The Multiverse Theodicy Meets Population Ethics

The multiverse theodicy proposes to reconcile the existence of God
and evil by supposing that God created all and only the creation-worthy
universes and that some universes like ours are, despite their evils,
creation-worthy. Drawing on work in population ethics, this paper develops a
novel challenge to the multiverse theodicy. Roughly, the challenge contends
that the axiological underpinnings of the multiverse theodicy harbor a ‘mere
addition paradox’: the assumption that creating creation-worthy universes
would always make the world better turns out to have morally repugnant
consequences akin to those of the assumption that adding worthwhile lives to
a population would always make the overall welfare of the population better.
Further, the challenge leverages this difficulty into an argument against God’s
having created all and only the creation-worthy universes, and hence against
the multiverse theodicy. Responses to this challenge are considered but
found wanting, largely because of commitments of the multiverse theodicy
that have no analogs in population ethics.