The anthropic argument against the existence of God

Sophia 48 (4):351 - 378 (2009)
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Abstract

If God is morally perfect then He must perform the morally best actions, but creating humans is not the morally best action. If this line of reasoning can be maintained then the mere fact that humans exist contradicts the claim that God exists. This is the ‘anthropic argument’. The anthropic argument, is related to, but distinct from, the traditional argument from evil. The anthropic argument forces us to consider the ‘creation question’: why did God not create other gods rather than humans? That is, if God is omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect then why didn’t He create a world populated exclusively by beings that are perfect in the same way that He is—ontological equivalents— rather than choosing to create humans with finite natures and all the suffering that this entails?

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Mark Walker
New Mexico State University

Citations of this work

Is Plato’s Timaeus Panentheistic?Dirk Baltzly - 2010 - Sophia 49 (2):193-215.
Megill’s Multiverse Meta-Argument.Klaas J. Kraay - 2013 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 73 (3):235-241.

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References found in this work

Reasons and Persons.Derek Parfit - 1984 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
The Nature of Necessity.Alvin Plantinga - 1974 - Oxford, England: Clarendon Press.
God, freedom, and evil.Alvin Plantinga - 1978 - Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
The Coherence of Theism (revised edition).Richard Swinburne - 1977 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
Providence and the Problem of Evil.Richard Swinburne - 1998 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.

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