In his paper ‘Can God do Evil?’ Joshua Hoffman puts forward a simple argument for why God must be necessarily omnibenevolent rather than contingently omnibenevolent. Hoffman begins his paper by noting that many philosophers and theologians have argued that God must be necessarily omnipotent. The reason for this being that if God was contingently omnipotent, then it is a mere contingency that He was able to create the universe, and it might have been the case that no universe at all was created. But, Hoffman argues, this would entail that there is no ultimate explanation of the universe or sufficient reason for the universe. Thus, the position that God is contingently omnipotent is incompatible with the principle of sufficient reason (PSR) and should be rejected; this is if we grant, as Hoffman does, that God must be omnipotent to create ex nihilo, and we accept the PSR.
Hoffman believes that a parallel can be forwarded to demonstrate that God must be necessarily omnibenevolent. His argument is that an omnibenevolent being seeks to bring about an optimal world - this being a world that is at least as good as any other possible world. Hence, if God was necessarily omnibenevolent, God necessarily creates an optimal world. However, if God is only contingently omnibenevolent, then it is only a ‘cosmic accident’ that God is ‘so well intentioned.’ And this again conflicts with the PSR and should hence be rejected.
Hoffman’s account, however, is flawed. For any argument that attempts to apply PSR reasoning to God ought to be viewed with some suspicion. For suppose we say that God must be necessarily omnibenevolent in order to provide an explanation for why God must have created an optimal world; we are still left with unanswered questions as to why God chose to create a certain world over that of another. Even if an omnibenevolent God must create an optimal world, why, we can ask, does God create this particular optimal world over that of another? Why has he chosen to create a world where all things are as good as they can be and a leaf falls at t1 instead of an equally good world where a leaf falls at t2? There are a few options that can be proposed to answer this. (1) There is only one unsurpassable optimal world that has no rival. Therefore, there needs to be no explanation beyond God’s omnibenevolence why He created this one. (2) There is an explanation, but we cannot or do not yet know what it is. (3) There is no reason for why God chose for the leaf to fall at t1 instead of t2.
(1) seems highly implausible. It is difficult to see how a world where leaf falls a second later than a leaf in another world ceteris paribus can be less or more optimal. Any appeal to chaos theory (the idea that small things can effect massive change, like the flapping of a butterflies wings causing perturbations in the atmosphere that can cause a tornado across the globe) is negated by the fact that God had to choose between the world ending at t1 or a millisecond later at t2; in this case there is no time for chaos theory to have effect. However, if either (2) or (3) are accepted, then a problem arises for Hoffman’s theory. If (2) is correct, then the person who believes that God is only contingently omnibenevolent can argue that there is a reason for why God is ‘so well intentioned’, it is just that we do not or cannot know what this reason is. If (3) is correct, then he can likewise say that there is no reason for why God is so well intentioned.
Given that (1) is implausible and it would be inconsistent to hold to (2) or (3) in the case of God choosing between optimal worlds but not in the case of why He chooses an optimal world, Hoffman’s argument is to be rejected.
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