Notes: Modal Challenge to Necessary Theism

Philosophy professor Robert Bass presents a challenge to philosophical theism in his 2015 paper¹ by targeting the common belief that God exists necessarily (or in all possible worlds)².

Rather than arguing against God's actual existence, Bass focuses on whether God must exist in all possible worlds. His central argument states that if gratuitous evil is even logically possible, then a necessarily existing God is impossible. This shifts the debate from whether terrible evils actually lack justification to whether we can conceive of evils that could lack justification. Bass develops two arguments supporting the view that gratuitous evil is more likely possible than divine necessity is true, potentially undermining a cornerstone of classical theism while leaving room for belief in a contingently existing God.

Main thesis

• Bass argues that if gratuitous evil is even possible, then God cannot be a necessary being.

• Central claim: "it is more probable that gratuitous evil is possible than that God is necessary."

• Conclusion: "probably, it is impossible for God to be a necessary being."

Key definitions

• God: "an always-existing being, unlimited in knowledge, power and goodness"

• NGod: God conceived as necessary (existing in all possible worlds)

• Necessitarian theists: those who conceive of God as NGod

• Gratuitous evil: "evil that God could not allow," which is evil without adequate justification that would make allowing it worthwhile.

The modal problem vs. traditional problem of evil

• Traditional problem: whether actual gratuitous evil exists.

• Modal problem: whether gratuitous evil is even possible.

• Bass notes: "Evidence for actual gratuitous evil counts against the existence of God, but if gratuitous evil is even possible, then God, conceived as a necessary being, is impossible."

The argument

1. If gratuitous evil is possible, then there exists a possible world containing gratuitous evil.

2. Any world with gratuitous evil is a world where God is absent (since God would prevent such evil).

3. If God can be absent from any possible world, then God is not necessary.

4. Therefore: if gratuitous evil is possible, NGod is impossible.

Arguments for why gratuitous evil is possible

• Argument from intuition

  • Many evils appear gratuitous: "ravages of disease and natural disaster, victimization by crime, war, massacre, mass starvation."

  • Even if actual cases have justifications, possible counterparts exist without justifications.

  • Example: "If a baby dying alone in horrible pain in the actual world, α, is not gratuitous only because somehow the event will lead to an otherwise unobtainable great good, then the baby dying alone in horrible pain in possible world, β, with no necessary connection to a great good, is gratuitous in β."

  • No best or worst possible worlds exist, so worlds can always be made better or worst.

  • The possibility of gratuitous evil "seems far clearer and more difficult to doubt" than divine necessity.

• The averaging argument

  • For any proposition P with unknown truth value: ◊P (P is possible) is more probable than □P (P is necessary). This is because □P entails ◊P, but not vice versa.

  • By extension, ◊E (gratuitous evil is possible) should be more probable than □G (God is necessary).

  • Bass calls this "the default assumption."

• Conceptual difficulties

  • "If a particular being is necessary, the relation of necessity to its other properties is opaque"

  • The argument that God must be necessary because he's the "greatest possible being" is circular: "requires the question-begging premise that such a being is possibly necessary"

• Empirical Considerations

  • Felipe Leon's argument cited: our experience shows "all concrete objects are contingent beings."

  • "The simplest, most conservative explanation of the data with the widest explanatory scope is the hypothesis that all concrete objects are contingent beings."

Response to potential objections

• Some theists might dismiss modal intuitions about gratuitous evil to preserve divine necessity

• Bass quotes Michael Almeida: "If the only way to accommodate belief in God is to endorse convenient skepticisms–as so many theists seem to believe–then we've got very good evidence that theism is false"

Implications for theism

• Bass notes most philosophical theists are "necessitarian theists" despite weak foundations

• No scriptural or doctrinal requirement for divine necessity: "There is no clear teaching of divine necessity in canonical scripture, historic creeds or authoritative doctrine"

• Suggests theists embrace necessity because "Belief in divine necessity may assure the believer that somehow there is a full and satisfactory answer [to evil], even if it is beyond our grasp"

• Abandoning divine necessity would force more direct engagement with the problem of evil

Methodology

• Bass acknowledges his arguments deal in "probabilities and rebuttable presumptions"

• Does not claim to definitively prove NGod is impossible, but establishes "a rebuttable presumption"

• Aims to shift burden of proof to those defending divine necessity

My reaction

• The second premise of the argument that "Any world with gratuitous evil is a world where God is absent (since God would prevent such evil)," is mistaken when viewed through the framework that evil is a privation, not an actual quality or element in reality.

  • For example, blindness in a person is not a "thing" but the absence of sight in an eye that should have it. Similarly, moral evil (sin) is a deficiency in the proper ordering of human will toward good, and natural evil (e.g., suffering from natural disasters) is a lack of perfection in created things.

  • Evil, as a privation, is parasitic on the good, meaning it cannot exist without the good things. If so, then evil of any kind is still dependent on God as the source and sustainer of all being. Since all existence depends on God as the source and sustainer, even a world with gratuitous evil requires God’s creative and sustaining act. Without God, there would be no beings, no goods and thus no privations (including gratuitous ones).

• On intuition, just because we cannot conceive of a reason why God allow an evil to exist, it's not obvious that we should think there isn't any reason. As Patrick Flynn points out in his book, if a beginner chess player doesn't recognize or anticipate a move of a grand master, then that isn't good reason to think that the grand master has no reason.³ In fact, a beginner should expect to not know the reason, since the grand master far exceeds the beginner's grasp of the game. This works because we are analyzing the actions of an intelligent agent, who can make intentional decisions, as opposed to a non-personal force that acts with indifference.

• Even if for the sake of argument accepting the soundness of the conclusion (that if gratuitous evil is possible, then a necessarily existing God is impossible), the saying goes that one person's modus ponens is another person's modus tollens. A modus ponens inference states that if P, then R. P is true, so R is true. However, a modus tollens inference states that if P, then R. Not R is true, so Not P is true. If we have independent reasons to think Not R (which in this case would be that a necessarily existing God exists), then the modus tollens inference rule would conclude that that no gratuitous evil is possible. For instance, on my Substack blog, I have several arguments for a necessarily existing God.

• On this site, I have made cases that God's refraining from preventing evil is the best or only way to prevent an even worse state of affairs, namely our indefinite disunion from God. Drawing another analogy from Flynn, there is some room for discretion in the evil that God allows, because some states of affairs with evil are compatible with God's nature, His reasons for creation or the way He relates to the world. For example, if God wills that the state of Colorado have rocky mountains, then the number and location of mountain ranges may be no better or worse or inconsistent with God's nature, His reasons or the ways He relates to the world. He could have made one more or one less mountain top, but God draws the line somewhere for no reason in particular but for the general reason that He wanted Colorado to have mountainous terrain. God draws the line somewhere in the amount of evil He allows under his general reasons for His creative act.

• On the averaging argument, the inference that ◊E (gratuitous evil is possible) should be more probable than □G (God is necessary) is problematic. The possibility of gratuitous evil (◊E) and the necessity of God (□G) address different domains (◊E pertains to the existence of evil without justifying purpose, while □G concerns God's necessary existence in a metaphysical sense). Comparing their probabilities directly is flawed because they are not mutually exclusive or directly competing propositions. For example, the proposition that "necessarily, 2 + 2 =4" is not less probable than "possibly, the sun will explode tomorrow," because "2 + 2 =4" is a necessary truth and neither proposition implies the negation of the other. If all possible descriptions of the world are incomplete without the proposition "God exists," as classical theists claim, then the likelihood of the premise that "gratuitous evil is possible" is not greater. Theists do make defenses for why gratuitous evil is logically compatible with the tri-omni attributes of God. If that is the case, then the presence of gratuitous evil in a world doesn't imply the non-existence of God.

• We can have good reason to believe from deductive argument that not all things that exist have a cause, for instance, and not all concrete beings are material (for instance). So the argument that all concrete (or casually active) objects are contingent is not true.

Image credit

1. Robert Bass, “Modal Evil and Divine Necessity” (paper presented at the North Carolina Philosophical Society Conference, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, February 28, 2015), https://philpapers.org/rec/BASMEA-2.

2. Modal logic uses ideas like possible, necessary, and impossible. To explain those, philosophers often talk about possible worlds (or the ways that reality could have been).

3. Patrick Flynn, The Best Argument for God (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2023), 250, Kindle.