It is widely assumed that if God exists, he chooses a world to make actual. The literature concerning this topic is surveyed under Is there a Best Possible World?. If all worlds bear axiological properties, and can be compared, it is natural to wonder whether the hierarchy has an upper bound. Whether this counts against theism is discussed under God and Bad Worlds (The Modal Problem of Evil). Some authors have judged that God could not exist in bad worlds. Worlds are widely assumed to bear axiological properties: some are good, others are bad some are better, others are worse. The first section of this article, God and Necessity, discusses several accounts of what this means, and of the relationship between God and worlds. In other words, God exists in all possible worlds God is a necessary being. Many philosophers believe that if God exists, he could not have failed to exist. Very roughly, the actual world is the way things are, whereas each possible world is a way things might have been. Since the 1960s, philosophers have employed the conceptual apparatus of worlds to discuss topics pertaining to God. Most of these authors take “God” to denote an essentially omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good being, who is the creator and sustainer of all that contingently exists. This article surveys some contemporary literature in analytic philosophy of religion bearing on the relationship between God and possible worlds.
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