Is God Dead? Series: The Best Possible World?

Critics of Christianity contend that it is all well and good that Christians argue God is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good, nonetheless, evil remains all the same. Last time we stated that the task of the Free Will Defense is to show no logical contradiction between two premises: 1), There is an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good God, and 2) there is suffering in the world. Even so, the question inevitably comes: “If God is the Creator of everything, and God is all-powerful, then couldn’t God have created a world with no evil?” When it comes down to it, this is the heart of the question, isn’t it? In response, skeptics lean one of two ways: either God is not all-powerful, or God does not exist. At any rate, the answer to the question is yes; God could have created a world with no evil. Having done so, however, the evil-free world that God could have created would have come at a great price—perhaps too great. Instead, the better question might be this: “If ‘God is good,’ and ‘God is love,’ then what morally sufficient reason might God have for creating the world in which we live”— a world of immense suffering? Considering the amount of evil in the world, is this the best possible world God could have created? That is the question the seventeenth- century philosopher Gottfried Leibnitz asked and attempted to answer. Leibnitz, understanding God as all-powerful and all-loving, reasoned that of all the possible worlds that God could have created, this one in which we live must be the best of all possible worlds. Philosopher Alvin Plantinga summarizes Leibnitz’s argument: “Being perfectly good, He must have chosen to create the best possible world He could, being omnipotent, He was able to create any possible world He pleased, He must, therefore, have chosen the best of all possible worlds, and hence this world, the one He did create, must be the best possible world.” That is, God was not derelict in His creation event. Interestingly, the critics agree with Leibnitz but draw the opposite conclusion. Critics maintain that since the world is filled with suffering, God must not exist (or, as Nietzsche would say, “God is dead”). At any rate, while Leibnitz’s logic sounds credible, it is rejected when one can just as quickly envision a better possible world than the present one. After all, it isn’t that hard to imagine. Perhaps a world in which there were more angels. Wouldn’t that be a better world? What about a world in which there were more good people serving other people? Wouldn’t that be a better world? The point is that this is not the “best possible world” God could have created. Therefore, the best possible world theory is not a defensible position for the Christian to explain why an omnipotent God would allow evil to exist.