No. I think Mike is an amazing philosopher, but I think in this case that he zigs where everyone else would've zagged. This review of Mike's excellent new book fleshes out my concern on this issue.
For what it's worth, Peter's worries, and perhaps your own Ex, I think are misplaced. The book aims to draw out commitments of certain atheological arguments. One example. If you endorse a view that says that God necessarily actualizes the best possible world (granting that there is a best possible world), then you hold a view that entails an impossibility. It is impossible that God necessarily actualizes the best world, since the existence of a best world entails the existence of non-best worlds (indeed, of extremely bad worlds). The entailment is straightforward: the moral value of best worlds depends in large part on moral agents constraining their behavior within the bounds of justice and beneficence. This constraint entails that they are not performing horrendous actions that they could be performing. Since they could performs these terrible actions, there is a (non-best) world in which they do. If God necessarily actualizes some world, then there is no world in which these agents go terribly wrong. But then the world actualized is not the best.
3 comments:
Do you think Almeida's book has dealt a significant if not absolute end to both logical/evidential arguments from evil?
Hi Ryan,
No. I think Mike is an amazing philosopher, but I think in this case that he zigs where everyone else would've zagged. This review of Mike's excellent new book fleshes out my concern on this issue.
Best,
EA
For what it's worth, Peter's worries, and perhaps your own Ex, I think are misplaced. The book aims to draw out commitments of certain atheological arguments. One example. If you endorse a view that says that God necessarily actualizes the best possible world (granting that there is a best possible world), then you hold a view that entails an impossibility. It is impossible that God necessarily actualizes the best world, since the existence of a best world entails the existence of non-best worlds (indeed, of extremely bad worlds). The entailment is straightforward: the moral value of best worlds depends in large part on moral agents constraining their behavior within the bounds of justice and beneficence. This constraint entails that they are not performing horrendous actions that they could be performing. Since they could performs these terrible actions, there is a (non-best) world in which they do. If God necessarily actualizes some world, then there is no world in which these agents go terribly wrong. But then the world actualized is not the best.
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