Topics Religion

Question Doesn't the "problem of evil" objection to God's existence presuppose that people ought to be happy? Isn't the idea that people ought or deserve to be happy questionable?

Accepted:
August 17, 2011

Comments

Terrific question! And of course there are reams of responses to and analysis of this very issue ... And you're certainly right that from a religious perspective, it's not entirely clear or obvious that 'happiness' would be (say) God's ultimate goal for human beings, for many different reasons ... But you know, the problem of evil is often framed rather differently -- not merely asking (say) how God can permit so much unhappiness, or so much suffering -- but so much *injustice*. The point of life may not be to be "happy" (whatever "happiness" exactly is, for various people) -- but surely it seems quite unjust when an innocent person, or a good person, is made to suffer in any number of ways -- or when small children are murdered -- and so on. What your point very nicely does (I think) is show that at least *some* of the things that people call "evils" really amount to their merely being inconvenienced or made unhappy -- and then you are right that these sorts of things would hardly disprove the existence of a God who wants more for us than mere happiness or convenient lives. But then there are plenty of other evils -- serious injustices -- to which it's hard to respond that the point of our life isn't merely to be happy -- so it's somehow not objectionable when innocent people are made to suffer dreadfully.

Hope that helps!
best ap

While I think that Andy is quite right to note that the problem of evil is normally framed in terms of suffering instead of happiness, I nevertheless want to add a couple of remarks concerning the possibility that happiness is the ultimate end of the human being, and how this might relate to the problem of evil, and then to take up the issue of whether human beings deserve happiness, a deep and interesting question in its own right.

Philosophers from Aristotle through Kant have taken happiness to be an end, if not the ultimate end, of human beings, although they have cashed out the respect in which happiness might play this role in very different ways. Indeed, Christian philosophers have traditionally believed that the blessed in Heaven will be rewarded with a vision of God that constitutes bliss. Now such philosophers recognize that in this life, at least, human beings may not experience happiness at all, but nevertheless this constitutes no block to their thinking that ultimately the worthy will be rewarded with happiness, at least in the next life. Interestingly, in the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant takes this idea to constitute the basis for what may be called a moral proof of God's existence: given that virtuous human beings are often not rewarded, and even suffer, in this life, and given, Kant claims, following the tradition, that happiness is one of man's ends, God must exist in order to ensure that virtue is ultimately proportioned with happiness. And I think that Kant's predecessors would have accepted his conclusion, if not the argument that he makes for this conclusion. Now insofar as the problem of evil is supposed to challenge the plausibility of thinking that God exists, or at least that God does not have the attributes commonly attributed to Him by theists, the question of how human beings are ultimately to achieve happiness, answered by appealing to the existence of God, is also threatened by the nest of considerations traditionally associated with the problem of evil. This is one way to see these issues as related, although a theist must of course respond to the problem of evil if s/he is to be entitled to appeal to God's existence in order to justify the claim that happiness is the ultimate end of human beings, which they can indeed achieve.

Yet as you point out, there's a deep question as to why it should be believed that happiness is an end of human life. Arguments for this claim have often tended to appeal to human nature, and especially in the Christian era, also to appeal to Biblical and Patristic claims about the ends of life. But why should it even be thought that happiness is an end of human life? This, I think, is a deep and important question, consideration of which might well illuminate a host of issues, from questions regarding the nature of religion to issues about the nature of a human being, that have been engaged both by theists and non-theists alike. One way to begin to approach this question, I submit, is to examine both the nature of happiness itself, and its relation to desert, and, indeed, whether the very concept of desert is reasonable.

Question Doesn't the "problem of evil" objection to God's existence presuppose that people ought to be happy? Isn't the idea that people ought or deserve to be happy questionable? Accepted:August 17, 2011

Question Doesn't the "problem of evil" objection to God's existence presuppose that people ought to be happy? Isn't the idea that people ought or deserve to be happy questionable?

Accepted:
August 17, 2011