God's power to deterministically create the maximally perfect universe because the maximally perfect universe is necessarily non-deterministic (given the above assumptions). More concretely, the maximally perfect universe requires freely given compliance from free-willed beings to do the right thing.
3) Given the argument in (2), the argument I thought you were making here is that this defense assumes a non-deterministic universe. But if the world is not deterministic, then how could God have perfect foreknowledge of the future? That is the argument I was trying to defeat with my counterexample of the multiverse. Your discussion of perfection here doesn't address my argument at all, as my argument takes as an assumption that the universe is not deterministic.