Theism and Explanation - Appeared-to-Blogly

Potential Theistic Explanations 89
is not the optimal way of achieving the posited divine goal. But what does
“optimal” mean in this context? It means the most rational way of achieving
the posited goal, given perfect knowledge and power as well as moral
perfection. But this merely shifts the question, which now becomes: What
does it mean for an action to be the most rational action in pursuit of a goal?
What we need here are criteria of rational action. I shall offer three such
criteria (Appendix 1.3), although my list does not pretend to be exhaustive.
In general, an agent is acting rationally in pursuing a particular goal
if she acts consistently with her beliefs and desires, in a way which is likely
to attain the goal, and which requires the least expenditure of time and
effort. This gives us three criteria of rational action: consistency, effi cacy,
and effi ciency.
At least one of these seems inapplicable to a divine agent, namely the
criterion of effi ciency. A divine agent has no need to conserve his time and
energy. 30 Nor does he need to create creatures that would achieve their goals
effi ciently, unless that effi ciency had some desirable consequence (such as
the minimising suffering). This may enable the theist to respond to an earlier
objection—the idea that God has no need to choose means to an end,
since he could achieve his ends directly, by way of basic actions (4.3.3.1).
The theist could respond that while this course of action might appear to
be more effi cient, God has no need to act effi ciently.
However, the theist still needs to specify why God has chosen this particular
means, to achieve the posited goal. And here another criterion of rational
action comes into play. We expect a rational agent to act in a way that
is consistent with his other beliefs and desires, or (if you prefer) consistent
with his character. 31 From God’s point of view, it may not matter that evolution
by natural selection (for example) takes a long time. He has plenty of
time to waste. But on the assumption that God is morally perfect, it does
matter if natural selection necessitates considerable suffering. Would it be
rational for an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent being to choose
this particular way of bringing living creatures into existence? We can now
see that at least some forms of the atheist’s argument from evil are, in fact,
suboptimality arguments. 32 They try to render the theistic hypothesis of
divine creation implausible by suggesting that God could have created a
world containing less suffering. 33
At this point, we can also understand the appeal of an uncompromising,
young-earth creationism, one that takes the opening chapters of Genesis
at face value. Remember the criterion of independent specifi cation? Let’s
apply it to the creation of the world. If we were to specify how an omniscient,
omnipotent, and morally perfect God would create a world, independently
of what we now know of the world’s origins, what would we
come up with? One could argue that we would produce an account that at
least resembles Genesis 1. After all, such a deity would not need to engage
in a lengthy process of creation. He would not need to “use” evolution,
for instance, in order to produce beings like us. He could achieve his ends