out the proposition ‘God exists’ when considering godly worlds, and we must not screen out the proposition ‘God does not exist’ when considering godless worlds. To see why, consider a theist who screens out the proposition ‘God does not exist’ in a godless world. To avoid quietism, either 3 or 4 should turn out to be true, and the other false. However, if ‘God does not exist’ is screened out, it has truth-value N. In that case, the antecedent of 3 and 4 will be N. Looking back at our truth-table, note that the conditional can only be false when the antecedent is true and the consequent false, as in classical logic. A theistic pro-theist could affirm the truth of 4 but not the falsity of 3, and the theist anti-theist could affirm the truth of 3 but not the falsity of 4. This same problem can be extended to atheism. Thus, we should not screen out the proposition ‘God exists’ in considering godly worlds or ‘God does not exist’ in considering godless worlds. Instead, what we screen out is the proposition ‘God exists is a necessary proposition’ or ‘God does not exist is a necessary proposition.’ Some conceptual truths, on which the atheist, agnostic, and theist might all agree, must be screened out. For example, the claim that ‘if God were to exist, God would exist necessarily’ must be screened out. Furthermore, for any set of propositions that entail this proposition, some subset of those propositions must be screened out. Of course, the beliefs that must be screened out differ for the theist and atheist. The theist must screen out beliefs ‘God exists necessarily,’ ‘if God did not exist, neither would anything else,’ and so forth. Similarly, the atheist must screen out beliefs such as ‘the very idea of God is incoherent,’ ‘God’s existence is logically incompatible with the existence of evil,’ and so forth. In practice, it seems that philosophers working on the axiological question have tended to conceive of impossible states of affairs in partial ways and emphasize which propositions are maintained as true within the godly or godless states of affairs.. To clarify my approach, I will outline Kahane’s (2011) argument using this new method. Again, my purpose is not to defend pro-theism or anti-theism, but rather to show how my method can be applied in practice. My method can be extended to other arguments for and against pro-theism and anti-theism (see Penner and Lougheed 2015, Penner 2015, McLean 2015, Dumsday forthcoming, Kraay and Dragos 2013). Kahane’s argument for anti-theism proceeds in two steps. In step one, Kahane argues that the world would be worse in certain respects if God did exist. Second, Kahane admits that the world might be better overall in certain other respect, but that these respects do not outweigh the the values lost by God’s existence from the perspective of the individual. Thus, Kahane is a personal anti-theist rather than an impersonal anti-theist. I will only apply my approach to pro-theism/anti-theism.16 Kahane’s argument concerning impersonal In support of the first step, speculating on Nagel’s claim that he “hopes the world is not like that,” Kahane writes:

“A world in which God exists is a world where human beings stand in a distinctive and inescapable relation to another person. It is a world where we are the subordinates of a moral superior…and where we have been created to play a part in some divine cosmic plan. It is a world where everything about us is known and fully understood by another, a world where even our innermost thoughts and feelings are not entirely private. It is a world in which we are never truly alone, away from the presence and attention of another. And if the true nature of God is beyond human comprehension, it would also be a world that we can never hope to fully understand. The idea is that God’s existence is logically incompatible with the full realization of certain values. Thus a world in which God exists is a world where we would not be the moral equals of all other rational beings—equal members of a kingdom of ends that has no ruler. Such a world seems