The Problem of Unbearable Suffering Part 4: Testing the premises

Part 1: https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-problem-of-unbearable-suffering.html

Part 2: https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-problem-of-unbearable-suffering_13.html

Part 3: https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-problem-of-unbearable-suffering_74.html

In Part 3 we saw the argument from unbearable suffering against skeptical theism laid out in premise form. Let's go through it premise by premise:

1) Goods and evils depend ultimately on conscious awareness. (Premise 1)

This falls out of the analysis of goods and evils cashing out ultimately as intrinsic goods and evils. Intrinsic goods and evils are the building blocks of goods and evils. But the only possible kind of intrinsic good or intrinsic evil that I can think of is the kind the goodness / badness of which is directly accessible, which requires conscious access. 

2) If goods and evils depend ultimately on conscious awareness, then unbearable conscious suffering (‘unbearable suffering’) is the greatest possible evil for an individual. (Premise 2)

If evils ultimately cash out their evil-ness in conscious terms, then evils in general are ultimately conscious. By categorical logic, if something general holds then so does something more specific. If all cats are cute, then my cat is cute. Likewise, if all evils are ultimately conscious, then the worst evils are ultimately conscious.

3) Therefore, unbearable suffering is the greatest possible evil for an individual. (From 1,2; modus ponens)

4) Every evil corresponds to an equivalent good of being saved from that evil. (Premise 3)

A puzzle in philosophy is to prove the badness of death for the one who dies. Common sensically, death is one of the worst things that can happen to the individual. But if the individual experiences no suffering in death, then what grounds the badness of death? This is where depriving evils come in. Depriving evils deprive one of intrinsic goods that the individual would otherwise have enjoyed. The conscious difference between enjoying those goods and not grants the conscious grounds for the badness of depriving evils. We view death as tragic, especially for those who die young. We say that murderers "robbed the victim" of their life. This account of depriving evils explains our common sense attitudes toward death and murder.

Depriving evils suggest the equivalent good: saving goods, like a helmet saving someone from injury or medicine saving someone from an illness (or: proper forestry saving a city from burning down from a raging wildfire). The greater the evil, the greater the good that saves one from the evil.

5) Therefore, being saved from unbearable suffering is the greatest possible good for the individual experiencing unbearable suffering. (From 3,4; categorical syllogism)

6) The phenomenon of suicide demonstrates that some people experience unbearable suffering. (Premise 4)

Unbearable suffering is something like "maxed out conscious constant pain." Ironically, if someone is in the middle of experiencing maxed out conscious pain, they wouldn't be capable of suicide, as the pain would be incapacitating. However, if someone is in that kind of pain, they likely are willing themselves to die even if they are not capable of doing so. So if someone wills themselves to die and is capable of acting accordingly, then that suggests someone can believe that being alive is not worth it despite not being in maxed out pain. If unbearable suffering is defined instead as "a level of suffering that renders life not worth living", then unbearable suffering is not maxed out conscious suffering; someone can will themselves to die before reaching maxed out conscious suffering.

So really we have two separate evils here: unbearable suffering (suffering so great that the individual would prefer death, but not so great that they would be incapacitated to the point of not being able to end their own life) and maxed out suffering (suffering so great that it's utterly incapacitating). While suicide demonstrates the reality of the first kind, it doesn't demonstrate the reality of the second kind. But the second kind certainly exists; third-degree burns, breaking one's femur, passing kidney stones, severe back injuries, various torture methods, and giving birth have been described as incapacitating pains. 

For the purposes of the argument, I think any suffering severe enough to make life not worth living counts as severe enough to enable the equivalent greatest possible good. In terms of strictly making life not worth living, both evils are equal.

7) If some people experience unbearable suffering and the greatest possible good for the individual experiencing unbearable suffering is to be spared from unbearable suffering, then it is not the case that for all we know all evils produce greater goods that justify them. (Premise 5)

The idea here is that for an evil to be justified there must be a good that depends on that evil and is greater than the evil. (I unpack the idea of 'gratuitous evil' more fully in my previous series on evil. See: https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2024/09/dementia-and-problem-of-evil-part-66.html) But if the greatest possible good for someone is to be saved from the greatest possible evil, then the fact that the person is experiencing that evil proves that that person has missed out on the greatest possible good that depends on that evil. Thus, if we see someone experiencing unbearable suffering, then we see someone experiencing a gratuitous evil.

You might imagine a scenario where one person's unbearable suffering causes another person to be saved from unbearable suffering. In that case, the first person's unbearable suffering does result in a maximal good, balancing out the evil. But that doesn't work. We are talking about the greatest possible good with respect to an individual. With respect to the first sufferer in this scenario, there is no good for them that compensates for their suffering. When we are talking about a God who loves the individual, of course we are talking about goods and evils with respect to the individual.

8) Therefore, it is not the case that for all we know all evils produce greater goods that justify them. (From 5,6,7; modus ponens)

9) If skeptical theism is true, then for all we know all evils produce greater goods that justify them. (Premise 6)

Some theists have argued that God need not ensure that all evils produce greater goods. Here is where I might rely on the analysis of gratuitous evil I give in my previous series. But the gist is the same as mentioned above: if God is a God who loves each person individually, then it's unloving of God to use someone's suffering in some satisficing kind of way, or in a way that benefits a story or a whole that has little to do with the individual, as that treats the individual as a means to an end.

And if the theists have in mind ultimate goods that come around and do benefit the individual sufferer, then by the argument I have given there is no way that these goods will be good enough, for an even greater good, and thus an even greater expression of love for the individual, would be to save the individual from unbearable suffering.

There are alternative ways of putting skeptical theism. I've listed out two below.

10) Therefore, skeptical theism is not true. (From 8,9; modus tollens)

Alternative version 1:

If skeptical theism is true, then it's not the case that we can see when evils cannot be justified. But we can see when evils cannot be justified.

. . .

7) If some people experience unbearable suffering and the greatest possible good for the individual experiencing unbearable suffering is to be spared from unbearable suffering, then there are some evils for which we can see that there cannot be greater goods that justify them. (Premise 5)

8) Therefore, there are some evils for which we can see that there cannot be greater goods that justify them. (From 5,6,7; modus ponens)

9) If skeptical theism is true, then there are no evils for which we can see that there cannot be greater goods that justify them. (Premise 6)

10) Therefore, skeptical theism is not true. (From 8,9; modus tollens)

Alternative version 2:

. . .

7) If some people experience unbearable suffering and the greatest possible good for the individual experiencing unbearable suffering is to be spared from unbearable suffering, then our perceived weight of the reasons for forbidding or allowing some evils is necessarily the actual weight of the reasons for forbidding or allowing some evils. (Premise 5)

8) Therefore, our perceived weight of the reasons for forbidding or allowing some evils is necessarily the actual weight of the reasons for forbidding or allowing some evils. (From 5,6,7; modus ponens)

9) If skeptical theism is true, then our perceived weight of the reasons for forbidding or allowing any evils is not necessarily the actual weight of the reasons for forbidding or allowing any evils. (Premise 6)

10) Therefore, skeptical theism is not true. (From 8,9; modus tollens)

This alternative version uses the language of 'perceived weight of the reasons...', following Perry Hendricks. This was written to neatly keep the parallelism to show the modus ponens, but strictly speaking Premise 5 could use some adjustments:

"...then our perceived weight of the reasons for forbidding unbearable suffering is necessarily the actual weight of the reasons for forbidding unbearable suffering. (Premise 5)"

But even this isn't quite right. It's more like: our perceived greater weight of the reasons for forbidding unbearable suffering over allowing unbearable suffering is necessarily accurate enough. We needn't perfectly perceive the difference in the weights of reasons. As long as we're necessarily close enough, that's enough to show that we see that the allowing of unbearable suffering is necessarily unjustified.

Extending to an argument against the existence of God

". . . it is not the case that for all we know all evils produce greater goods that justify them." ⟶ We know of some evils for which it is impossible for there to be greater goods that justify them. ⟶ We know there are some gratuitous evils.

Our perceived greater weight of the reasons for forbidding unbearable suffering over the reasons for allowing suffering is roughly the actual weight of the reasons for forbidding unbearable suffering over the reasons for allowing suffering. ⟶ We know of some evils for which it is impossible for there to be greater goods that justify them. ⟶ We know there are some gratuitous evils.

Given the classic formulation of the evidential problem of evil, if we can see that some evils are gratuitous, then we can see that a perfect God does not exist. 

One might switch from focusing on a loving God to a perfect God. The reason to do so is because you might think you could have a perfectly loving God who lacks the knowledge or power to act according to his perfect love, and thus to prevent gratuitous evils. Though that doesn't apply if you think of love itself as being a function to some degree of one's knowledge and power (i.e. you cannot love someone perfectly unless you are sufficiently wise and powerful). Either way, a perfect God is the target of the argument.

I think rhetorically it's more effective to focus on a loving God. 'Love' is more specific, intuitive, and personal than 'perfection'. And Christians, in the end, claim that God loves you, and it's easy for one to test that proposition introspectively. "Do I feel like there's an all-knowing, all-powerful being who loves me, given the details of my life?" – that's a more powerful and direct kind of question than, "Do I feel like this world was created by a perfect being?", though the latter is also a great question.

Rambling thoughts: Beliefs ground actions; actions do not ground beliefs

"History admits no rules, only outcomes. What precipitates outcomes? Vicious acts and virtuous acts. What precipitates acts? Belief."

-David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

A professor of mine pushed back against my idea (not that I'm the first to come up with it) that moral facts are a kind of epistemic fact; i.e. moral facts are facts about what we ought to believe about what we ought to do. More specifically, moral facts are facts about the weight of the external reasons for doing or refraining from a morally contextualized action, or about the weight of the external reasons for believing that doing or refraining from a morally contextualized action would make things on the whole better, would fulfill some kind of necessary moral obligation, would demonstrate one's virtue, or some combination thereof (depending on the normative theory the actor has in mind at the time of the action).

(So the weight of reasons is something discovered, not invented. If reasons are external, then consequences, actions, and virtue can all generate reasons for acting, and in that sense I agree with normative pluralism. But really I think reasons from action and reasons from virtue cash out consequentially, and in that sense I agree with consequentialism.)

(Side note: I'm open to the idea that all actions are morally contextualized. One might think that prudential reasons are not moral reasons. For example, you have prudential reasons to make a certain chess move given your desire to win the chess game, but you have no moral reasons to make that move or any other move, or to play or not play chess in the first place. But you might think that we have a moral obligation to maximize flourishing, and it may just so happen to be that you playing chess, and playing to win, maximizes flourishing at some time.)

He suggests that if believing is a kind of doing, a kind of an action, then epistemic facts are moral facts. That is, the fact of what you believe (so really, doxastic facts) determines whether you believe in something good or evil; i.e. there are moral facts about what beliefs are good or evil. Moral facts come first.

But that opens up a mystery: What could these moral facts be? What are they composed of?

One reason for locating moral facts in epistemic facts is that it doesn't face this mystery. The wrongness of evil actions is really the same wrongness as believing in false beliefs. 

But we don't think of believing in false beliefs as necessarily evil, and yet we do feel that evil actions are evil, so how could the wrongness of both be the same? The answer is that not all false beliefs are morally contextualized. If I falsely believe the square root of 9 to be 6, then that probably won't significantly affect the real moments of real flourishing real people really have, or would have. But if I falsely believe that some race is inferior to mine, then that's an evil belief because not only is it false and/or irrational, but it's morally contextualized; consequences, action, and virtue are at stake with that kind of belief in a way they are not at stake with innocuous false beliefs.

Put simply, you can be wrong, and you can be wrong in a way that hurts yourself or others. It's the latter kind of wrongness that we call evil.

Another problem: Why think believing is a kind of doing? I could see this if someone were a doxastic voluntarist and believed that we choose our beliefs. But I think doxastic involuntarism is true; we do not choose our beliefs.

It seems to me that beliefs ground actions, not the other way around. And thus evil beliefs ground evil actions; or morally-contextualized-false-beliefs ground morally-contextualized-false-actions. If actions depend on beliefs, then why not think actions that depend on irrational beliefs as irrational actions? And if that irrationality threatens to hurt people and cause needless suffering, then why not call these irrational actions evil?

Some people might say that a person cannot control the consequences of their actions, and so it's not fair to call an action evil when the person performing the action had good intentions and cannot be blamed for not seeing the future. But I don't believe in free will, so I don't believe in moral blame anyway. I do think a kind of critical blame is okay whereby we acknowledge the lower or high quality of a person's organism (i.e., it's okay to praise or curse someone for their talents or irrationality respectively), but hating the person per se (i.e. the soul or self) does not make sense when the person per se is merely along for the ride and has no control of their brain structure or circumstances.

In other words, my consequentialism does not lead to the unfair judgment of actions as evil in terms of blame, because I don't believe any moral blame is fair to begin with. (Certainly there is causal blame, but that's not the same as moral blame. Rats helped cause the spread of plague, but we don't morally blame the rats in the sense that we think their spreading the plague says something about the moral character of the rats.)

Certainly, intentions matter, though I would argue that intentions matter exactly for consequentialist reasons. If someone has bad intentions, then we can expect them to be a future cause of evil. But if someone has good intentions, then it's merely a fluke that some of their actions have poor consequences. Of course, if someone has good intentions but is incompetent, and their incompetence is causing problems, then they will naturally be removed from positions of responsibility. So even when we don't treat a person as evil for causing problems, we still treat them as a cause of problems (we exterminate rats even when we don't blame them).

What makes an action evil, on my view, just is the fact that the reasons to perform the action are outweighed by the reasons to not perform the action. "Evil" basically means "irrational and pertaining to consequences, intentions, and virtue"; in other words, "irrational and morally contextualized". This parallels the epistemic side: What makes a belief irrational is the fact that the reasons to believe that belief are outweighed by the reasons to refrain from believing it. People blamelessly believe wrongly just as they blamelessly act wrongly. In some cases those beliefs or actions tell us something about the rationality of the person (but the person never chooses to be irrational; they simply are that way); in other cases those beliefs or actions only tell us about the extenuating circumstances of the person.

What about non-propositional beliefs and actions? Animals act, and yet animals don't seem to have beliefs.

One option is to say that non-propositional beliefs are indeed a kind of belief. Animals certainly hold some kind of regarding attitude. Animals regard this area as their territory, or this moving thing as a source of food. These non-propositional regardings ground the animal's actions. Ditto for human infants, or know-how knowledge. If I know how to play a song on the piano, the actual playing of the song is largely a non-propositional effort. And yet, there is still a kind of regarding that takes place; I regard this note as the right note to play at this moment.

Another option is to say non-propositional beliefs don't exist; animals have no beliefs of any kind, and yet they have actions. Thus, there are actions not grounded in belief, but grounded in instincts or biological processes. It would just follow that these actions are non-rational; they cannot be rational or irrational, and thus cannot be good or evil. (They can be good or bad in the sense of beneficial vs harmful.)

But almost all human actions are belief-based, even if the belief is implicit and subconscious.

The Problem of Unbearable Suffering Part 3: Unbearable Suffering in the Actual World

Part 3: Unbearable suffering in the actual world

The phenomenon of suicide demonstrates that some people experience unbearable suffering in the actual world. For someone to even consider ending their life, it must be the case that their suffering is nearing unbearable levels. For someone to follow through with choosing their own death is to very clearly state that being alive is not worth it for them.

It may not be the case that suicide is necessary for unbearable suffering. Hypothetically someone could experience unbearable suffering at the thought of both staying alive and at the thought of facing death. Someone could be truly stuck in their unbearable suffering. Someone could experience unbearable suffering right before they die or are killed.

You may wonder about suicide survivors who go on to say that attempting suicide was a mistake and that they failed to see at the time how much they had to live for. I have two points in response to this. First, that doesn’t rule out the existence of those who truly do experience unbearable suffering and end their lives because of it. Second, it could still be the case that the survivors were in fact experiencing unbearable suffering at the time of their attempt, and it wasn’t until later that their suffering subsided. Even if someone retrospectively realizes that their unbearable suffering wasn’t rational, it’s nevertheless the case that the unbearable suffering took place.

Putting all the pieces together, we can put the Argument from Unbearable Suffering in premise form:

1) Goods and evils depend ultimately on conscious awareness. (Premise 1)

2) If goods and evils depend ultimately on conscious awareness, then unbearable conscious suffering (‘unbearable suffering’) is the greatest possible evil for an individual. (Premise 2)

3) Therefore, unbearable suffering is the greatest possible evil for an individual. (From 1,2; modus ponens)

4) Every evil corresponds to an equivalent good of being saved from that evil. (Premise 3)

5) Therefore, being saved from unbearable suffering is the greatest possible good for the individual experiencing unbearable suffering. (From 3,4; categorical syllogism)

6) The phenomenon of suicide demonstrates that some people experience unbearable suffering. (Premise 4)

7) If some people experience unbearable suffering and the greatest possible good for the individual experiencing unbearable suffering is to be spared from unbearable suffering, then it is not the case that for all we know all evils produce greater goods that justify them. (Premise 5)

8) Therefore, it is not the case that for all we know all evils produce greater goods that justify them. (From 5,6,7; modus ponens)

9) If skeptical theism is true, then for all we know all evils produce greater goods that justify them. (Premise 6)

10) Therefore, skeptical theism is not true. (From 8,9; modus tollens)

The Problem of Unbearable Suffering Part 2: Analysis of Suffering

Part 2: Unbearable suffering

The data to be explained is our conviction that NGL is certainly not loving and that we should be able to see this. I suggest that it’s the maxed out suffering (I use ‘maxed out suffering’ and ‘unbearable suffering’ interchangeably) of the inhabitants of the nightmare world that lies at the center of the explanation. This can be seen intuitively by considering the relevant differences between increasingly better versions of the nightmare world. If God tortured his creatures for only a trillion years, instead of infinity, would he still fail to be perfectly loving? Clearly, yes. What about a trillion years minus one second? And minus another? There’s no non-arbitrary stopping point as we approach zero seconds spent in the nightmare world. What if God tortured only a trillion souls instead of infinite souls? Or a trillion souls minus one? Again, there’s no non-arbitrary stopping point. If God tortures even a single soul for a single second, this is enough to tarnish God’s perfect love.

However, once we reduce the intensity of the suffering, immediately it becomes less and less clear, as we approach zero suffering, that the God of the nightmare world is unloving. While fewer sufferers and shorter durations of suffering improves the nightmare world, we can reach all the way to the end—a single sufferer and a single moment of suffering—and it’s still clear that the nightmare God is not perfectly loving. But the same isn’t true when we compare nightmare worlds with reduced suffering. Far before we reach the equivalent end of next-to-no-suffering, we may hit a level of suffering low enough to be offset by justifying goods. So what’s principally driving the ‘nightmare’ of the nightmare world appears to be the maxed out suffering of the inhabitants.

Why would unbearable suffering be driving our certainty in the nightmare God’s lack of love in this way? My explanation is found within the following account of goodness and badness.[*2] For something to be intrinsically good is for something to be good in and of itself. To be good in and of itself is to be that the goodness of which is directly accessible. The only thing the goodness of which is directly accessible is an intrinsically positive conscious state, i.e. happiness. Conversely, the only thing the badness of which is directly accessible is an intrinsically negative conscious state – pain. Goods come in three varieties: Intrinsic goods are those goods the goodness of which is directly accessible; extrinsic goods are those goods that give rise to intrinsic goods; and saving goods are those goods that directly or indirectly prevent intrinsic evils. The evil equivalents are intrinsic evils, extrinsic evils, and depriving evils that directly or indirectly deprive one of intrinsic goods that otherwise would have been obtained.

Questions rise immediately. Are people intrinsically good? What about virtue, justice, and autonomy? Do we deprive the unborn every moment we forgo procreation? What about evil happiness, such as delighting in the suffering of others? Is that intrinsically good?

On the account of good and evil under consideration, people are not intrinsically good. While that might sound bad, it really shouldn’t once we understand what it must mean for something to be intrinsically good. We should avoid the mistake of using the word ‘intrinsic’ as an intensifier. When people say that something is intrinsically good, often they mean that it’s really good. Or they mean that its goodness is readily available. It might be tempting to think chocolate is intrinsically good because the chocolate itself can be eaten and enjoyed then and there. But chocolate is extrinsically good; only the goodness of the taste of chocolate is directly accessible (for those who like chocolate). It’s also a mistake in thinking that intrinsic goods must be of greater magnitude than extrinsic goods. Compare the goodness of the experience of a hot shower to the goodness of a dream job. Dream jobs are “only” extrinsically good, and yet their goodness dwarfs the intrinsic goodness of the experience of a hot shower.

Likewise, persons are “only” extrinsically valuable, but their value is immense and primary. Without people the intrinsically good states they generate would not be possible. People are loci of value – wellsprings of value – without which the greatest goods we know of would not exist, and indeed goodness itself would not be possible without the consciousness to cash it out. The value of virtue and justice is like this too – extrinsic but essential and primary, for one cannot live a good life without virtue.

Evil happiness is intrinsically good, which explains the motivating reasons for why people are tempted by it. But it’s extrinsically evil, leading to intrinsic evils down the line, which is why evil happiness is not worth pursuing. Consider a relatively innocent case of evil happiness: you know you shouldn’t have the extra dessert, but you succumb in a moment of akrasia and give into gluttony. This leads to intrinsic evils of guilt, dissatisfaction with your weight, and self-disappointment. Not all happiness is created equal; higher, more sophisticated forms of happiness carry far greater extrinsic goods than baser forms of happiness. 

We do not harm the unborn by not bringing them into being, as we do not cause them pain nor do we take away any pre-existing capacity to flourish. While we might deprive the unborn of goods they otherwise would enjoy by not reproducing, we also save them from evils they might have otherwise endured. Not to mention there are the risks of misery to yourself and others to consider as well. This is why bringing a child into the world is the great responsibility we consider it to be. While bringing a person into the world comes with great benefits, it comes with great risks as well. Presumably, a loving God would create people exactly because doing so adds more wellsprings of value to the world.

This is only a sketch of an account of good and evil. But if this account of good and evil is able to address questions such as these sufficiently well, as I think it can, then we have independent reasons for thinking this account, or something close enough, is right, and we needn’t appeal to it in an ad hoc fashion just to explain our conviction that the nightmare God cannot be loving. With that said, if this account also explains our conviction that the nightmare God cannot be loving, then that is further support for the account.

Given the distinctions of saving goods and depriving evils, we see how goods and evils entail each other in the sense that wherever there is an evil, there is the good of being saved from that evil, and wherever there is a good, there is the evil of being deprived of that good. However, as an aside, if being deprived of a lesser good enables you to obtain a greater good, for example being deprived of an affluent childhood saving you from developing a vicious character, then what may first appear to be a depriving evil may turn out to be an extrinsic good.

Unbearable suffering enables the equivalent good of being saved from that suffering. But when suffering is unbearable, and thus at capacity, then by definition the equivalent saving good is at capacity in its goodness. The greatest possible good for the person trapped in the worst possible fate is to be delivered from that fate.

So members of the nightmare world needn’t rely on a noseeum inference whereby they infer that there are likely no goods that could justify their fate from the fact that they cannot see what those goods could be. Instead, members of the nightmare world can see, with the same intuitive certainty we started with, that no such goods are possible. Maxed out intrinsic evils entail maxed out saving goods. So when the Nightmare God of Love says there are goods beyond your ken that justify your being tortured day and night in a lake of fire for all eternity, you can see, with certainty, that this God is lying or confused. It’s impossible for any mystery good to reach the max goodness of being delivered from unbearable suffering.

This explains the intuition support given earlier when we considered ever-improving nightmare worlds. When maxed suffering is reduced below the max, a gap appears between actual suffering and suffering-at-capacity. This gap allows God to show his love by allowing high-but-not-maxed suffering to prevent maxed suffering, if God is stuck in a position where he lacks the power to do any better. Hence, why reducing the suffering of the nightmare world makes it immediately unclear that the God of that world is unloving when reducing the duration or number of inhabitants does not. As an aside, of course it wouldn’t make sense for a God powerful enough to create a world to not be powerful enough to do better than allowing near-max suffering to prevent maxed suffering.

A problem arises at this point. If God deprived us from maxed out happiness, then wouldn’t this generate a maxed out depriving evil? But we wouldn’t experience such a depriving evil. And yet evils, especially maxed evils, are supposed to ultimately cash out in conscious experience on my account.

This points to a general problem of how depriving evils derive their evil on my account. Extrinsic evils cash out their evil when they produce intrinsic evils. But depriving evils do not necessarily produce intrinsic evils. If all evil must be realized consciously eventually, when are depriving evils realized?

We can think of depriving evils as comparative evils, opportunity cost evils, or the evil of the lesser good. When invited to a party, you consider the intrinsic goods you would enjoy at the party versus staying at home. Fear of missing out on those goods kicks in and you go to the party. We perform these kinds of comparison tests all the time when making decisions for future actions. While deprivation is not experienced, we still know that depriving evils are evil in the same way that we know intrinsic evils are evil: through a test in conscious awareness. We introspect and compare two potential future experiences, such as going to the party or staying home, and we use our past experience to inform us of which is likely to be the greater good. The lesser good becomes an evil compared to the greater good. Depriving evils derive their conscious badness in the hypothetical conscious inferiority of one good, or an altogether lack of good, compared to a greater good that was missed out on. Saving goods derive their goodness in the same way, via the conscious difference between suffering more and suffering less.

I see two directions we can move in with respect to God and maxed happiness. One is to say God is obliged to grant us maxed happiness because if God doesn’t then God will incur a maxed out depriving evil, and God can’t afford to incur such massive evils multiplied over all creatures. Our lack of maxed happiness then becomes another problem of evil. Another approach is to say that happiness (intrinsically positive mental states) when taken to too great an extreme becomes incapacitating. If God gave us a never-ending max dose of pure pleasure, we wouldn’t be able to do anything other than lie still, overwhelmed by the experience. All capacity for relationship, creativity, exploring reality, or those activities that make life most meaningful would be lost. Under this conception, maxed out happiness would result in deleterious effects, and thus being deprived of it is not actually a maxed out depriving evil.

The argument thus far has been in two parts. Skeptical theism says that for all we know, God could have access to goods that justify the evils we see. The first part has us imagine a nightmare world in which it seems absurd that God could have access to goods that justify the unbearable suffering of endless people. The second part attempts to explain why this strikes us as absurd. It’s absurd to think God could have justifying goods in the nightmare world because the greatest possible good for victims of unbearable suffering is to be spared from unbearable suffering. Therefore, it’s not always the case that we rely on a noseeum inference when inferring that God likely does not have access to justifying goods. We can see for ourselves, in the case of unbearable suffering, that such goods cannot exist. In Part 3 I briefly argue that unbearable suffering exists in the actual world.

---

*2 - This account is broadly hedonistic. Epicurus alludes to the idea that goods and evils depend on awareness: "Accustom yourself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply awareness, and death is the privation of all awareness . . ." Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus, trans. Robert Drew Hicks, The Internet Classics Archive, accessed January 04, 2025, https://classics.mit.edu/Epicurus/menoec.html.

The Problem of Unbearable Suffering Part 1: The Nightmare God of Love

Skeptical theism says that for all we know there are goods that depend on and justify the existence of evils. My argument, following William Rowe, begins with saying that skeptical theism faces the absurdity that God could allow any evils whatever. In Part 1 I imagine a nightmare God who creates and sustains a world of infinite conscious suffering. In Part 2 I offer an analysis of suffering that explains our conviction that the nightmare God is not loving. In Part 3 I show how the key feature of the nightmare world that proves its creator unloving—unbearable suffering—is found in the actual world. Therefore, just as we can see that there cannot be a Nightmare God of Love, we can see that there cannot be a God of love of the actual world.

Part 1: The Nightmare God of Love

My argument is inspired by William Rowe, who says the following about skeptical theism:

Because we cannot rule out God's knowing goods we do not know, we cannot rule out [the possibility of] goods that justify God in permitting any amount of evil whatever that might occur in our world. If human and animal life on earth were nothing more than a series of agonizing moments from birth to death, the position of my friends would still require them to say that we cannot reasonably infer that it is even likely that God does not exist. . . . But surely such a view is unreasonable, if not absurd. Surely there must be some point at which the appalling agony of human and animal existence on earth would render it unlikely that God exists.[*1]

My strategy is the following:

Step 1: Describe a nightmare world such that it's impossible for an all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful God to be the creator and sustainer of it.

Step 2: Identify those features of the nightmare world that explain why it's impossible for an all-loving God to be the creator and sustainer of it.

Step 3: Identify those features in the actual world.

If we can see how the Nightmare God of Love is impossible, and if we can see that there is no relevant difference between the Nightmare God of Love and the hypothetical creator of the actual world, then we can see that a loving God cannot exist.

We imagine the following:

Nightmare World = an infinite number of people experience maximal suffering (e.g., burning in a lake of fire) for an infinite amount of time. If you don’t believe in actual infinities, then posit a potentially infinite number of people experiencing maximal suffering for a potentially infinite amount of time.

Nightmare God = the creator and sustainer of the nightmare world.

Nightmare God of Love = the creator and sustainer of the nightmare world, and we stipulate that he is perfectly loving.

Imagine being covered in third-degree burns 24/7, surrounded by an endless sea of people like you screaming in agony. All you want, all the time, is to die or to be sent to a better world. One day, the Nightmare God of Love hovers above the lake of fire and speaks to a group of you (he numbs your pain just enough so you can focus on what he is saying). He says that he loves all of you and he's doing this for your own good, but those goods are beyond your ken, so you'll just have to trust him. Would you believe him?

You should have absolute certainty that this God is either lying or confused. Maybe the God is lying because he is cruel and delights in giving others false hope (considering he created and maintains a world of complete torture, that would check out). Maybe he is lying to perform a social experiment. If the God genuinely thinks he is doing you a favor, then he is definitely confused. Regardless of exactly how the nightmare God fails to be perfectly loving, he certainly fails nonetheless. If the God had the tiniest bit of love, just enough to take pity on his creatures, he would cease their suffering at once. So not only is this God not perfectly loving, but he is not loving even in the most minimal sense.

I will ward off a particular objection right away, as doing so will help set the context for my argument. The opponent of my argument can try to find a relevant difference between the actual world and the nightmare world in the following way: Many theodicies are applicable to our world, but no theodicies are applicable to the nightmare world. Whether any theodicy succeeds in making it more plausible than not that God has access to goods that justify evils is something to be debated. But there is no such debate possible in the nightmare world; not a single imaginable theodicy can get off the ground in the nightmare world.

But this misses the point. The Nightmare God of Love argument is, like Rowe's reductio ad absurdum, an argument against skeptical theism. It’s not relevant to skeptical theism whether God has access to plausible justifying goods—the entire thrust of skeptical theism is that we are not in a position to know whether God has access to justifying goods. But when we apply this skepticism to the nightmare world, we get the absurd result that members of the nightmare world are not in a position to know whether there are goods beyond their ken that justify their eternal torture. But surely members of such a world are in a position to know that such justifying goods cannot exist. My argument is striking explicitly against skeptical theism: I'm claiming we can see when justifying goods cannot exist.

The Nightmare God of Love (NGL) is certainly perfectly loving, because we stipulate him as such, and yet he is certainly not perfectly loving, as demonstrated by the fact that he is the creator and sustainer of the nightmare world. That's the contradiction. We can be certain that NGL is a contradictory being and thus does not exist. If we can be certain of anything, it’s that the God who tortures you day and night for eternity does not love you perfectly, or really at all. The trick is to prove that NGL is not perfectly loving. In virtue of what exactly can we say for certain that NGL is not perfectly loving? That is the question I take up in Part 2.

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*1 - Rowe, William. “An exchange on the problem of evil.” In God and the Problem of Evil, edited by Daniel Howard-Snyder, Michael Bergmann, & William Rowe, 124–158. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2001.

Gavin Ortlund on what we lose when we lose God

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K-nHx7GBGA

3:20 - 4:00

"Let's suppose there is no God. It is hard to state how dark that is. What it means for our human nature, for love, for the way that I feel about my kids – so that's one of the most important things in my life, that feeling of love I have for them. If that's reductively explained by evolutionary psychology – basically I feel this way because it helped animals survive in my animal ancestry, and that's it, and there's nothing more – if I really try to live on that basis, I do find it dehumanizing. It tears away everything that I think gives life value and meaning, and hope."

It cannot possibly be dehumanizing to find out the true nature of humans. It would be the opposite; it would be a humanization of your views about yourself to find out what it really means to be human. Really, it's Christianity that dehumanizes us and makes us out to be these 'kingly creatures' or godly spiritual beings with immortal souls – made in the 'image of God' and loved by God to the point of incarnation, sacrifice, and salvation.

Clearly, Ortlund had in mind something other than the literal meaning of dehumanizing – something more along the lines of what he says next. If there is no God and we are mere flukes of nature – the result of particles smashing together in surprisingly productive ways – then there's no real reason for our existence. We are because we can be and that's simply how the dice came up; or, in the case of necessitarianism, we are because we must be as determined by the necessary laws of nature.

In one sense I'm in full agreement with Gavin Ortlund. I think we lose a lot when we lose God; in some sense losing God is an infinite loss, or at least an infinite disappointment. I think God entails that the universe is in the best possible state of affairs, or at least in one possible configuration of a best possible state of affairs. Hence, why I defend pro-theism. The world would be so much more meaningful and beautiful if death wasn't the end, but we went on to enjoy a world where nature and humanity are in perfect harmony, where we can explore galaxies and build worlds of our own. We can imagine a world infinitely better than ours, and it's pretty crushing to start with a worldview in which everything is enchanted by God's purpose and adoration only to come to believe that death is the end and we are just another bug crawling around on a speck of dust floating in a cosmic sea of indifference. We are not kingly creatures, but machines obeying complex lines of code that so happen to include the curse of subjective consciousness.

Reality is hellish compared to what we can imagine. Gavin is right – that's dark. But it's a darkness we must face. Hiding from it doesn't make it go away.

While the naturalistic worldview invites deep cynicism and pessimism, I don't think it entails the extreme version where humans are objectively worthless and all value is subjective. On that view, anthropocide isn't wrong in any real sense; destroying all of humanity wouldn't make any real difference. That's a degree of cynicism too extreme for me. I think that view fails to appreciate the reality of value.

In another post, I'll defend my view of mitigated cynicism. We should be cynical up to a point, but I argue that human value is immense, finite, and objective. Human value is not infinite like the idealists and Christians believe or want to believe. And human value is not nothing as the cynics think. And human value is not subjective like the anti-realists say. But that's for another time.

Notable quotes: Epicurus on good and evil

Setting comments about death aside, it turns out my notion of goodness and evil depending on consciousness is Epicurean:

"Accustom yourself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply awareness, and death is the privation of all awareness; therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life an unlimited time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality."

Translated by Robert Drew Hicks.

Source: https://classics.mit.edu/Epicurus/menoec.html