ARGUMENTS AGAINST MONOTHEISM 145Chancey worlds
If (P) It is logically impossible that a morally perfect and
omnicompetent being allow any pointless evils is true, it is a necessary
truth. If (P) is a necessary truth then we cannot consistently describe
any condition under which (P) is false. Here is an interesting attempt to
offer such a description.^31 Consider a world W of this sort:^32 W is
strongly random so that often the microevents in it constrain the
macroevents that occur to a much less significant extent than
presumably is the case in our world. For example, in W a car’s being in a
particular position at one moment may leave open where it will be a
moment later in ways that far exceed considerations of what its driver
may do or what would follow were there laws in that world like the laws
that hold in our world. Call these events in which randomness is great
randomness cases.^33 Suppose that in a randomness case, Sue crosses a
street and is killed in an automobile accident which, given preceding
conditions, might equally well never have happened. Chance plays a
significant role in this world. The accident, strictly, has no cause if a
cause is an event A such that, given A and all relevant laws, the
accident’s occurrence is more probable than not. In that very plausible
sense of “cause,” the accident was causeless, because it was as likely not
to occur as to occur relative to what obtained independent of anyone’s
knowledge.
In a world where chance, or absence of cause, plays such an important
role, it is false that such events as the accident are planned by anyone,
human or divine. Indeed, this is true of all events that occur in
randomness cases in this world. Even if God knows in advance that the
accident would happen, God did not cause the accident (it had no cause).
But if God did not cause the accident, then God did not plan the
accident.
It is possible that God put constraints on this world so that, even by
chance, no event can occur that God would be wrong in permitting.
Suppose also that each person in W is under divine providence, so that
while God permits Sue to be killed in the accident, God also preserves
Sue in existence, reunites her with her family in the afterlife, and so on.
In sum, one could complete the description of W in such a way that,
even though there are evils in W for which God did not plan,
nonetheless God brings good out of these evils for those who suffer
them.
One thing that arises from such considerations is this: God
presumably could know in advance what would happen even in a
chancey world. An intrinsically omniscient God will not ever have to