Scott wrote:

DanielCC wrote:

(For what it's worth I have a suspicion that the Scholastic account of the transcendentals coupled with the admission that God need not create the best possible world leads to the interesting conclusion that there is no world too evil for God to create - any being/goodness is gratuitous)

The page to which I linked explicitly concludes (on more or less that basis) that there's no possible world so bad that God couldn't choose to create it.

That's true, but the article also concludes that especially bad worlds can't be conceived by the Divine Intellect in the first place (and so, simply aren't possible worlds). I think Daniel is making the stronger claim (similar to my fifth paragraph here) that God could create even those very bad worlds because goodness becomes gratuitous.

Last edited by John West (8/16/2015 11:32 am)

Scott wrote:

But only because any possible world (i.e. any world not actually contradictory), insofar as it exists, is for that very reason a participation in divine goodness.*

The article doesn't, that is, seem to me to be arguing that some worlds are just too "bad" to be conceivable as divine creations; it's arguing that any conceivable (meaning simply "noncontradictory") world is, thus far, good. The contradictions in question aren't between the hypothetical badness of the worlds and the goodness of God.

I see what you're saying, but how do you square it with the sentences preceding or following the one you quote: “As an effect preexisting in its cause, a world possible world is willed according as it is a possible participation in the divine goodness. That is, so long as all its elements are compossible, i.e. do not entail a contradiction, the possible world is a possible participation in divine goodness from the mere fact that it is conceived by the divine intellect. So the only possible world that is so bad that it cannot be willed by the divine will is one that cannot be conceived by the divine intellect”?

My problem with defenses against, for example, the modal problem of evil (closely related to that part of the article) that assume and use God in their response is that the modal problem can be rephrased as a modus tollens[1] to avoid assuming God exists (as a premise for reductio), and thereby render responses to it assuming God exists question begging. I know one man's modus tollens is another man's modus ponens, but the point of the modal problem can be that evil worlds are possible and this conflicts with what we would expect given God's Nature.

Regardless, I agree that since being is good and any evil is parasitic on that good, on further analysis all evil worlds likely turn out to contain a contradiction. Modal problem of evil proponents have more to say about that, but it can be saved for when they say it.
 

Scott wrote:

(That's how I take it, at any rate. The author may mean something else, but if so, he's fudging a bit.)

Well, there's no sense in getting bogged down arguing over textural interpretations. I think (I may misunderstand) my standard reply to the problem of evil is similar (see above), and pretty much in agreement.

Scott wrote:

I think he's making the even more stronger (strongerer?) claim that all (created) goodness is gratuitous, in any world at all. He's not , I think, saying that such goodness "becomes" gratuitous only in especially bad worlds.

I think the author of the piece to which I linked agrees with that even strongerer claim. I also think they're both right.

Sorry. I meant “becomes” in light of arguments that there is no best possible world. That was poor phrasing on my part. Even there, it's really one way or the other.

I also agree with Daniel and you (and maybe the author). But, in general, I think modal problem of evil formulaters need to spend more time considering what kind of world would conflict with God's existence in the first place. In other words, I don't think they're actually arguing for the piece of the argument they need for their conclusion to go through. I don't think their evil worlds are a problem for God, even if they do exist.


[1]ie. Worlds with gratuitous evil are possible. If God exists, worlds with gratuitous evil are impossible. Hence, God does not exist.

Last edited by John West (8/31/2015 6:17 pm)

DanielCC wrote:

Well the problem ceases to be about suffering per say (a good thing too given the utter saccharinity it inspires in many atheists – see Quentin Smith’s famous ‘Bambi deer’ remark in his debate with WLC or Darwin’s frankly pathetic whinging about parasitic wasps) and becomes a question of why don’t all beings perfectly instantiate their essences. In other words it asks why there are any instances of privation when it’s possible for there not to have been.
 
The time honoured response to this has been to point out that as there are contingent beings in the first place and thus beings doomed to corruption at some point the world is ordered such that the inevitable corruption of beings contributes to the flourishing of others.  This neutralises a great deal of the problem as far as I’m concerned and reminds us to avoid anthropomorphism – however it’s a small step from admitting this to the claim that God orders the world so that corruption is at its’s bare minimum/its use is maximised which saddles one with the problematic best of all possible world claim.
 
I’ll start a thread for possible world claims I think – they lead to interesting antimonies.

(For what it's worth I have a suspicion that the Scholastic account of the transcendentals coupled with the admission that God need not create the best possible world leads to the interesting conclusion that there is no world too evil for God to create - any being/goodness is gratuitous)    

 

But is it necessary to explain this as an answer to the problem of evil itself. Or in other words, hasn't the classical theist, if he gives cogent arguments for the nature of God and the good, dealt with the supposed problematic nature of the POE already. What you describe seems to be just a mopping up. It is an interesting question, but it is not in itself a problem in the way the atheist thinks is, and tries to frame, the POE. 

Or perhaps what you describe goes to the question of God's power and not his benevolence. The theist does have to show why privation can exist and not even God can prevent it, without this in fact taking away from God's omnipotence. I must confess that I am not up on possible worlds talk, but does this require it? Can't just a general Thomistic or Platonic account of privation do to neutralise the POE as a problem, with the rest, again, being mopping up? 

DanielCC wrote:

Scott wrote:

(That's how I take it, at any rate. The author may mean something else, but if so, he's fudging a bit.)

John West wrote:

I think Daniel is making the stronger claim . . . that God could create even those very bad worlds because goodness becomes gratuitous.

I think he's making the even more stronger (strongerer?) claim that all (created) goodness is gratuitous, in any world at all. He's not , I think, saying that such goodness "becomes" gratuitous only in especially bad worlds.

I think the author of the piece to which I linked agrees with that even strongerer claim. I also think they're both right.

Indeed I was! 

Like I said, I meant that good becomes gratuitous (everywhere) if there is no best possible world. That was bad phrasing on my part! (Especially since, really, there has either always been a best possible world, or not.)

[Edited for award-winning typo.]

Last edited by John West (8/17/2015 8:58 pm)

With regards to the response that due to the fact that only the Goodness of God is perfect, and anything apart from it will not be perfectly good such as the world, could it be argued that the world could have contained less evil than it does even though it will never be perfectly good, and instead could have been near perfectly good with only little evil, as this better fit the nature of God's Goodness instead of the amount of evil we have now?