I don’t think I’ve written on this exact thought here before, but stop me if it sounds familiar.
The problem of evil is perhaps the most persuasive argument that all religion is bullshit. Why does so much human suffering occur, if a god exists who’s not a complete sadist?
Any deity who has deliberately or negligently set up a world in which thousands of children starve to death every single day, utterly unable to do anything to improve their circumstances, is not worth any kind of notice, let alone praise. And while every theistic explanation for this sorry state of affairs I’ve yet encountered has been insipid, vacuous, disingenuous, demonstrably false, patronising, or in some other way unconvincing, the point that most believers will eventually settle on goes something like this:
People have free will to do terrible things. If God didn’t let people make mistakes, we’d be mindless robots incapable of making any real choices about how to live our lives.
Now, even assuming that things like disease and natural catastrophes can somehow also be covered by the “free will” excuse, it still fails for one particular reason that doesn’t seem to get brought up a whole lot:
Free will sucks.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d object as strongly as anyone if some alien bodysnatchers started to take control of the limbs and mental faculties I call “mine”, and of which I currently enjoy the sensation of being in command. The notion of having one’s free will taken away, or of simply being a purely deterministic automaton, is inherently kinda creepy.
But think about the trade-off here. In the above apologetic, free will is offered as the primary reason why every living human being isn’t blissfully, wonderfully happy every moment of their lives.
I cannot be alone in considering this a seriously shitty deal.
Of course, there are good reasons why giving up one’s autonomy is so often presented as a sinister prospect. In film and literature, it tends to be governments and corporations that are presumed to know what’s best for all of us, and which invariably turn out to have some kind of deplorable, megalomaniacal underside. The protagonist will usually (though not always) succeed in exposing and undermining this charade, and returning to the populace the independence they never knew they’d lost. Humanity has a hard time ahead, but a new dawn rises on a hopeful future.
And yes, that’s all jolly good. In practice, in the real world, surrendering authority so completely can only leave oneself vulnerable to being exploited, and no such guarantee of pure happiness as a trade-off can ever be trusted.
But we’re talking about God, not a group of people easily corrupted by power. Surely we can rely on the creator of the universe to be more benevolent than the guys who invented Google?
I cannot imagine anything that mankind is accomplishing in the current arrangement, which wouldn’t be far surpassed by the simple, continuous, eternal contentment and bliss that God ought to be capable of providing. If he wasn’t a dick. And fictional.
Yes, sir, you are right.
But I bet the religious types will just come back with ‘well hedonism is just sinful.’ – depending on the religion I suppose.
Some people just have a need to self-flagellate, they’re masochistic, punishment-craving, guilt-ridden… weirdos.
I’d rather be happy, personally. Seems that’s just more proof of the selfish nature of atheists, though.
Yep, I reached the same conclusion a few months ago after listening to a discussion — essentially if we do have free will from a god then the only thing we didn’t decide of our own free will is whether we in fact wanted to have it as part of the tradeoff. Now, maybe some people would (many value things like heroism which need a certain degree of suffering) but the point is that this is the most important decision of all in the standard theistic universe and it’s one that was imposed on us by fiat.
Of course on the other hand I wouldn’t say free will sucks since free will as described by most religions (essentially decision making free from causality) isn’t coherent at all!
Here’s a dilemma for you:
Imagine you were to be reborn (or for sake of argument just somehow to start an entirely new life).
Beforehand you are offered a choice of three envelopes.
Envelope 1 is labelled: “Boring uneventful life” and contains a ticket to such a life.
There are two other tickets – to either:
“Life of luxury” or
“Life of misery, possibly shortened”.
Envelopes 2 and 3 contain these two other tickets but the envelopes are not labelled and it is not possible to distinguish which ticket is inside each.
You have a free choice from the three envelopes before beginning your new life.
Do you take the envelope labelled “Boring uneventful life” or do you pick one of the unlabelled ones?
How does this scenario achieve a boring life without altering the personality of the person reborn? If they are interesting they are likely to have an interesting life.
If all 3 envelopes are about circumstances only (ie. mundane circumstances, great circumstances, terrible circumstances) I’d choose mundane on the assumption that it can still be the basis for an interesting life — but am definitely curious what others think.
“…I currently enjoy the sensation of being in command. The notion of having one’s free will taken away, or of simply being a purely deterministic automaton, is inherently kinda creepy.”
and there it is, the common appeal to free-will. People really don’t like the idea of not being in control, they like the *feeling* of being in control. I stress *feeling* because that is all it is, just a feeling of control, it is not really control. Free-will is not compatible with causality and the laws of physics as we know them. There is no evidence of free-will nor scientific support for it. On the contrary, science shows us that our universe is more or less deterministic with some possibility for randomness, neither of which support free-will.
I find it quite unsettling that so many atheists will settle for just this *feeling* of free-will but will have none of the theists excuses for a just *feeling* of a god is out there. There isn’t evidence for either. Theist find the belief of a god comforting, and believe becuase of it. Most atheists believe in free-will because they find it comforting. Even though both are without evidence.
I don’t believe in a god or free-will.