The No Best World Objection to the Problem of Evil Is Not the Best Objection in the World to the Problem of Evil
I don't think it works.
When attempting to justify why lots of small children get cancer, theists will often say that we can’t expect a perfect world because there is no best world. This objection does not succeed.
First, even if there’s no best world, we could expect God to create a much better world. To give an analogy, consider the big number duels , where people were tasked with coming up with the biggest number. There is obviously no biggest number. However, despite this fact if someone wrote the number 1 million as their biggest number, it would be reasonable to conclude that they were not the best big number dueler that’s metaphysically possible. Maybe we can’t expect the world to be perfect, but we can certainly expect it to be very good.
Second, this can’t explain evil. While perhaps there is no best world, there is no reason to make the world actively worse. To go back to the original scenario, the best possible mathematician wouldn’t just randomly subtract 27 from their original number. There’s no justification for making the world actively worse, even if we can’t always make it better.
Third, this would be a skeptical scenario. If we think that God can’t make things as good as possible because there is no best world, then we have no reason to think God will let us into heaven. After all, there is no best world, so why’d we expect him to let people into heaven. That would make the world better, but he can’t do everything that makes the world better.
Four, this would mean God doesn’t exist. A better God would create a better world. If God creates world X and there’s a better world Y to create, then the being that would create world Y would be a greater being. This would mean that the concept of a greatest being is not intelligible, because the greatness of beings can keep increasing eternally. If there is no greatest possible house, there can’t be a greatest possible architect.
Five, this would seem to rule out heaven, given that heaven is supposed to be the greatest possible world state.
Sixth, it seems like the greatest possible being would create a world better than one that any finite mind could conceive of. Yet I can conceive of many better worlds. Those would be
Worlds of pure, increasing bliss, wisdom, desire fulfillment, and virtue.
Worlds like this one but with no baby cancer, malaria, or flesh eating parasites.
Heaven.
Worlds where we’re all omnipotent and have our own worlds, where interaction is voluntary.
Etc.
Seventh, it’s far from clear that there is no best world.
If we look around the world if strikes me as much more like a world where a being wrote down the number 7 in the biggest number contest, than one in which the greatest possible mind did the best they could to make the world as good as possible.