Are Theists Illogical for Believing in God?

[Caecilian]

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@Caecillian

I think it is fair to say that Leibniz's contention was that our world is the best of all possible worlds. He inferred this from two traditional god attributes (all-knowingness and omnibenevolence) which renders the argument unfalsifiable for humans. But he thus logicallly ensured that our world must be the best of all possible worlds. In fact his argument boils down to the conclusion that another version of our world, for instance a version without kid cancer, would necessarily harbour an evil greater than kid cancer.It is therefore unclear to me how you suddenly can claim to bypass this and state that another possible world must be better.

When you restrict your argument to nomologically possible worlds you place additional conditions on the set of all logically possible worlds. For instance, correspondence rules between the different possible worlds are needed in a nomological set, because that's how they are defined. This means that measurability must be garanteed of aspects of all possible worlds. But that is not something we can arrange from our point of view in this universe. We have no access (yet) to other universes.

Are you still following? It means that:
1) the set of nomologically possible worlds is a subset of all logically possible worlds
2) we cannot construct any set of nomologically possible worlds that contains more than only our present universe
3) you cannot arrive at the conclusion that there is another nomologically possible world that is better than ours

Oh, and forget the usual frodonian drool, it's not worthy of your attention ;-)

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Okay...

First of all, I haven't read Leibniz, so I'll have to defer to you on what he meant. It appears to be a circular argument (yet again):
a) God is both omnipotent and omnibenevolent
b) Therefore, we must live in the best of all possible worlds
c) Therefore, the problem of evil is solved
d) Therefore, god is both omnipotent and omnibenevolent
Not very convincing, I'm afraid.

In reply to your numbered points:
1. Yes, thats obviously true.
2. Maybe. I think that its a fair assumption that there are other nomologically possible worlds, given that microphysics appears to be stochastic. Iow: with a stochastic microphysics, there are other possible present states of the universe, given identical starting conditions. Makes sense to me.
3. I don't need to. In fact, I concede the issue in my first point. The argument hinges on 'god' being limited by logical rather than nomological possibility. Unless you're prepared to argue that the two are identical (i.e. that our physical laws are somehow metaphysically necessary), then its hard to see how a better universe isn't logically possible.

I'll try to re-phrase the argument:

1. We assume that we really do live in the best of all nomologically possible worlds.

2. However, it is very easy to imagine a better world ('heaven' might serve as some sort of model here).

3. Therefore, we do not live in the best of all logically possible worlds.

4. 'God' is only limited by what is logically possible (he is omnipotent).

5. Therefore, god could have instantiated a different world from the set of logically possible worlds. Some of the different worlds that he could've instantiated would be better than ours.

6. But he didn't. He instantiated our world, which is not the best logically possible world even if it is the best nomologically possible world.

7. Therefore, god is a cunt.