Can God choose which world to actualize?

Ok, so, I've posted a few things lately regarding the Leibnizian idea of God surveying possible worlds and choosing one among them to actualize. And it's been helping me organize my thoughts, at least.

I think I can boil down the thing that's worrying me the most into a simple question.

Suppose, at time t, God is surveying all of the possible worlds, and considering which one to actualize. Isn't, though, God's activity at time t an actual state of affairs?

I think that pretty much sums up my worry.

Does creation ex nihilo determine which possible world is actual?

The usual Leibnizian idea is that, prior to creation, God surveyed all the possible worlds, and actualized one of them. Assume that God is a temporal being, and that God's actions are temporal. Consider an arbitrary time t which is prior to creation ex nihilo and at which God is engaged in surveying the possible worlds.

Question: is there an actual world at time t?

If the answer is No, this would seem to entail that God's activity at t is occurring in every possible world. On this basis, one might be inclined to think that there is exactly one and only one possible world at time t (which, paradoxically, would suggest further that there is an actual world at time t). Maybe there are infinitely many worlds at time t which share an identical temporal segment; Plantinga probably dissusses this, I'll have to go back and look.

One way to think about God's situation at t might be this: at time t, every possible past is identical, but there are infinitely many possible futures. So, maybe God's activity at time t isn't so much that God is surveying possible worlds, but possible futures.

One way to spell things out, then, would be this. At time t, there are infinitely many possible pasts that are identical. At time t, there are infinitely many distinct possible futures. God's activity at time t is actual, i.e., belongs to the actual world, which is one of infinitely many identical pasts. At time t, it is indeed open to God to determine which world is actual -- which future becomes distinct from the infinitely many identical pasts -- even though God's activity at time t is actual (i.e., belongs to the actual world).

Creation and Modality

Here is a rough sketch of something that I don't see discussed very often. Or, another way to put it would be to say that a certain conflation seems to occur pretty regularly during discussions of the problem of evil.

I'm not sure of the best way to sketch out this idea; but here goes.

Let '@' name the actual world. Consider the following set of propositions:

(1) God exists at every possible world.
(2) God exists at @.
(3) God created the cosmos ex nihilo.
(4) The cosmos exists at @.

So far, so good -- nothing very controversial here for most varieties of theism. But, suppose we add

(5) It is not the case that God created @.

to the set of (1) through (4). Maybe some theists will want to reject that (1) through (5) is consistent.

How about if we add

(6) God actualized the cosmos.
(7) It is not the case that God actualized @.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a discussion of (5) and (7) before. Instead, these and other details related to the usual Leibnizian scenarios of God's contemplation of and selection among possible worlds tend to get glossed over pretty rapidly.

Can the doctrine of The Fall be saved?

Suppose we boil the doctrine of The Fall down to the following basic thesis:

(F) The disobedient acts of the first human persons ruined all of creation and caused God to be hidden.

According to tradition, 'ruined all of creation' explains why the world contains as much pain, suffering, disaster, and mortality as it does. In short, we are told that (F) entails something like the further thesis

(E) The disobedient acts of the first human persons are the reason that the world contains pain, suffering, disaster, and mortality.

But we have every empirical reason to reject (E). We know from, e.g., the fossil record that creatures have been suffering and eating each other and dying for hundreds of millions of years prior to the activity of any human persons. So, we know that (E) is false. By modus tollens, (F) must be false too.
Which raises two questions: To what extent does the tradition still endorse (F) and (E)? If, on the other hand, the tradition gave up on (F) and (E), approximately when?

The extent to which 20th century analytic philosophers of religion have, e.g., defended premises and assumptions such that natural evil is a necessary condition for the observed regularities of the natural world, which regularities are themselves in turn necessary for the acquisition and development of moral knowledge in human persons. What's become a commonplace in discussions of the problem of divine hiddenness -- that it is necessary for God to hide in order to protect his creatures from epistemic coercion -- explicitly contradicts (F). Another prominent example might be Plantinga's suggestion that it is possible that each and every human person suffers from transworld depravity, according to which, for every human person, there is no possible world in which that person performs only morally good actions. Insofar as tradition emphasizes that The Fall is a human failure, it may create tension to think that every world that contains human persons was unavoidably bound to be a fallen world.

Does Satan have creaturely freedom?

According to the traditional account, Satan is a fallen angel (or, at least, a fallen creature). That Satan is fallen entails that Satan has creaturely freedom. Satan's fall was presumably temporally prior to Adam and Eve's fall (in other words, The Fall). And, presumably, Satan's being fallen is a result of Satan's disobeying God in some way.

While the traditional account explains that the cause of The Fall was Adam and Eve's disobedience, tradition is curiously silent about why it was human disobedience which caused The Fall and not Satan's.

One possibility is that Satan's disobedience did in fact result in a Primeval Fall which was temporally prior to The Fall. Perhaps it was the Primeval Fall which first ruined creation. If the Primeval Fall occurred millions or billions of years ago, this might even neatly explain why so-called natural evil is (very much) more ancient than The Fall.

Perhaps there is support in the tradition for the idea that the Primeval Fall took place 'in Heaven' -- or perhaps, in other words at least, a creaturely location that is nonlocally related to Earth. At any rate, according to tradition, Satan is spatiotemporally located in The Garden when he tempts Adam and Eve.

The details are unfortunately unclear, however, leaving us with a handful of difficulties.

First, suppose a Primeval Fall transpired in Heaven. Even Heaven is susceptible to the effects of creaturely freedom. This would suggest that creaturely freedom leads unavoidably to disobedience. For the purposes of the afterlife, then, God would have need to restrict the freedom of human persons in Heaven in order to prevent another Fall.

Second, the strongest replies to atheological Divine Hiddenness arguments involve a premise along the lines of 'God must be hidden in order to protect the epistemic and cognitive freedom of his creatures.' But the fact of a heavenly Primeval Fall would establish that being in the full presence of God does not compromise creaturely freedom.

Third, on the other hand, there is the conceptual difficulty of explaining how it is that Satan -- a rational free agent with full knowledge and experience of the presence of God -- rejects God. What rational grounds could Satan have for freely rejecting God, and unrepentantly so?

Creation and Fall: An Inconsistent Set

The traditional account of Creation and Fall is inconsistent, insofar as it entails the following inconsistent set of propositions.

(1) Disobedience to God caused the Fall.
(2) Satan disobeyed God prior to Adam and Eve.
(3) Adam and Eve caused the Fall.
(4) Satan did not cause the Fall.
(5) The first misuse of creaturely freedom caused the Fall.
(6) Only as a result of the Fall, God is now hidden.

The set of (1) through (6) is inconsistent; they cannot all be true. Insofar as the traditional account entails each of (1) through (6), the traditional account is false.

For the purposes of discussion, I have summarized the traditional account below.

Creation and Fall: The Traditional Account

Before creation, there was nothing in the world but God. Until there came a moment when God performed creation, and the universe was born. God spoke, and the universe was born out of nothing. God saw the universe, and said that it was good.

Among the things God created was The Garden. And it was in The Garden that God created human persons. God created human persons to be special, to reflect His own image. God created human persons to be free like Himself, free to choose between Good and Evil. God saw creaturely freedom, and said that it was good.

Adam and Eve were the first human persons in The Garden. Adam and Eve were happy and free in the presence of God.

Happy though they were with their lives in The Garden in the presence of God, one day Adam and Eve chose to do Evil. Adam and Eve were tempted by Satan (a powerful but wicked nonhuman person possessed of creaturely freedom) to disobey God and do Evil. Instead of obeying God's wishes to do Good, Adam and Eve used their freedom to disobey God.

This single human decision of Adam and Eve to disobey God caused The Fall.

The Fall ruined God's creation. God's creatures now must live lives full of pain and suffering and mortality. Adam and Eve were chased out of The Garden, forbidden to return. And not only did Adam and Eve cause life for God's creatures to be full of pain and suffering and mortality. Adam and Eve also caused God to be hidden. Adam and Eve caused God to be chased away.

Because of The Fall, creation contained now Evil as well as Good. The name of this Evil was Sin. Adam and Eve were not the first to choose Sin. Before Adam and Eve, Satan had abused his own freedom and chosen Sin. But it was Adam and Eve's first Sin which caused The Fall. Like Satan before them, Adam and Eve were now unclean from Sin.

The Fall and its effects were irrevocable. All of creation, and every of Adam and Eve's descendants, were ruined and unclean from Sin.