A couple of people have objected that the god as utility monster concept
relies on the notion that a god would want to maximise the number of saved
souls.
Now, this isn't my notion. It's WLC's notion (for
example, when arguing against Stephen Law (see the First
Rebuttal). WLC defends against Stephen Law's version of the Problem of
Evil (using the Evil God concept) by saying:
Maybe only in a world suffused
with natural and moral evil would the maximum number of people come to freely
know God and find eternal life.
That said, it isn't a good idea to rely on WLC to support my
argument when it leads to the non-existence of god. He might find some
new evidence that invalidates his position and thus be forced to abandon
it. So, I'd like to independently support the contention that a god would
want to maximise the number of saved souls.
Now, I don't mean only that god's happiness would be
paramount and suck dry the font of happiness that would otherwise be available
to the rest of us - which is true enough, but also that even vague inclinations
on the part of an eternal, all-encompassing, all-powerful being like WLC's god
would translate into absolutes.
Here are my assumptions:
(1) the god in question is
thoroughly good
(2) from (1), anything that the
god wants is thoroughly good
(3) the god wants more than one
person to be saved (otherwise Adam could have sufficed)
(4) the god wants more than one
person of each gender to be saved (otherwise Adam and Eve could have sufficed)
(5) there is no magic number
between 1 and infinity, N, that is inherently better than all numbers higher
than it, such that N good things are better than N+1 good things
(6) thoroughly good things cannot
be saturated (meaning that "good in moderation" is not a term that
one could reasonably apply to the god's wishes - if N+1 good things are no
longer good, then they are not thoroughly good and a person trying to argue
this point would be left trying to determine the value of N and attempting to
defeat (5))
(7) therefore, there is no limit
to the number of people that "should" be saved and made available to
know and freely worship the god posthumously
To defeat this argument (at least in my opinion), the theist
would have to:
A. Posit a limitation to the
number of saveable souls that her god can create - therefore admitting that god
is not omnipotent
B. Posit a value of N and provide
a supporting argument as to why N+1 is less good than N
C. Argue that the god can want
things that are not thoroughly good - therefore admitting that the god is not
omnibenevolent
D. Argue that the god wants something
other than saved souls and churning through humans, saving the souls of some
and damning others is a mere side-effect that the god doesn't care about -
thereby admitting that the god is not omnibenevolent
If there is a watertight argument that defeats this notion
of "god as utility monster", then theological zombies do not
follow. But, at the moment, I don't see one that doesn't throw out the
notion of the theist’s god in the process (or rely on a blatant appeal to
ignorance, as is likely for an attempt to defeat via option B above).
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