In his article, ‘Why Evolution Does Not Make the Problem of Evil Worse’, discussed on this thread, Rope Kojonen cites a chapter (from The Problem of Evil: Eight Views in Dialogue, edited by N. N. Trakakis) by Yujin Nagasawa titled ‘The Problem of Evil for Atheists’.
The foundation of Nagasawa’s argument is a purported inconsistency between belief in widespread ‘Natural Evil’, what Nagasawa terms “Systematic Evil”, and those who believe this being “grateful” for their lives, and being “happy”.
I believe that this “inconsistency” does not exist, and that ‘The Problem of Evil for Atheists’ that is founded on it therefore does not exist either.
Kojonen has repeatedly brought up Nagasawa (here and here), as well as bringing up this ‘inconsistency’ directly.
Kojonen however has been unwilling to defend this “inconsistency” (beyond simply asserting it), so I am left to explore it alone.
On further examination, the crux of both the purported inconsistency, and questions over its existence, would appear to be this definition:
‘Existential optimism’ is the thesis according to which the world is, overall, a good place and we should be grateful for our existence in it.
Nagasawa then builds this definition into his ‘problem’:
The thrust of the problem can be presented as the following question: Why should we think that the world is overall good and that we should be happy and grateful to be alive in it if our existence depends fundamentally on a violent, cruel, and unfair biological system which guarantees pain and suffering for uncountably many sentient animals?
But humanity does not live in the “overall” – we live in the “here and now” – in the happiness and suffering that we see ourselves or, to a lesser extent, that we hear about from friends and family, or to an even more attenuated degree, that we see reported on the news.
We do not need the world to be “overall, a good place”, merely to be “localised, a good place”. This renders Nagasawa’s definition of “existential optimism” defective, at least for the purposes of this analysis.
The human mind is simply incapable of encompassing the whole world, and all its happiness and suffering, even just in the present.
This is made worse because, in introducing ‘Systemic Evil’, Nagasawa states:
For approximately four billion years, uncountably many organisms have competed and struggled for survival. In this cruel, blind system, the weaker are eliminated, and even the
survivors will eventually die, often painfully and miserably.
It would therefore seem that “overall” encompasses the entire four billion years of life existing on the Earth. (This interpretation is also supported by the “… like” quote below.) This makes it even more impossible for the human mind to even comprehend, let alone base its degree of gratitude and happiness on it.
Further, I would suggest that, outside reading Philosophy of Religion or Apologetics, or participating in a forum such as this one, it is likely that these questions don’t even arise.
Nagasawa states that this situation is:
… like expressing our happiness about and gratitude for living with smiley faces while, at the same time, recognizing that we are standing on the corpses of countless people and sentient animals that have died painfully and miserably, allowing us to survive.
With all due respect to Nagasawa, I would suggest that it is wholly unlike this scenario.
The vast majority of the “overall” suffering is so vastly remote that a better description would be:
… like “expressing our happiness about and gratitude for living with smiley faces” while there is this pile of corpses off on the horizon, where we can only see them, dimly, through a telescope in our attic, if we bother to climb the stairs, and if we happen to point our telescope in exactly the right direction (instead of at the myriad of other philosophical ‘problems’ and conundrums that we might otherwise focus on).
But I think even this simile exaggerates the situation.
Beyond this issue of distance and of inability to encompass the “overall”, is the issue that I did not ask for any of this. I was given not choice as to whether I came into existence or not. That I should feel some form of ‘existential guilt’ for this existence therefore feels alien – and would seem to require an unnatural degree of philosophical contortion. If I contort my mind in just the right way I can see what is being argued at, but the viewpoint simply does not ‘stick’.
My thesis is therefore that the “overall” balance between suffering and happiness has such a massively-attenuated effect on human consciousness, that it has negligible effect on happiness.
Therefore there is no inconsistency.
