God is traditionally understood to be a perfect being who is the creator and sustainer of all that is. God's creative and sustaining activity is often thought to involve choosing a possible world for actualization. It is generally said that either there is (a) exactly one best of all possible worlds, or there are (b) infinitely many increasingly better worlds, or else there are (c) infinitely many unsurpassable worlds within God's power to actualize. On each view, critics have offered arguments (...) for atheism that turn on God's choice of a world. In what follows, I first discuss some background issues, and I then survey the contemporary literature on these arguments. (shrink)

Rationalist models of divine agency typically ascribe perfect freedom to God, where this is understood as a freedom from external causal influences and non-rational influences, including desires or preferences not derived from reason alone. Paul Draper has recently developed a rationalist model of God’s agency on which God faces “hard choices” between options differing in moral and non-moral value. He argues that this model is preferable to rival rationalist models because it is compatible with God’s having significant freedom and being (...) maximally worthy of praise and gratitude. I argue that on an alternative model of divine agency, which rejects perfect freedom and holds that God makes hard choices on the basis of brute preferences, God would be more worthy of praise and gratitude. However, a probabilistic problem for theism which Draper identifies for his model also applies to the brute preference model. (shrink)

Mathematics is obviously important in the sciences. And so it is likely to be equally important in any effort that aims to understand God in a scientifically significant way or that aims to clarify the relations between science and theology. The degree to which God has any perfection is absolutely infinite. We use contemporary mathematics to precisely define that absolute infinity. For any perfection, we use transfinite recursion to define an endlessly ascending series of degrees of that perfection. That series (...) rises to an absolutely infinite degree of that perfection. God has that absolutely infinite degree. We focus on the perfections of knowledge, power, and benevolence. Our model of divine infinity thus builds a bridge between mathematics and theology. (shrink)