God meets Satan’s Apple: the paradox of creation

Philosophical Studies 175 (12):2987-3004 (2018)
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Abstract

It is now the majority view amongst philosophers and theologians that any world could have been better. This places the choice of which world to create into an especially challenging class of decision problems: those that are discontinuous in the limit. I argue that combining some weak, plausible norms governing this type of problem with a creator who has the attributes of the god of classical theism results in a paradox: no world is possible. After exploring some ways out of the paradox, I conclude that the classical theist should accept Marilyn Adams’s view that no norms apply to gods.

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Daniel Rubio
Toronto Metropolitan University

Citations of this work

God and gratuitous evil: Between the rock and the hard place.Luis R. G. Oliveira - 2023 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 94 (3):317-345.
Skeptical Theism Proved.Perry Hendricks - 2020 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 6 (2):264-274.
Equal Moral Opportunity: A Solution to the Problem of Moral Luck.Philip Swenson - 2022 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 100 (2):386-404.

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References found in this work

Risk and Rationality.Lara Buchak - 2013 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
The Coherence of Theism (revised edition).Richard Swinburne - 1977 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
The Existence of God.Richard Swinburne - 1979 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
Social Choice and Individual Values.Irving M. Copi - 1952 - Science and Society 16 (2):181-181.
The Existence of God.Richard Swinburne - 1979 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.

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