Does choosing death entail maximal suffering?

In other posts I've argued that suffering-at-capacity aka max suffering (or maxed out suffering) aka unbearable suffering is logically incompatible with a loving God. Suicide entails suffering-at-capacity. Thus, suicide entails there is no loving God.

But is it true that suicide entails unbearable suffering?

It seems like my own views say no, because I believe that some people can die happy, and can even die happy by choice. I think an example of this is Jesus, who willingly goes to his own death. But Jesus can die happy, knowing that he will survive his death and knowing that his death is for the salvation of the lucky elect (or, under universal reconciliation, for everyone).

Socrates is another example. He takes his own life, but he seems to do so with a kind of satisfaction, knowing that either he will be favorably judged by gods in the afterlife, seeing as he is a philosopher who has strived to cultivate virtue, or death is a peaceful sleep. Either way, there is nothing to worry about. Socrates dies peacefully, despite the fact he dies by suicide; no unbearable suffering in sight.

First, here is a similar puzzle: If someone sees that they will be crucified on a cross in the near future, and takes their life to prevent what would be unbearable suffering, then isn't this a case of suicide implying a lack of unbearable suffering?

My response: Dread itself can cause unbearable suffering. If you want to know whether someone is suffering unbearably, look no farther than signs that life is not worth living for them. So if someone takes their life, it must be the case that living has become unbearable by something. In the case above, it's dread that is the source of the person taking their life, and thus it is dread that is the cause of unbearable suffering.

So how do I respond to the case of Jesus, or Socrates?

One option (and these options need not be mutually exclusive) is to say that no one can really die happy; everyone wants to live. Consider what Diotima says in the Symposium:

“Now, then,” she said. “Can we simply say that people love the good?”

“Yes,” I said.

“But shouldn’t we add that, in loving it, they want the good to be theirs?”

“We should.”

“And not only that,” she said. “They want the good to be theirs forever, don’t they?”

“We should add that too.”

“In a word, then, love is wanting to possess the good forever.”

“That’s very true,” I said. (206; pg 519)

Which reminds me of something Nietzsche said:

"Oh man! Take heed of what the dark midnight says: I slept, I slept—from deep dreams I awoke: The world is deep—and more profound than day would have thought. Profound in her pain—Pleasure—more profound than pain of heart, Woe speaks; pass on. But all pleasure seeks eternity—a deep and profound eternity." (Schaeffer, Francis. How Should We Then Live? Translated by Udo Middelmann. Fleming H. Revell Company, 1976, pg 169.)

We then must speak of dying relatively happy. Some deaths are more miserable than others, and we should strive to have the least miserable death we can.

A key to dying well is to write down a bucket list, a set of things you'd like to do while you can, and to then prioritize them. Take the single most important achievement on that list and turn it into an action plan. And that there becomes your life, for the time being at least. If you do this accurately enough, and if you are lucky enough to succeed, and if you don't happen to change your mind such that the achievement in question no longer interests you, then you will achieve a pretty good sense of satisfaction with yourself and your life; you accomplished the essential task you set out to accomplish; you slayed your dragon.

So when we talk about dying happy, we are talking about something relative and not absolute. Obviously, if an old, accomplished person had the chance to live another life, or to be young again and free, they'd take that over death most of the time. But we don't get the option. So you have to psychologically adapt to what you're stuck with.

Another option is to say that Socrates did in fact suffer unbearably. 

Another option is to say that being able to die happy is exactly what causes unbearable suffering. If someone is able to die happy, then they probably have achieved some sense of existential completion; something of a self-actualization, or maybe even a psychological state beyond self-actualization. Whatever it is, it's the peak of psychological achievement; a kind of bliss or nirvana or enlightenment. But if someone has achieved such a state, then you can see how continued living could become unbearable for this kind of person. To live further would be pointless, and indeed it may be impossible to live without some kind of pursuit on which to live, a pursuit that betrays desire or need, when the person who is existentially complete has no desire or need, and thus has no pursuits, and thus has no basis on which to live. Living itself becomes unbearable for such a person. So far from the ability to die happy contradicting the idea that self-death entails unbearable suffering, it actually can entail it.

So I can have it both ways: self-death always entails unbearable suffering, and yet someone can die happy while choosing to die. But how can such deep peace be compatible with such deep suffering?

Another option is simply to say that not all suicides entail unbearable suffering, but some of them do. Even if just a single suicide entails unbearable suffering, that's enough for my argument against God.

The problem of different kinds of unbearable suffering:

Let's say someone achieves existential completion and can die happy. Because of this, they find life unbearable and so they choose their own death. Here's the problem: We now have two entirely separate kinds of unbearable suffering. The first kind is the suffering of being existentially incomplete. The second kind is living without a basis on which to live.

For the kind of person under question, the greater suffering between the two is obviously being existentially incomplete. Because, after all, why wouldn't this person just choose to die before accomplishing their great task? If they're going to choose death anyway, why not save themselves the trouble? The answer: because the thought of dying before accomplishing the great task is unbearable. And yet the thought of dying is no longer unbearable after the task has been accomplished, and indeed the thought of living becomes unbearable.

So now we have two kinds of unbearable suffering:

(1) Die before becoming existentially complete.

(2) Live while existentially complete.

Which one is worse? Surely, the first one is worse. And yet, death is not a conscious harm. And only conscious harms can be the worst harms. If suffering in general ultimately cashes out in terms of consciousness, then the worst suffering cashes out in terms of consciousness. But if we allow depriving evils to cash out in terms of consciousness via the theoretical conscious comparison between the positive goods and a lack thereof, then don't we allow depriving evils, and thus unconscious harms, to be the worst of sufferings? This would lead to a contradiction on my part.

Response: Being deprived of paradise is bad for the one deprived, but not as bad as being sent to hell. We know that being deprived of paradise is bad the same way we know being sent to hell is bad: by the test of direct awareness. We can be certain that one experience is better than another (or better than a lack) by comparing the two in our minds. If one of the experiences is not actual but probable, then we still have probabilistic justification for believing that one experience is better than another.

The person directly aware of their happiness in paradise is aware that being deprived of paradise would make them infinitely worse off. But this doesn't mean that deprivational evils are as bad as positive evils of the same magnitude. This is an asymmetry between max depriving evils and max extrinsic evils, and between max saving goods and max extrinsic goods. Being saved from hell is a max saving good. Being sent to heaven is a max extrinsic good. The latter includes the former, but then also includes infinitely more goodness. So extrinsic goods / evils are always greater than saving goods / depriving evils of the same "rank", at least when maxed, because max extrinsic goods / evils always include max saving goods / depriving evils. (Maybe unmaxed evils and goods are sometimes, or always, incommensurable and cannot be held at the same rank.)

So the worst of suffering and the best of flourishing still must be intrinsic and not merely depriving or saving. So technically the best possible good with respect to someone suffering in hell is to send them to heaven, and not merely to snuff them out of existence. But both the sending and the snuffing are in fact maximal goods, it's just that one is greater.

But how can you have two max goods with one being greater than the other? Likewise, how can max suffering be considered maxed when we can imagine a worse suffering? If (2) is an unbearable suffering, and yet (1) is worse, then (2) isn't really a max evil. This would mean that suicide doesn't entail max suffering.

Response: Think of unbearable suffering as suffering that surpasses a threshold. Different sufferings can surpass that threshold to different degrees. So if I have a bank account with $100 in it, I can overdraft it by spending $101 or by spending $1,000. If one's capacity for suffering is overdrafted, then one experiences unbearable suffering, no matter the degree of the overdraft.

This means that some max sufferings are worse than other max sufferings. This makes sense, for God could always enhance our minds so that we could suffer in deeper and more profound ways, and then torture us with our new heightened capacities for suffering. These heightened max sufferings are worse than our current max sufferings.

But max suffering is relative to the individual's capacity. And saving goods are relative to the suffering. So no matter how simple the creature, their suffering-at-capacity produces a good of being saved from that suffering, and it's hard to imagine what goods God has in mind that are supposedly greater than these saving goods.

To die happy then is to die without a specific kind of suffering – the suffering of feeling unfinished in one's life, and to die with a specific kind of happiness – the happiness of feeling that one's life is complete. But it's entirely compatible to have one kind of happiness amid outweighing pains such that one dies with one kind of happiness, peace, and yet also with unbearable suffering. The mistake is in thinking that necessarily happiness and pain eliminate each other and cannot co-exist, or in thinking that specifically contentment cannot survive along with suffering, as suffering implies discontent. But one can be content in certain respects while discontent in others, just as one can be happy with some things while unhappy with others. No one is truly happy, because to be truly happy would be to plainly ignore the failings of this world and the plights of others.

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. But the only possible kind of intrinsic good or intrinsic evil 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 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. Though, many people have experienced those pains without willing themselves to die, or without preferring death to them. So ironically, incapacitating conscious pain may not count as unbearable suffering for the person built such that they prefer it to death. Or, maybe for those persons, those pains didn't count as incapacitating given their pain tolerance.

For the purposes of the argument, what matters is the kind of suffering that makes life not worth living for that person, as that enables the equivalent greatest possible good for that person. We could then imagine the nightmare God giving customized forms of tortue to each individual on the basis of what that individual considers to be not worth it.

Though you might suppose that there's not a single person in history who could prefer living to death when in the middle of a full debridement from complete (but not so complete so as to kill you) third-degree burns. Whether the unbearable suffering is physical or psychological, it's conscious either way.

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. Whatever God's mystery good is supposed to be, it cannot reach the level of goodness of the maximal good of saving the person from unbearable suffering. And because only a maximal good can offset a maximal evil, and because the mystery good cannot be as good as the maximal good, God's mystery good cannot offset the maximal evil. Thus, if we see someone experiencing unbearable suffering, 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.

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

Part 4: https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-problem-of-unbearable-suffering_16.html

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

Part 4: https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-problem-of-unbearable-suffering_16.html

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.

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*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

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

Part 4: https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-problem-of-unbearable-suffering_16.html

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.