Leibniz According to Leibnez, God has the potential to envision, conceive, and create an infinite number of possible worlds. From this infinite potential God selects the best one(s) to create. Leibnez suggests that God uses reason to consciously select the world that has the fullest creative potential, the most multiplicity, and ultimately, the least amount of evil. Leibnez suggests that the world in which we live must have been the best possible world, because God would not have chosen otherwise to create it. In the Monadology, Leibnez characterizes God as being benevolent as well as omnipotent, and therefore surmises that this one is the best of all possible worlds. "Now, as in the Ideas of God there is an infinite number of possible universes, and as only one of them can be actual, there must be a sufficient reason for the choice of God, which leads Him to decide upon one rather than another," (Monadology Sect. 53).

As part of his proof, Leibnez shows that the world, however multiplicities or seemingly disorganized, is actually harmonious. An unlimited...

Leibnez describes harmonious interdependence as "connexion or adaptation of all created things to each and of each to all," (Mondadology Sect. 56). Moreover, the universe in all its multiplicity and seeming chaos exhibits remarkable parallelisms: each thing mirrors another, and ultimately all things are as "a perpetual living mirror of the universe," (Mondadology Sect. 56).
Therefore, for Leibnez the best of all possible worlds is one with as much diversity and as much order as possible: diversity plus order equal perfection. The philosopher's definition of "best" entails two separate qualifiers: one, that something is necessarily best because God declared it so, and two, that something is best because it is complex, diversified, and it functions harmoniously. Beyond the multiplicity of the best world rests a divine Monad, according to Leibnez.

Leibnez's assessment of God's creation is inherently flawed in that he presupposes a set of qualities for the…