Divine Creation and Human Procreation: Reflections on Genesis in the Light of Genesis

Human beings are contingent insofar as their existence is not necessary. Logically, there is, of course, nothing self-contradictory in a human-less world, let alone in a world from which any particular individual is absent. From a metaphysical perspective, however, things are less clear. Spinozistic arguments notwithstanding, it is indeed plausible to say that the existence of any individual person is metaphysically speaking a contingent matter; but is the existence of humanity as such similarly contingent? Could the world as we know it be devoid of humans? Some metaphysical and theological systems answer in the negative; naturalistic and positivist approaches answer in the affirmative, treating the evolution of humanity as a contingent, even accidental matter. Without taking sides on this issue, I would like to follow a Leibnizian line by claiming that even if there is a possible world in which there are no human beings, a benevolent God could not have created it since it would not have been the best possible world. Indeed, it will be the major argument of this article that a human-less world would lack any value. Or in other words, human beings are non-contingent from the point of view of value: being its source, they are necessary.