In his essay, “The Meaning of Life”, Daniel Hill argues that if there is no God, then life cannot be meaningful, by arguing that if life has any meaning, it must have been given by the creator of this life. This argument depends on his premise that the creator of life must be an all-powerful, all-knowing, and morally-good one, such as God; a being well equipped for meaning-endowing. It seems, however, that for such a creator to act out all three traits to each one’s infinite nature, is logically impossible. The logical possibilities of God are that he is morally good and all-powerful, but not all-knowing; that he is all-knowing and morally good, but not all-powerful; or that he is all-powerful and all-knowing, but not morally good.

I will take as a starting point that a creator of life has an infinite capacity for at least one of these traits at a time, as no isolated one of these traits can logically deny itself. Let us begin by asking what it means for a creator to be any one of these traits, alone. If a creator is all-knowing, then he knows everything that happens and will happen, on top of knowing everything that his creation can know. If a creator is all-powerful, then he has control over everything that he creates, and so he enacts his will upon it. If a creator is morally good, then beyond understanding what is good, he wills for it.

Hill believes that God is both morally good and all-powerful. He says that “God necessarily brings about good things for God and all others” and in the same essay, he assumes a belief in an “allpowerful [sic] God [rather] than in one who is not quite all-powerful…” (Hill, “The Meaning of Life”). The discrepancy arises then, when we consider that if a creator is morally good and all-powerful, then his will should be reflected in his creation. There being much evidence of evil in our world, however, means that our creator is limited in either power or moral goodness. I reason that a creator who is capable of endowing meaning, has a will. As mentioned, if a creator is morally good, and has a will, then the creator wills for what is good. If a creator has a good will and is all-powerful, then he is able to use his infinite power to enact his good will. It is therefore easy enough to conclude that if a creator is able to use his power to enact his good will, then only goodness happens in the world, and that if only goodness happens in the world, then undue suffering does not. Of course, if there is only goodness in the world, then there is no evil, and if there is no evil then goodness is no longer contrasted with evil, and so to say that only goodness happens in the world is to say that neither goodness nor evil happen in that world. In such a scenario, however, it is clear that evil, including undue suffering, does not happen. Undue suffering is apparent in our real world, however, as noted by the tragic things that occur on Earth, and need not be mentioned here. It is not the case that a creator’s good morality is enacted in our world, and therefore, it is false that either an all-powerful creator has good morals or that a morally good creator is all-powerful.

My argument would end there, if omniscience were not a trait for consideration. Perhaps one logical explanation for a creator being all-powerful and morally good, yet allowing undue suffering, is that he not only lacks infinite knowledge, but is largely unaware of what happens to his creation. In this scenario, the blind creator cannot know that there is undue suffering, or where in our world to enact his good will, despite his power and good intentions. This hypothesis seems unlikely when we wonder whether such a powerful creator, regardless of his intentions, would not want to be able to observe his creation in order to confirm that it exists in the way he intended. Assuming that he would see the benefit of, and therefore want, this observation, would he not be able to attain it by using his powers to simply put himself in the position to observe? Perhaps a good-willing creator of a failed world is unaware that it is possible for his creation to fail. Perhaps only through the act of observation would he recognize the need to track his faulty creation. A line may be drawn here, between a creator being all-powerful and him being all-knowing. Can a creator of life be infinitely powerful, yet blind? If so, then what is the use for his infinite power? Without regard to its mysterious use, in this discussion, it is logically possible that a creator of life is morally good and all-powerful, if and only if he is lacking in infinite knowledge.

Inversely, can a morally good creator be all-knowing, yet powerless? A similarly good-willing-yet-helpless-god hypothesis is that a creator does indeed have good morals and is aware of the need to fix his creation, but is not powerful enough to even interact with it. It seems unlikely that something with the power to create lacks the power to interact with it. If we think of it, however, as the creation becoming more powerful that the creator, such as through free will, then this loss of power can make more sense. Take for example, a child growing up and, one day, leaving home. A highly knowledgeable and good-willing parent will always know what is best for their child, and yet, this parent will also have no option other than to let the child go and be free, soon enough. The control that the parent once had over their child, is eventually completely replaced by the growing child’s free action. As it applies to a non-omnipotent creator, his power is seemingly enough to create life, yet limited to that end, leaving the world with a compassionate, but helpless God. The only problem with this good, all-knowing but not all-powerful creator, is that he willingly creates, completely aware of whether or not his creation will helplessly suffer. His decision to create such life, nonetheless, poses a challenge to his good morals, if his creation does suffer. If we suppose, however, that this creator knows that his creation will suffer, but he also sees that, eventually, it will stop suffering, through the creation’s own will to end it (rather than the creator’s forced will upon the creation) then we might ask ourselves if our free will is worth our suffering. If it seems worth it, then it is fair to conclude that this creator has good morality after all. This good morality means that it is logically possible for a creator of life to be all-knowing and morally good, if and only if he lacks omnipotence.

It might be a challenge for some of us to believe that free will, as the tool for sentient beings, on a journey to certain peace, through ages of suffering, is worth the creation of these beings, at the hands of a morally good creator. One might find it easier to believe that in such a scenario, the creator is either not morally good, or lacking infinite knowledge. We have considered the possibility of a blindly hopeful, good creator. We have yet to discuss the possibility of an all-knowing and all-powerful, morally limited creator.

In the case of an all-powerful, all-knowing, and morally limited creator of life, the fact of a creator not being as morally good as possible, could mean that any moral goodness he does have, simply does not extend to his creation. Perhaps this creator sees a need to fix his creation, and is powerful enough to fix it, yet is insensitive to the pain caused to his creation. An example of this would be the drive for some people to commit suicide when their lives feel unbearably painful. This could be an all-powerful, all-knowing creator’s working solution to the problem of suffering. This possibility is defeated, however, if we consider that the omniscience of such a creator would have warned him of the necessary fixing in his upcoming creation. In fact, if an all-powerful creator were truly omniscient, would he not have decided to avoid his creation as it were, so as to spare it any pain from the start? He might instead have opted for a creation that was either insensitive to pain, or not able to hurt itself, somehow. Considering the unlimited nature of omnipotence, these options would have been available to a good-willing creator, and yet, as noted, there is suffering in our world.

On the other hand, we may assume that any pain to the creation of unlimited power and knowledge, is for a purpose, or, at the very least, the pain is a negative side effect of the given purpose. Perhaps whatever purpose this creator intends is beneficial for something other than his creation. One possibility is that the creation benefits the creator, as would be the case in a simulation. However, if a simulation must be run, it could mean that the creator of it is not all-knowing after all, as he is seeking knowledge through this simulation. However, it is not the case that if a simulation is run, it is because it must be run. Perhaps a creator of a simulation is simply amusing himself with what he already knows will happen. This seems unlikely of an, at least, moderately well-meaning creator, considering the simulation’s negative effects on its subjects.

We must consider the possibility that a creator of an existence such as ours, is devoid of morality. We may understand a creator’s lack of moral sensitivity if we imagine such an infinitely powerful and knowing creator as the endlessly skilled programmer of a highly advanced artificially intelligent computer. Artificial intelligence is programmed to mimic human emotions to an oddly realistic extent, as we may have noticed. The programmer, in our example, knows that emotions are a thing only truly experienced by himself (let us say that our sample programmer is human), and that the emotions displayed, recreated, and otherwise understood by his coded creation, are not truly painful for the creation. This is easy enough for us to believe of our own artificially-intelligent systems. Through this reasoning, then, the programmer continues to let the program express pain, perhaps desensitizing himself to his creation’s realistic suffering. Similarly, an all-knowing and all-powerful creator of life could, and in fact must, lack moral goodness, if it is true that moral goodness applies to artificial sentience. He not only can, but must, lack moral goodness, if we consider the pain that the human species causes itself at the hands of an all-knowing, infinitely capable creator.

One might challenge that, if a creator is all-knowing, then that creator is aware of any form of sentience. If we see reason and empathy as things that stand on their own, however, and then consider infinite reason and infinite empathy as the equivalents, omniscience and moral goodness, respectively, then we might see that moral goodness is not a necessary component of infinite knowledge, just as empathy is not a necessary component of reason. One might understand moral goodness, but for one to choose moral goodness, is to use understanding for the sake of empathy, compassion, or what we might call ‘goodness’. In other words, an omniscient creator could know good morals, but this knowledge does not imply that he is drawn to any of these morals. There is also no reason to believe he would not be able to stop his creation’s suffering if he wanted to. In this scenario, our hypothetical creator is all-knowing, all-powerful, and not morally great. Therefore, it is logically possible for a creator to be omniscient and omnipotent, if and only if he is not infinitely, morally good.

Hill’s premise is of an infinitely good, infinitely knowing, and infinitely powerful being, to endow meaning unto our existence. It is not possible for a creator to be all three things at once, as he must be either blind to our suffering, unable to help us, or benefitting himself rather than us. I agree with Hill only when he tells us that one cannot benefit something by bringing it into existence.

Work Cited
Hill, Daniel. “The Meaning of Life.” Philosophy Now, 2002. philosophynow.org/issues/35/The_Meaning_of_Life.

Originally written for PHL 333 at Toronto Metropolitan University, Prof. Beillard, March 2019.