The Multiverse Theodicy Meets Population Ethics

Abstract

The multiverse theodicy proposes to reconcile the existence of God and evil by supposing that God created all and only the creation-worthy universes and that some universes like ours are, despite their evils, creation-worthy. Drawing on work in population ethics, this paper develops a novel challenge to the multiverse theodicy. Roughly, the challenge contends that the axiological underpinnings of the multiverse theodicy harbor a ‘mere addition paradox’: the assumption that creating creation-worthy universes would always make the world better turns out to have morally repugnant consequences akin to those of the assumption that adding worthwhile lives to a population would always make the overall welfare of the population better. Further, the challenge leverages this difficulty into an argument against God’s having created all and only the creation-worthy universes, and hence against the multiverse theodicy. Responses to this challenge are considered but found wanting, largely because of commitments of the multiverse theodicy that have no analogs in population ethics.