The Best Possible World, But Not For Us

Mohsen Moghri gives a Godless but principled response to the problem of evil.

- Mohsen Moghri

We are all familiar with the problem of evil for traditional theism: a perfectly benevolent God would evidently desire the greatest good, and want the best for every human being, yet we find ourselves in a world that seems nothing like that. Thousands of people lose their lives in earthquakes, or because someone in power decides to start a war. Thousands of others lose their faith because of seeing such incidents. It seems reasonable to think that a caring God would intervene at least when his soul-making plans turn out to be soul-breaking, and when his beloved the freedom for humanity is undermined. So what is the theist to say? Of course, God may have reasons for allowing horrendous instances of evil, and the reasons may be far beyond our limited grasp. Or maybe he doesn't care about us. Or what if God was not concerned about the good things for us, and instead cared about the overall value of reality? Well, I'm going to focus on a novel view that pictures the creative power in just this way: as a non-personal force that creates the best world, but not for us, since it cares about other values than simple human benefit. This view is called 'axiarchism'. First I'll introduce axiarchism and its metaphysical background. Then we'll see how the problem of evil makes trouble for that view. Finally, I'll develop a version of axiarchism that may succeed in avoiding the problem.

Axiarchism