#955 Does God Have a Finite Number of Preferences?
August 31, 2025Dr. Craig,
I appreciate how you are willing to face the biggest challenges to the Christian faith. You have inspired me to explore philosophy. Even though your work is impressive, I must say, I am still not convinced of the existence of God. In fact, I believe that the Christian God is impossible to exist for mainly one reason. I have not heard you talk about this specific argument, so I present it here:
1: To will something is to choose between options based on preference.
2: Preference implies a finite set of desires or inclinations.
3: An infinite, perfect being cannot have limitations or finite preferences.
Since a perfect being cannot have finite preferences, it cannot will.
4: Creation is unnecessary for a perfect being, since it adds nothing to its perfection.
In addition to not being able to act out of will, a perfect being cannot create something out of necessity.
5: The Christian God is defined as an infinite, perfect being who created the world.
6: The act of creation requires motivation either from necessity or desire.
7: There cannot be an infinite, perfect being who created the world
Therefore, the Christian God cannot exist.
Here in Finland, most people do not believe in God. But now, religious belief has had a resurgence in the youth. So faith has been somewhat of a hot topic these recent years. This has led to some light-hearted debates in the school cafeteria. I have presented this same argument to my religious friends. The one objection I keep hearing is to the idea that God cannot have desires. In their mind, God has the free will to do anything. To me, the idea that God has a human-esque mind is inconceivable. How can the ultimate source of the universe be so simple, so finite? Tell me, Dr. Craig, is this argument not sound?
Yours sincerely,
Olli
Finland
Dr. craig’s response
A
I’m glad to hear that you are thinking about these questions, Olli! I suspect that the reason that not very many people find your argument convincing is that the premises just are not obviously true, and you give no arguments in support of them.
For example, I’m not sure what (2) even means! Are you saying that in order to have a preference I must single out one option as the most desirable? That’s not clearly true to me, since I think one can make arbitrary choices from equally desirable options. But even if it were true, it’s not at all obvious to me why (3) is true. Why can’t a perfect being have a single overriding desire with respect to some state of affairs? For example, why couldn’t God’s preference be that all created persons would freely come to know Him and His love and so find eternal life? It seems to me that with regard to many states of affairs we might think that God would have a single, overriding preference concerning it. Indeed, have you thought that it might be precisely in virtue of His moral perfection that God’s desires are limited to good choices? So I just don’t see any incompatibility between God’s perfection and His having a finite number of preferences.
I’m not sure either what you mean by “a human-esque mind,” Olli. Certainly, we should not conceive of God as “the Man in the sky,” as many atheists do. But as a personal being, God must have a self-conscious mind that is capable of freely willing. So what’s the problem?
- William Lane Craig