Berg's fourth argument: "This is not the best possible world"

Berg's fourth argument is riddled with many of the same errors as the previous three contain. So, rather than pointing out these errors again and again, I'll focus on the flaws unique to the present argument.

Argument 4: The ‘This Is Not The Best Possible World’ Argument

1. God if he exists must be omnipotent, supremely good and our ultimate creator.
2. Therefore an existent God (being supremely good and competent) would have created the best possible world (if he created anything).
3. As the world is inconsistent (between ages and people) it cannot all be the best possible world.
4. Therefore as the world is not the best possible world, God cannot exist.

Again, lets take a look at this one point at a time.

1. God if he exists must be omnipotent, supremely good and our ultimate creator.

I just have to note the double standard required to insist that God HAS to be the ultimate creator while subscribing to the favorite atheist argument of "who made God?" It’s one or the other; if you accept the former, then you have to throw away the latter. In fairness to Berg, I have never seen him reiterate the who-made-God talking point, but other atheists would do well to consider this fundamental dichotomy.

2. Therefore an existent God (being supremely good and competent) would have created the best possible world (if he created anything).

No, not at all. That is simply a baseless assumption rendered meaningless due to our inability to define what is “best.” If Berg would like to provide a definition of what constitutes the best world and demonstrate that this is God’s standard, let him roll in the mud with it. But for some reason, I don’t think he’ll try.

Moreover, nobody is saying that God never created the best possible world. Atheists retreat to the multiverse hypothesis whenever convenient, but fail to consider the possibility that God has made many other universes, with one as the best (could be what Christians call heaven.) Although we don’t know what He has or has not made, we can be reasonably sure that while this may not be Berg’s perfect world, it could be the world He intended to create: agents possessing free will do to good, or to do evil.

3. As the world is inconsistent (between ages and people) it cannot all be the best possible world.

Berg here assumes that the best cannot be dynamic. What evidence does Berg have that the best world has to consistent and monotonous – even having to be exactly the same between ages and people?! The notion directly contradicts numerous teachings in the Bible, from the concept of original sin to the eschatological future of mankind. If God can’t create a dynamic world while adhering to Berg’s definition of “supremely good,” then Christians will just have to accept the fact that God is not Berg’s “supremely good.” Moreover, if God is the ultimate creator with the omnipotence to define what is “good” and “best,” then by Berg’s logic this would be the “best” world (if God had to create best world.) Rather than proving that God does not exist, Berg has simply demonstrated the optimal nature of this world. But of course, God’s arbitrary goodness has nothing to do His existence.

4. Therefore as the world is not the best possible world, God cannot exist.

In order to arrive at this conclusion, Berg has made the faulty assumptions that God must create the best possible world, that the best cannot constitute inconsistency and even that his definition of best is relevant here, that God must be supremely good by an external metric in order to exist, and that God can omnipotent yet be unable to create a nonbest world. Since these assumptions are predicated upon extremely narrow conceptions of God, and the relevance of Berg’s standards of the best and the good, it should be obvious to the objective reader that the conclusion is unwarranted and incorrect.