The quantitative argument against the notion of a best possible world
claims that, no matter how many worthwhile lives a world contains, another world
contains more and is, other things being equal, better. Parfit's ‘Mere Addition
Paradox’ suggests that defenders of this argument must accept his ‘Repugnant
Conclusion’: that outcomes containing billions upon billions of lives barely worth
living are better than outcomes containing fewer lives of higher quality. Several
responses to the Paradox are discussed and rejected as either inadequate or
unavailable in a theistic context. The quantitative argument fails if some world is
such that addition to it is not possible, i.e., if it is intensively infinite, as Liebniz
claimed. If the notion of such a world is incoherent, then no world is quantitatively
best and the quantitative argument succeeds, but only at the cost of embracing the
Repugnant Conclusion.