Introduction
In his paper, ‘Our Lives Go Better in a World Created by God’ (2025), Ballard presents a thought-provoking new pro-theistic argument. Unlike theistic arguments, which aim to establish that God exists, pro-theistic arguments aim to show that God’s existence would be preferable.Footnote 1 Wide pro-theistic arguments seek to show that God’s existence is preferable, all things considered. Narrow pro-theistic arguments, such as Ballard’s, seek to show that God’s existence would be preferableFootnote 2 merely in some respect. The respect in which Ballard argues that God’s existence would be preferable concerns the bestowed worth of the world. In brief, if God exists, then, as the world’s creator, God bears a particular relation to the world, and this relation bestows additional worth upon it. My aim is to assess Ballard’s argument, offer several objections, and develop a parallel anti-theistic argument according to which God’s non-existence would be preferable.
Ballard’s argument for narrow pro-theism
Consider the following case given by Ballard (Reference Ballard2025, 350):
Case 1: da Vinci’s sketch
Imagine an old sketch hanging on your wall, long admired but of unknown origin. One day an art historian takes it for analysis. She later returns with astonishing news: the sketch is, beyond doubt, a lost page from Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks.
Does this news give you reason to regard the sketch as having greater worth than you previously thought? Ballard argues that, upon learning who created the sketch, you are now able to recognise the additional worth it always possessed – the worth the sketch has in virtue of its having been created by da Vinci. You can now recognise the sketch’s additional bestowed worth.
The sketch’s bestowed worth arises here not from how good the sketch is, but from how good the artist is. And the greater the artist, the more bestowed worth their creations possess – for it is on ‘account of the greatness of the artist, [that] the work becomes all the worthier’ (Ballard Reference Ballard2025, 351). This case draws our attention to the idea that worth can arise from not only the intrinsic properties that something possesses but also its extrinsic properties – properties a thing ‘possesses only because it is related to other things’ (Davison Reference Davison and Kraay2018, 40). The created-by relation, which obtains between a creation and its creator, is one candidate source of such worth.
We should note that the bestowed worth the sketch has in virtue of being created by da Vinci is not instrumental. The fact that da Vinci is well known, or that the sketch could command a higher price, should not drive our intuitions about its revealed bestowed worth. Such instrumental value ‘is to be contrasted with “final value,” that is, the value that something has as an end or for its own sake’ (Zimmerman and Bradley Reference Zimmerman, Bradley, Zalta and Nodelman2025, n.p.). The sketch’s intrinsic properties (such as its accuracy or beauty) make up some of its final value. But it also ‘might well be valuable in part because of various relational properties’ (Kagan Reference Kagan1992, 184). On this view, bestowed worth is a species of extrinsic final value (Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen Reference Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen2000).Footnote 3
Ballard formulates the principle that underpins this phenomenon as follows:
Bestowed worth. F has bestowed worth when and only when F acquires final value by its relation to G – typically, some person, period, or event – through which that acquired value is derived from G’s own axiological status. (2025, 352)
In addition to the created-by worth-bestowing relation, Ballard also highlights several other potential worth-bestowing relations: the sustained-by, owned-by, expressed-by, and valued-by relations (354–355), and suggests there will be others. For the sake of brevity, I will concentrate on the bestowed worth resulting from the created-by relation. However, many of the points raised could, perhaps with some adjustment, also apply to some of these other worth-bestowing relations.
The created-by worth-bestowing relation raises several questions. First, does this bestowed worth only arise if a creator possesses ‘great goodness’? Ballard states that bestowed worth only arises when the following condition is met:
The ‘bestower’, the relatum that bestows the worth, must itself be something, or someone, of great goodness. (2025, 356)
So, a merely good artist may fail to confer any bestowed worth on their works. By contrast, because da Vinci is a great artist, his works do possess bestowed worth. This distinction between goodness and great goodness introduces a potential arbitrariness. For example, given that artistic goodness plausibly comes in degrees, there is presumably a tipping point that distinguishes a good artist from a great one.Footnote 4 Yet it seems odd that bestowed worth only comes into existence once this threshold is crossed. Reconsider case 1, but now suppose that a second sketch, identical to the first, is identified as the work of da Vinci’s twin brother. The twin’s artistic goodness falls only a hair’s breadth short of da Vinci’s, yet suppose this difference is enough to mark the boundary between goodness and great goodness. The result is that da Vinci’s sketch has bestowed worth, whereas his twin’s sketch has none. Some may find this result odd, as such a small difference in the creator’s goodness should not generate a discontinuity in bestowed worth. This oddness could be avoided if bestowed worth were to vary proportionally with the creator’s goodness, without crossing any threshold; so, for example, the work of a mildly good artist would gain a mild degree of bestowed worth, and so forth. Nevertheless, since my objections to Ballard’s argument hold regardless of whether such a threshold exists, I will proceed with it in place and merely register my concern here.
Second, must a creation express what makes its creator good in order to possess created-by bestowed worth, or can anything the creator makes have such worth? In the da Vinci case, what makes the creator good is his artistic ability, and that ability is expressed in his creation, namely a work of art. In this respect, the work and the ground of da Vinci’s greatness are aligned. Whether such alignment is necessary is unclear. For example, a sketch created by Gandhi might also have bestowed worth, but this wouldn’t be because Gandhi is a great artist, but rather because he is great in some other respect. In this case, Gandhi’s sketch is not an expression of what makes him great. So, there are two possibilities for when bestowed worth arises from the created-by relation:
Expressive worth-bestowing creation: If [G creates F and G is sufficiently good and F expresses G’s goodness] then [F being created-by G bestows worth on F]
Non-expressive worth-bestowing creation: If [G creates F and G is sufficiently good] then [F being created-by G bestows worth on F]
Interestingly, non-expressive worth-bestowing creation makes sense of the intuition not only that Gandhi’s sketch might have additional worth but also that Hitler’s paintings may have negative worth. For if it is the case that the ‘moral defects of the artist plausibly count as extrinsic moral defects of the art’ (Liao Reference Liao, Fox and Saunders2023, 196), then an inverse principle that subtracts worth (rather than bestowing it) would explain why Hitler’s paintings are undesirable despite his artistic ability having little to do with his moral abhorrence. Given that non-expressive worth-bestowing creation explains these intuitions, and that Ballard also holds that Hitler may have ‘tarnished’ his painting by association (2025, 352), I shall proceed with this interpretation in mind.Footnote 5
Third, is the bestowed worth of a creation fixed by the creator’s goodness at the time of its creation, or is its worth fixed by some ultimate assessment of the creator’s goodness? Imagine discovering a sketch drawn by da Vinci at the age of four…and it is terrible…even for a four-year-old. If you still think the sketch possesses bestowed worth because da Vinci later became a great artist, then this might suggest bestowed worth is fixed by an ultimate assessment of the artist’s goodness.Footnote 6 This option would also explain the intuition that Hitler’s paintings have negative worth despite the possibility that his character may not have been abhorrent at the time he painted them. Given these explanatory benefits, I will proceed with this interpretation.
Given these interpretations of bestowed worth, we can now begin to construct Ballard’s argument. If God exists, then, like da Vinci, He would be good enough to bestow worth upon His creations. Moreover, given that God is supremely good and ‘the worth bestowed is partly a function of the character of the relatum’ (Ballard Reference Ballard2025, 356), then, Ballard argues, a God-created world would possess unsurpassed bestowed worth.
If a perfect God exists, then, an amount of worth is bestowed [upon the world] which could not be otherwise. So there is at least one significant sort of value unobtainable in any atheist world. The version of impersonal pro-theism I defend is thus, we might say, modally fortified. It is immune to capture in possible atheist worlds. (ibid., 356)
So, if we focus on the created-by worth-bestowing relation, we can formulate Ballard’s argument as follows:
1. Anything that is ultimately good to degree x is sufficiently good to imbue created-by bestowed worth in its creations to degree y.
2. If God exists, then God is ultimately good to degree x.
So,
3. If God created the world, then the world has created-by bestowed worth to degree y.
4. If God did not create the world, then the world has created-by bestowed worth to less than degree y.
So,
5. With respect to created-by bestowed worth, it would be better if God created the world.
The idea is that, since (all other things being equal) created-by bestowed worth increases with the creator’s goodness, the created-by bestowed worth of God’s creations (y), given His supreme goodness (x), would be unmatched.
My aim here is to offer reason to resist premise 4. I will suggest that it might be possible for something other than God to create the world and yet for the world to have the same degree of this bestowed worth (or perhaps even more). My approach here is similar to that taken by Kahane (Reference Kahane and Kraay2017), who argues that many of the things people value about a world with God (such as cosmic justice and immortality) may be attainable without God. Here, however, the focus is on just one kind of extrinsic final value: bestowed worth attained via the created-by relation.
Two objections to Ballard’s argument
Premise 4 of Ballard’s argument states that if God did not create the world, then the world would have less created-by bestowed worth. But is that right? Perhaps the world could have the same degree of this bestowed worth (or even more) even if it were not created by God. In other words, there may be potential counter-examples to premise 4 to consider. Here are two candidates.
Objection 1: The effort-multiplier
Consider the following case:
Case 2: Fred and Wilma’s statues
Fred and Wilma are equally masterful sculptors who each create identical statues. The only difference is that Wilma mastered her craft only after considerable effort, whereas Fred’s mastery came with very little effort.
Which statue possesses greater bestowed worth? There are three options before you: (1) both statues have the same bestowed worth – as effort plays no role in determining bestowed worth; (2) Wilma’s statue has more bestowed worth – as she exerted more effort to attain her mastery; or (3) Fred’s statue has more bestowed worth – as he exerted less effort to attain his mastery. I want to make the case for option (2).
To support option (2), I want to appeal to intuitions similar to those underlying many people’s preference for human, rather than AI, generated art. Bellaiche et al. (Reference Bellaiche, Shahi, Turpin, Ragnhildstveit, Sprockett, Barr, Christensen and Seli2023) report that ‘not only is AI-art liked less, but it is also viewed as less worthy’ (7), partly because ‘people’s preferences for art increase as their beliefs about the amount of effort that went into creating a piece of art increase’ (8). Of course this is not the only explanation of these preferences, and our focus here is on the effort spent becoming a great artist (rather than the effort involved in creating a piece of art).Footnote 7 Yet the intuition that worth is somehow linked with effort does seem strong. What is more, this intuition isn’t limited to the creation of AI artwork. It seems to apply to achievements more generally.
More than 6,000 people have reached the summit of Mount Everest, yet Erik Weihenmayer – who is blind – is one of the few summiteers to feature on the cover of Time Magazine (2001). Stephen Hawking’s scientific accomplishments are extraordinary in their own right, but still more so given the physical limitations under which he worked. Henri Becquerel shares the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering radioactivity, but his name is less well remembered than that of his co-laureate, Marie Curie, who was both denied a formal higher education in Russian-occupied Poland and excluded from many academic circles because of her gender. The achievements of such individuals seem to possess greater worth precisely because of the increased efforts that were required to achieve their greatness.
Such intuitions are broadly supported by Bradford (Reference Bradford2013, Reference Bradford2015), who argues that ‘achievements are all valuable in virtue of their difficulty’ (2013, 220). This is not to say that achievements cannot also be valuable for other reasons, but without this difficulty they simply fail to constitute achievements. Bradford helpfully summarises her position as follows:
First, achievements are characterized by a process–product structure: all achievements have a process, which culminates in a product. Second, the process of an achievement is difficult. Something must be difficult to some sufficient degree in order to be an achievement; after all, if running a marathon and writing a novel were easy, we wouldn’t be inclined to call them achievements. …we will suppose that an activity is difficult just in case it requires effort from the agent engaging in the activity. (2013, 205)
So, according to Bradford, Wilma’s mastery of sculpting is a product that has a certain value as an achievement because it is the culmination of a process she engaged in that required effort. In which case, if the value of an agent’s greatness depends in part on how much attaining that greatness is an achievement, then effort is relevant to how we determine bestowed worth. And this is why Wilma’s statue may have more bestowed worth than Fred’s.
Perhaps you remain unconvinced. Perhaps the opposite holds: someone who attains mastery with comparatively little effort imparts greater bestowed worth to their creations. On that view, Fred’s statue would surpass Wilma’s. The thought has some appeal. Consider Mozart, whose precocious facility suggests mastery achieved with relative ease. Yet although Mozart is a great composer, the ease with which he became such should not augment his greatness. To see why, consider the following case:
Case 3: Aladdin’s painting
A genie grants Aladdin’s wish to instantly become an artist ultimately as good as da Vinci. Aladdin then goes on to paint a portrait just as good as the Mona Lisa.
Does Aladdin’s painting have more bestowed worth than the Mona Lisa just because he attained his mastery more easily? I’m inclined to think not. Like art generated by AI, the ability of Aladdin to paint such a portrait (his mastery) was not gained in the right kind of way; it required no effort.Footnote 8 His painting may be technically brilliant, and so have enormous intrinsic final value, but it has no created-by bestowed worth.
If these intuitions are correct, effort should figure in our assessment of this bestowed worth, and in a manner that explains why both Wilma’s statue exceeds Fred’s, and Aladdin’s painting has no created-by bestowed worth at all. The simplest way to do this (though some readers may find it unduly mechanistic, and it is by no means the only way) would be as follows:
If G creates F (and G is sufficiently good to bestow worth), the created-by bestowed worth of F equals the ultimate goodness of G multiplied by the effort G exerted to become this good.
For example, when Wilma (G) sculpts her statue (F), its bestowed worth is determined by how great a sculptor Wilma is, multiplied by how much effort was required of her to become such a great sculptor. The inclusion of this effort-multiplier would now explain why Wilma’s statue has more bestowed worth than Fred’s (for, although Wilma and Fred are equally great, Wilma’s greatness required more effort, and so is a greater achievement), and why Aladdin’s painting has no bestowed worth (for Aladdin’s greatness required no effort, and so isn’t an achievement).
You may be able to guess where this is leading. If God exists, then, like Aladdin, His goodness is not the result of any exertion of effort. We might reach this conclusion in several ways. For instance, if we follow Ballard’s conception of God as ‘the perfect being of traditional theism’ (2025, 356), then His perfection may make Him necessarily as good as He could possibly be. As Leftow (Reference Leftow1998) points out, God’s perfection
…affects our view of God’s personal attributes. It would be better to be necessarily omniscient, omnipotent and so on than merely contingently so. So perfect-being theism pushes us to say that God has necessarily his personal perfections. (sect. 6)
If God’s ultimate goodness arises from His perfection, and His perfection arises from His necessary properties, then how could God have exerted effort to become as good as He is? Even the notion of becoming good, effortlessly or otherwise, may be impossible for God.
Regardless of how we might reach the conclusion that God’s goodness is not the result of any exertion of effort, if it is true, and the effort-multiplier holds, then His creations would have no bestowed worth (at least not from the created-by relation). In which case, contrary to premise 4, it wouldn’t be the case that, if God does not exist, then the world has less than y bestowed worth.Footnote 9 For regardless of whether the world was created by God, or by no one at all, it would have zero of this bestowed worth in either case.
Note that this result does not show that a world created by God could not have greater overall worth; wide pro-theism may still be true. It shows only that, if a God-created world were better overall, the advantage would not derive from this species of bestowed worth.
Let us now consider some possible responses to this objection.
Response 1: Less effort means more bestowed worth
Perhaps a lack of effort can sometimes point in the opposite direction – it can be taken as evidence that a creation has more bestowed worth. Here the focus shifts from God’s expending no effort to become as good as He is, to God’s expending no effort to create the world. God’s ability to create the world effortlessly could be taken as evidence of His tremendous power, and such power is part of what makes God great. According to this line, God’s lack of effort is not a liability, but evidence that His creations have more bestowed worth. This response has some force. However, I’m not convinced it is able to undermine this objection.
To help us think this response through, consider the following case:
Case 4: Barney and Betty’s statues
Barney and Betty each create identical statues. However, Betty required considerable effort to sculpt her statue, whereas it required very little effort for Barney to sculpt his.
Unlike the Fred and Wilma case, which focuses on the effort required to become master artists, this case focuses on the effort involved in creating a piece of art. This response suggests that Barney’s statue has more bestowed worth since he seems to be the better sculptor, as evidenced by his ability to create his statue with far less effort.
It is worth making a distinction here between two types of acts. The first is what we might call goodness-forming acts. For example, if da Vinci practiced drawing a perfect circle by hand, and doing so contributed to his becoming a great artist, this would be a goodness-forming act. The second is what we might call goodness-expressing acts. For example, if da Vinci were to one day succeed in drawing a perfect circle by hand, and this was an expression of how good an artist he is, then this would be a goodness-expressing act. In this case, Barney’s lack of effort seems to be part of a goodness-expressing act. It shows us just how good a sculptor Barney is, and suggests Barney is a better sculptor than Betty. But the case does not tell us anything about the effort either Barney or Betty expended on goodness-forming acts.
Now compare the case of Barney and Betty’s statues to a modified version of Aladdin’s painting:
Case 5: Aladdin’s painting modified
A genie grants Aladdin’s wish to instantly become an artist ultimately as good as da Vinci. The genie then grants Aladdin a second wish: to be able to effortlessly think paintings into existence. Aladdin then goes on to effortlessly think of a portrait just as good as the Mona Lisa, which then blinks into existence.
Although I think Barney’s sculpture could have more bestowed worth than Betty’s, I don’t think Aladdin’s painting could have more bestowed worth than da Vinci’s. Why is this?
Barney’s lack of effort may be part of a goodness-expressing act that indicates he is a better sculptor than Betty. But for that goodness to bestow worth, its attainment must constitute an achievement. That is, Barney must have expended effort on goodness-forming acts for his goodness-expressing act to bestow worth on the statue. However, Aladdin’s lack of effort is not the result of any effort spent on goodness-forming acts. He was simply magically granted his abilities. His reduced effort is the result of no effort at all.
This gives us a principled way to distinguish between these two cases – allowing us to maintain that Barney’s sculpture may have more bestowed worth than Betty’s, but Aladdin’s painting does not have more bestowed worth than da Vinci’s. And if you share these intuitions, then, by the same token, you should not take God’s ability to create the world effortlessly as evidence that the world has more created-by bestowed worth.
Response 2: Reversing the argument
A second response to this objection may be to point out that one person’s modus ponens is another person’s modus tollens.
I have argued that if bestowed worth is partly determined by the effort-multiplier and God is unable to expend any effort, then His creations have no created-by bestowed worth. However, Ballard might agree that God cannot exert effort, but reverse the argument and suggest that, given that God’s creations do have created-by bestowed worth, then the effort-multiplier cannot hold. So, we have two options before us. The choice may come down to which bullet to bite.
On the one hand you can hold that God’s creations do have created-by bestowed worth and accept that Aladdin’s painting has just as much of this worth as da Vinci’s. On the other hand, you can hold that Aladdin’s painting has no created-by bestowed worth and accept that neither do God’s creations.
I find it harder to accept that Aladdin’s painting has any bestowed worth, and I have tried to explain this resistance by arguing that it is because his goodness is not an achievement. I leave it to those who hold the opposing view to explain why Aladdin’s painting should be of equal worth to da Vinci’s.
Response 3: God’s efforts
A third response might be to push back against the suggestion that God’s greatness is not, at least to some degree, an achievement (i.e., the result of effort). For perhaps God undertook significant efforts after creating the world, perhaps most notably via incarnation, and these efforts increased God’s ultimate goodness.
One might think such efforts are irrelevant, since they occur after the creation of the world. However, they are not. Remember that we are only concerned with the efforts a creator expends to become ultimately as good as they are. This is why even a sketch by a four-year-old da Vinci might have bestowed worth, despite his becoming a great artist only later. So, if some degree of God’s goodness were the result of efforts undertaken after creating the world, it would count as an achievement and could therefore ground the bestowed worth of His creations.
However, this possibility raises other issues. For example, if God is necessarily maximally good, how could such efforts affect God’s goodness? If God is timeless, how can efforts expended in time affect His goodness? Does the effort exerted by God qua human affect the goodness of God qua divine (Crisp 2007)? These broader issues can only be hinted at here; suffice to say that ‘it remains problematic how the originator of the universe is immutable from the universe in which he is the supreme cause’ (Ezeoba Reference Ezeoba2024, 32).
Objection 2: The co-creation addition
Let us now consider a second objection to Ballard’s argument. Consider the following case:
Case 6: da Vinci and Raphael’s sketch
One day the art historian (who previously informed you that your sketch was by da Vinci) asks you if she can take it away again for further analysis. She returns with more amazing news. That particular sketch was in fact the joint work of da Vinci and Raphael!
So, the sketch that you thought was created by one master turns out to be co-created by two. Does this new information give you reason to regard the sketch as having even greater bestowed worth? If so, then it might be because its bestowed worth is determined by aggregating the greatness of both masters. The simplest way to do this (but by no means the only way) would be to sum their goodness,Footnote 10 as follows:
If G and H co-create F (and G and H are each sufficiently good to bestow worth), the created-by bestowed worth of F equals the ultimate goodness of G plus the ultimate goodness of H.
One might also wish to add the effort-multiplier to this formula, in which case it would look as follows:
If G and H co-create F (and G and H are each sufficiently good to bestow worth), the created-by bestowed worth of F equals (the ultimate goodness of G multiplied by the effort G exerted to become this good) plus (the ultimate goodness of H multiplied by the effort H exerted to become this good).
However, I will set aside the effort-multiplier here to make clear that this objection can operate independently of the previous one.
If we factor this co-creation addition into our assessment of bestowed worth, could the world have created-by bestowed worth to degree y, or perhaps greater, even if God did not create it? Consider the following possibility:
Case 7: Near-gods
Imagine an agent who is as good as it is possible to be without being a god: a near-god. Suppose, for example, that omnipotence is a necessary condition of being a god. A near-god could then share all of God’s other attributes (omniscience, perfect benevolence, and so on) while lacking some seemingly trivial power, such as the ability to directly create a tin of baked beans. Such an agent would be very good but not supremely good and, given this limitation, would not be a god. Now imagine a second near-god that also shares many of God’s attributes, except that it lacks the ability to directly create a tin of spaghetti hoops. Suppose, finally, that these two near-gods collaborate to co-create the world.
Although neither agent’s ultimate goodness equals or exceeds x on its own, their combined goodness might. If so, then, other things being equal, the world they co-create could have bestowed worth that equals or exceeds y. That would be a counter-example to premise 4.
One might object to this counter-example by pointing out that the supreme goodness of God would far exceed the combined goodness of these two near-gods. For if God were infinitely good, while each near-god (because of the limit on their power) was finitely good, then the bestowed worth of God’s creations would be infinitely greater than that of the near-gods’ co-creations. Yet if the bar is infinite goodness, imagine now an infinite number of near-gods co-creating the world. For, if the co-creation addition holds, such a world would also possess infinite bestowed worthFootnote 11 – an outcome that would again render premise 4 false.Footnote 12
Response 1: The best explanation
One might counter this objection by pointing out that the explanation it offers for the creation of the world is far less parsimonious, and so far less likely to be true. Ockham’s razor, after all, would seem to favour a single perfect agent (such as God), over multiple imperfect ones (such as our near-gods). Yet while this consideration may bear on what we ought to believe, it has little bearing on what we ought to prefer. To illustrate this point, consider the following analogy offered by Luck and Ellerby (Reference Luck and Ellerby2012).
Suppose, for example, that you buy a lottery ticket knowing full well that there is only a one in a million chance of winning the jackpot. Forming the belief that you will win the jackpot seems irrational given what you know. However, does that mean you shouldn’t hope to win? Should you instead hope to lose because this is what is more likely? Surely not. (196)
Likewise, even if the simplicity of the God hypothesis warrants assigning it a higher probability than a plurality of near-gods, this has no direct bearing on what we ought to prefer. Our (narrow) preference should depend solely on which world (the one created by God or by the near-gods) has more created-by bestowed worth.
Response 2: Shifting the target
A second possible response to this objection would be to suggest that it misrepresents Ballard’s position. Perhaps his aim was merely to compare a God-created world with a world created by no one. If so, the near-gods counter-example would miss its mark. However, Ballard’s target is much broader than this. For he acknowledges that
…there are worlds where some lesser deity stands in these [creation] relations, rather than the perfect being of traditional theism. But in such worlds, less worth will be bestowed, since the worth bestowed is partly a function of the character of the relatum. (2025, 356)
In which case, the near-god counter-example does seem relevant.
However, since these near-gods are identical to God apart from a trivial deficiency, and so may, for some, constitute ‘lesser deities’, a further issue arises. Ballard also aims to offer what he calls a ‘modally fortified’ argument, ‘immune to capture in possible atheist worlds’ (356). One might therefore suggest that any world containing deities, lesser or otherwise, is not, strictly speaking, an atheistic world. If so, this counter-example may again not be relevant.
Yet I defined a near-god as an agent that is as good as it is possible to be without being a god. So, if you hold that a necessary condition of being a god is omnipotence, then a world created by agents identical to God save for some trivial deficiency in power will be an atheistic one. But if your bar is different, the example can be adjusted to suit. For example, if one holds that a necessary condition of being a god is being immortal, then a world created by an infinite number of mortal agents would also be an atheistic one. So, the near-gods counter-example can be modified to resist this concern.
Response 3: Average goodness
A third response to this objection would be to suggest an alternative means of determining the joint goodness of co-creators. For example, perhaps averaging the goodness of co-creators may be a better way of determining their collective goodness (rather than simply adding them). And if this were the case, then my objection would fail to undermine Ballard’s argument. For the average goodness of an infinite number of finitely good agents would remain finite.
However, if this were the case then we would no longer have reason to think the sketch co-created by da Vinci and Raphael (assuming they are equally great artists) would have more bestowed worth than if it were solely created by da Vinci. In which case, if you share this intuition, an additive model of some sort will be required.
This is not to say that every additive model yields infinite goodness in the near-god case. Still, if one rejects the simple additive model I have proposed, one must offer an alternative; and to avoid ad hocness one must also provide independent reason for adopting it.
Response 4: Finite infinities
A fourth response would be to note that it is not clear that adding together the goodness of infinitely many finitely good near-gods would exceed the goodness of a single infinitely good God.
Consider the following infinite series of numbers (where the next number is half of the previous):
\begin{equation*}0.5+0.25+0.125+0.0625+0.03125+0.015625+0.0078125+...\end{equation*}This is an infinite series of finite values, yet its sum is not infinite. So, why think that an infinite number of finitely good near-gods could be infinitely good?
This would be a serious problem for the near-gods objection if it relied on such an infinite series. However, this objection can operate with near-gods of any finite goodness. Consider an alternative infinite series of finite values, only this time these values all consist of non-zero natural numbers – for example, the number 1:
\begin{equation*}1+1+1+1+1+1+...\end{equation*}The sum of this series would be infinite.
So the mere fact that the sum of an infinite series of finite values need not be infinite is not sufficient to undermine this objection. What must be shown is that no such series could have an infinite sum.
Two loose ends
Before concluding, I would like to tie up two important loose ends. The first concerns the development of an anti-theistic argument. The second concerns the possibility that these objections extend to other worth-bestowing relations (not just the created-by bestowed worth).
An anti-theistic argument from bestowed worth
Earlier I suggested that a focus on created-by bestowed worth might support an anti-theistic argument. So far, however, I have only raised objections to Ballard’s pro-theistic case. And even if every pro-theistic argument fails, it does not follow that any anti-theistic argument succeeds. To refute a pro-theistic argument, it is enough to show that the world could be at least as good without God. To establish an anti-theistic argument, one must show that the world could be better without God. So let us now attempt to develop such an argument.
Supposing the effort-multiplier holds, consider the following case:
Case 8: The labouring near-god
Imagine a near-god that is sufficiently good to bestow worth on its creations. However, this near-god gained its goodness only after some effort. And, after attaining such goodness, it created the world.
Provided, as discussed, God could not exert effort to attain His greatness, then the world created by this labouring near-god would have more created-by bestowed worth. In other words, the following argument may hold:
1. If G creates F, then the created-by bestowed worth of F equals [the ultimate goodness of G multiplied by the effort G exerted to become this good].Footnote 13
2. If God exists, then He is ultimately good to degree x and He exerted zero effort to become this good.
3. If the labouring near-god exists, then it is ultimately good to a degree less than x (but still good to some degree) and it exerted a non-zero amount of effort to become this good.
So,
4. If God created the world, then the world has zero created-by bestowed worth.
5. If the labouring near-god created the world, then the world has more than zero created-by bestowed worth.
So,
6. With respect to this bestowed worth, it would be better if the labouring near-god created the world.
So, if the effort-multiplier holds, a narrow anti-theistic argument can be made that suggests, at least with respect to this bestowed worth, a world created by our labouring near-god would outrank one created by God.
The sustained-by worth-bestowing relation
I have focused here on the created-by relation. Although Ballard suggests that this relation alone may be sufficient to support the claim that the world would have more bestowed worth were it created by God, his argument does not depend on this. It requires only that all the worth-bestowing relations together are jointly sufficient for the world to have more bestowed worth were it created by God (Ballard Reference Ballard2025, 354). Earlier I suggested that my objections, perhaps with some adjustment, might also apply to some other worth-bestowing relations. To illustrate this, let us switch to the sustained-by relation and revisit the first objection.
Consider the following case:
Case 9: Aladdin and Lucullus’s gardens
Imagine a magnificent garden sustained by the master gardener Lucullus, whose green fingers were earned through years of toil. Upon seeing Lucullus’s garden, Aladdin commands his genie to instantly make him an equally great gardener. Aladdin then goes on to sustain a garden just as magnificent as Lucullus’s.
Whose garden has greater overall worth? If you judge that it is Lucullus’s, this must be because it possesses greater bestowed worth (given that the gardens have equal intrinsic worth). In which case the effort-multiplier seems to achieve the same end here.
We can conduct a similar exercise with objection 2. Imagine again Lucullus’s garden, but this time you learn it is being sustained by two master gardeners, Lucullus and Pliny. If you now regard the garden as having greater worth (than had it merely been tended by Lucullus), this would be because the additional gardener contributes additional bestowed worth. In which case the co-creation addition seems to achieve the same result again.
It may be that some worth-bestowing relations are unaffected by the effort-multiplier and co-creation-addition objections. If so, a pro-theist could further narrow their argument to those relations, and these objections would not apply. The more interesting question, however, is comparative: whether the total bestowed worth of a world created by God across all worth-bestowing relations exceeds the bestowed worth of every possible atheistic world. I leave such a comparison to others. However, I hope to have indicated that appealing to bestowed worth to ground narrow pro-theism may be less ‘modally fortified’ against possible atheist worlds than Ballard suggests (2025, 356).
Concluding remarks
I have presented two objections to Ballard’s narrow pro-theistic argument.
The first objection maintains that if an effort-multiplier is required to determine created-by bestowed worth, and God exerted no effort to attain His goodness, then God’s creations lack this bestowed worth. Hence a world created by God would have no more created-by bestowed worth than a world created by no one.
The second objection maintains that if a co-creation addition is used to determine created-by bestowed worth, and the world were jointly created by infinitely many near-gods, it would possess infinite bestowed worth. Hence, even if God’s goodness also conferred infinite created-by bestowed worth, so too would a world created by these near-gods.
I also advanced an anti-theistic argument that maintains that, if an effort-multiplier is required to determine created-by bestowed worth, then while a near-god could exert effort to attain its ultimate goodness, a perfect God could not. Consequently, a world created by a labouring near-god would possess more created-by bestowed worth than one created by God.
The central aim of this paper has been to argue that, once the notion of bestowed worth is developed further, Ballard’s pro-theistic argument at least faces serious difficulties and, at most, an anti-theistic argument may surface. However, I’d like to conclude by briefly offering a reason to doubt the very notion of bestowed worth. Consider the following case of creation:
Case 10: Two babies
Imagine two babies are born. One baby’s parents are sinners, but the other baby’s parents are saints. Otherwise the babies are the same.
Next, consider a case of sustaining:
Case 11: Two orphans
Imagine two orphans in foster care. One orphan’s foster parents are sinners, but the other orphan’s foster parents are saints. Otherwise, the orphans are the same.
Suppose the saints’ moral goodness suffices for greatness, whereas the sinners’ does not, but in all other respects they are the same. Is one baby of greater overall worth solely because its creators were saints? Does one orphan have greater overall worth merely because it was sustained by saints? If the answer to these questions is ‘no’, then either the very notion of bestowed worth may be suspect, or its reach may not extend to the most important parts of the world, its occupants.
Of course, a principled distinction might be made between God creating and sustaining His creatures, and parents creating and sustaining their children. For example, given the genetic lottery involved in procreation, one might argue that it is not a kind of creation that can bestow worth, since it lacks sufficient authorship. In particular, it doesn’t involve the intentional, contentful shaping that would allow this creation to properly reflect its creator’s intent. God’s creation of creatures, by contrast, may plausibly be said to involve such authorship.
This distinction has intuitive force. For why should a child’s worth be affected by their parents, especially given the familiar thought that people possess a kind of intrinsic worth that is not hostage to the merits of those who brought them into existence? Yet this line may sit uneasily with other commitments, such as the doctrine of original sin, according to which humans inherit what seems like a type of negative bestowed worth in virtue of their descent from human sinners. I will leave it to others to navigate through such waters.
Acknowledgements
My thanks to Wylie Breckenridge, Daniel Cohen, Graham Oppy, William Tuckwell, and two blind reviewers for their input into this paper.
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