Rope, I would suggest that this ‘problem for atheists’ exists purely in Nagasawa’s imagination – a “problem of evil for imagined atheists” rather than for real atheists.
It relies on the fallacy that atheists (or theists or agnostics for that matter) are purely rational in their life choices.
I would suggest that nobody is that rational. All our lives are a mess of spur-of-the-moment choices, emotion, instinct, and cultural pressures.
This view also runs into the problem that parents rational expectations of the lives their children might lead are not homogeneous. Those who would have the lowest expectations, are also likely to have the least leisure time to contemplate views such as Nagasawa’s, so will likely have children regardless. Those with the leisure for such contemplation are likely to have far higher expectations, and so it is far less obviously irrational for them to have children.
@Roy and @John_Harshman, as fellow atheists, what do you make of Nagasawa’s views, both described above, and quoted by me here?
@Faizal_Ali, as a psychiatrist, do you find Nagasawa’s analysis of human motivations to be reasonable?
I would again have to disagree. Every day, on my daily walk, I “admire” the calls of the Tui and the Bellbird, and the antics of the Fantail and Native Pigeon. Intellectually, I know, if I put thought into it, that these birds are subject to predation, disease, starvation, etc – but generally I don’t. ‘Out of sight out of mind’ is a thoroughly normal part of human cognition and psychology. Nagasawa would seem to be ignoring this (either intentionally or unintentionally) in his analysis.
Similarly, “existential optimism” would seem better explained by normal human psychology than confected into a tortured argument for tortured atheist minds.
I would conclude by suggesting that humans are never completely “without contradiction”, and that to assume otherwise is irrational.
Postscript:
After writing this I did a spell of exercycling, as I do each day. Today I listened to tracks from Queen’s final album, Innuendo, recorded while their lead singer, Freddie Mercury, was in the final stages of dying of AIDS. This section of the title track seems relevant:
If there’s a God or any kind of justice under the sky
If there’s a point if there’s a reason to live or die
If there’s an answer to the questions we feel bound to ask
Show yourself - destroy our fears - release your mask
Oh yes we’ll keep on trying
Hey tread that fine line
Yeah we’ll keep on smiling yeah (yeah yeah)
And whatever will be will be
We’ll keep on trying
We’ll just keep on trying
Till the end of time
I’ve never seen any indication that Freddie was a religious person. His determination to sing until his last breath, rather than end the pain early, may well have been irrational. Then I can only thank the universe for this irrationality, for the joy that this album has brought to me and many others, in spite of his pain (or quite possibly because of it – as his mortality is a major underlying theme of some of its most enduring songs).