Authored by: Mitchell LeBlanc.

My previous post on this topic was rather non-productive. I presented an argument, which generated a few responses stating that my choice of scholar to cite (Richard Swinburne) was a bad choice. Of course it is true that Swinburne is not a member of the reformed tradition, but I do not think my argument depended on his ideas. Indeed, I had hoped that RK might provide a defense of the premises in which he shared disagreement but no such response has arrived. With that said I will attempt to deal with RK’s post in a more direct manner.

As I said in my last post on this subject, the argument RK as formulated is far too lengthy to post. If one wants to understand the following analysis, one should first familiarize themselves with RK’s argument as linked above. Briefly put, he proposes that the attributes of God entail modal collapse, in that the actual state of affairs is/was the only possible world.

Analysis

For the purpose of this post, in an attempt to be direct while also keeping the length of my post short, I would like to focus on one premise that RK presents in his deduction:

(7) Therefore, God’s thoughts can never include infinite numbers of hypothetical worlds not in accordance with His purposes (per 3b), as that would be contrary to His nature.

Firstly, of course, the premise does not exclude the possibility of finite numbers of possible worlds not in accordance with God’s purposes, but I will not follow this objection here as I think it might just be an oversight on RK’s part. What I wish to draw attention to is that neither this premise, nor that argument as a whole seems to argue the impossibility of God’s thoughts including a finite/infinite number of worlds that are in accordance with his purposes.

For the sake of argument, let us grant that God’s knowledge cannot contain worlds that are in discordance with his intentions. This claim seems odd at first, for it seems to me that in order for God to know which worlds are in discordance with his intentions, he must have a knowledge of those worlds (since knowing which worlds are in concordance with his intentions seems to logically imply such knowledge). Though, dismissing this objection for the sake of argument shall do in our current context.

Let us assume that God desires to create a world in which there are people who love. Since we have granted (7), this means that any world in which this desire cannot be exemplified is excluded from God’s knowledge. This obviously does not entail, as I’ve said before, that God cannot have knowledge of worlds which are in concordance with his intentions. As such, let there be a world, w1, wherein the earth exists and there are 3,000 people who will exemplify love. This is not the only circumstance in which love can be exemplified, for let there be a world, w2, wherein the earth exists and there are 3,002 people who will exemplify love. Further, let there be a world, w3, wherein the earth exists and there are 6,004 people who will exemplify love. And so on and so forth. Further, let there be a world, w4, wherein 7,014 people live on mars instead of earth and exemplify love.

As should be evident, in the circumstance wherein the desire of God is to create a world in which there are people who love, he still has possible worlds to choose from: w1, w2, w3, w4.  But perhaps it is the case that God’s desires are much more complicated than this (which they probably are) and that there are many desires operating in tandem. Given that, I believe the same problem still applies. For should God’s desire be that there exists a world, in which people love, animals are food for the people, works of art are created and all computers are blue (random set of desires), there are still many possible ways in which these desire could be exemplified. That is, there are still many possible worlds that are in concordance with God’s desires and which (7) does not eliminate.

But what if God’s desires include quantifications, such as God specifically wants 3,002 people who love. Well, if (7) obtains then any world which does not contain 3,002 people who love is a logically impossible state of affairs and God knows not of such a world. But even with this quantificational desire, there are variables to consider with regard to the people themselves. Are they tall people, short people, loud people, blind people, fast people, slow people, etc? So even this set of worlds contains many subsets.

One might further consider the problem of no best world in which the idea of a “best world” is logically impossible, and such God is not expected to actualize such.

Even foregoing this objection, I think that RK makes a slight misunderstanding. There are areas in his argument where he purports that God’s thoughts and nature are, among other things, necessarily eternal and immutable. Now, he seems to think that since this is the case, there cannot possibly be any point in which God is ‘surveying’ worlds and has not made up his mind. I suggest to RK that he has not familiarized himself with the difference between temporal priority and logical priority. That is, while it may be true that there is no point, temporally prior to God’s actualization of some world (either physically or metaphysically temporally prior), it does not follow that there is no point logically prior to God’s actualization. That is to say, the idea that God surveys possible worlds before actualizing one in accordance with his nature (whether it be the “best” or whether that notion be impossible) does not imply that at some temporal point, God was undecided. All it means is that the actualization of a world has a necessary logical precondition, the selection of a world. Or rather, the selection of a world has a necessary logical precondition of there being some possible world. It might be helpful to think of this notion in terms of what is required for thought, there may never be a temporal point where there is a brain in a living human being that is not thinking (maybe there is, but assume that there isn’t for the sake of the example). That is to say that thought and the brain coincide, one is neither before or after another (that is similar to how many think of God’s actualization of the world). It is still true however, that thought have as a necessary logical precondition, the brain. In this regard, the brain is logically prior to thought but not temporally prior. I suggest that a further understanding of this concept be employed by RK, or at least that RK make a stronger case that God’s attributes not only forbid a temporal point of surveyance, but a logical point as well.