in eds. Yujin Nagasawa and Erik Wielenberg, New Waves in Philosophy of Religion (Palgrave MacMillan 2008).

Leibniz argued that God would not create a world unless it was the best possible world. I defend Leibniz’s argument. I then consider whether God could refrain from creating if there were no best possible world. I argue that God, on pain of contradiction, could not refrain from creating in such a situation. I conclude that either this is the best possible world or God is not our creator.

In this paper I discuss a number of problems associated with the suggestion that it is possible for God to randomly select a possible world for actualization.