Determinism and theodicy
According to determinism plus the relevant physics, the events in our world come as a total package: delete any of history’s catastrophes, ancient or recent, and almost certainly no sentient beings ever come to exist. In that sense, all sentient beings owe their existence to the worst suffering that has ever occurred. Does this consequence of determinism provide a theodicy? In other words, if God exists, does this consequence of determinism excuse God for allowing all that suffering? No, for two reasons.
First, theism says that God can do magic: God can make something happen without there being any fully specific way in which it happens. (Deep down, magic makes no sense, but for purposes of this discussion we’ll have to ignore that fact.) If God can do magic, then God isn’t constrained by intelligibility or determinism. In that case, no consequence of determinism could excuse God for anything.
Second, even if all sentient beings owe their existence to the precise details of God’s created order, it doesn’t follow that they have no legitimate complaint against God. For God can wrong a sentient being by creating it. If its existence is worse for it than its never existing ‒ something an all-knowing God could foresee ‒ then God wrongs that being by creating it. David Benatar thinks every sentient being’s existence fits that description, in which case God wronged every sentient being God created. One needn’t go that far in order to conclude that enough sentient beings fit that description for the total package to be something God was wrong to create.
