(February 6, 2020 at 5:22 am)Gae Bolga Wrote: Do you agree with Platingas suggestion that god was incapable of creating a better world than this one?
I haven't read his argument. I only know this fellow's name and not his ideas. And 'better' is pretty ambiguous. Generally speaking, God is under no compulsion to create the best of all possible worlds in the sense that human suffering would be kept at a minimum. The kind of arguments you can read in C S Lewis. God is under no compulsion to create at all.
God could have created us all as angels not humans. Angels have no material bodies and don't suffer pain.. Not from illness or natural disasters or car accidents or... lots of stuff like that. They don't die. But even with material beings I am persuaded that God could have created a world which would be less painful for us and other animals. He didn't and where was I when He created the roots of the mountains.
Let's say you imagine God created a world where the weather is always like California or the Caribbean. Without the earthquakes or hurricanes. You could then imagine a world where something else and something else beyond that is better. In fact, He has created a world where death and tears are no more. Human souls are there now and , at the General Resurrection, will be there with their glorified bodies. But that is to say He did not create us to be in Heaven from the start.
One of the false, almost always unexamined premises, in these arguments from pain is that, given God's nature He has to create the best of all possible worlds. But He doesn't and that is the view of a lot a very good theologians like St. Thomas.
