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Articles

The Best of All Possible Next Worlds

by John Green

I am an atheist – there are no two ways about it and for the time being this is not open to question. I simply mention it to declare my particular bias before proceeding with this exposition. Not that it is my intention here to proselytize on behalf of atheism or to berate religions; most of the arguments on either side have grown rather stale and the fact that the existence of evil in the world is largely down to those who profess to believe in a deity of one sort or another is occasion for despair or rage rather than philosophical speculation. My actual intention is to set out what we might call a ‘bestpossible- theism’, in other words, I wish to define what, if anything, a god, an afterlife, or an ‘other world’ could be.

I am by no stretch of the imagination an expert on religious matters, nor however, do I regard atheism as a peculiar or radical position.

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