#1015 Preferability of a World without Suffering

Dear Professor Craig,

I have been considering your argument that the purpose of life is not primarily human happiness but the knowledge of God, and that suffering may therefore be permitted in a world ordered toward bringing persons freely to the knowledge of God.

I would be very interested in your response to the following possible-worlds objection.

Suppose that a coherent possible world contains free persons, love, meaningful relationships, moral agency, and genuine knowledge of and relationship with God, but contains no cancer, catastrophic suffering, animal suffering, war, or death. I call this “World 2.”

If World 2 is logically possible, what greater good supplied by severe suffering would justify preferring our “World 1” to World 2?

Healing, rescue, forgiveness, and redemption seem to be what I call “reparative goods”: healing requires illness, rescue requires danger, forgiveness requires wrongdoing, and redemption requires a condition from which one needs to be redeemed. Their value within World 1 can be immense. But does the value of the repair provide a reason for preferring an order in which the damage occurs over one in which it never occurs?

I am not arguing that God and evil are logically incompatible, nor that Christ’s voluntary suffering is equivalent to involuntary human suffering. My question is only whether the World 1/World 2 comparison leaves suffering with a necessary greater good that could not also be present, or be unnecessary without loss, in World 2.

Where, in your view, does this possible-worlds argument fail?

With kind regards,

Peter