Rabbits and Suffering

My department, as it turns out, has a specialty. We do religious philosophy. We're actually, as I understand it, a really good place for religious philosophy - if you're into that sort of thing you might also go to Notre Dame, but I think we're higher ranked. I have been trying since I got here to articulate exactly why I think religion and philosophy should be kept separate, and then today it hit me:

Philosophy is based on rigor. Religion is based on faith.

Don't get me wrong; if you want to do religious philosophy, I say have at. You can try to prove the existence of God or whatever and that's fine. You can even, if you insist, assume the existence of God and work from there. But it isn't good religion and it certainly isn't good philosophy.

Case in point: some people have argued against modal realism by pointing out that, if there are possible worlds that realize every possibility, then there must be a possible world consisting of nothing but rabbits and suffering. In fact, there must be infinitely many. (Don't worry about why this follows; it actually does.) Now, God would never have created infinitely many worlds consisting of just rabbits and suffering, because that's arbitrary and God is never arbitrary. Therefore modal realism cannot be true. QED.

Let's think about what's wrong with this argument: the arguer assumes

1. That there is a God
   
2. That she [the arguer] knows what God would and wouldn't do
3. That God never does anything arbitrary
4. That it even makes sense to talk about arbitrariness on this scale.
   

All of these assumptions are problematic. Passing lightly over 1, how on earth do you come by the knowledge of what God would or wouldn't do? Most likely you have read it in your notoriously over-translated and difficult to understand Book. Okay, let's assume that's legit - let's assume that the book is totally true, that your interpretation is flawless, and that either it somewhere covers this case specifically (the Bible says a lot of things, after all) or it's possible to correctly extrapolate from what it does say. I'll grant you all that. But then tell me this: what the heck is the point of philosophy? If all the answers are in your book, what are we doing? Does philosophy boil down to Biblical exegesis? Is it too late for me to apply to library school?

So 2 is problematic; what about 3? One word: Job. Moving on.

Finally, how does it make any sense at all to talk about arbitrariness on that scale? How is it any more arbitrary to create infinitely many worlds than it is to create just one? Just one? Why would God do that? See #2. But our human notion of arbitrariness can't be applied to God's actions in creating worlds. If God created as many worlds as there were people alive on Earth at 11:59 a.m. on December 14, 1974, that would be entirely God's prerogative. Does that seem random to me? Sure! But hey, God moves in mysterious ways. It's not for me to understand.

Philosophy, though - that is something I must try to understand. And that's the difference.