The Best Argument against God (Palgrave Pivot)

The illusion version of privation theory theodicy has been critiqued for denying the reality of crimes, wars, terror, sickness, injury, death, suffering and pain to the victim. A different approach to the problem of evil is to turn the tables by suggesting that any argument from evil is self-refuting, in that its conclusion would necessitate the falsity of one of its premises. One response—called the defensive response [85] —has been to assert the opposite, and to point out that the assertion "evil exists" implies an ethical standard against which moral value is determined, and then to argue that this standard implies the existence of God.

The standard criticism of this view is that an argument from evil is not necessarily a presentation of the views of its proponent, but is instead intended to show how premises which the theist is inclined to believe lead him or her to the conclusion that God does not exist. A second criticism is that the existence of evil can be inferred from the suffering of its victims, rather than by the actions of the evil actor, so no "ethical standard" is implied.

A variant of above defenses is that the problem of evil is derived from probability judgments since they rest on the claim that, even after careful reflection, one can see no good reason for co-existence of God and of evil. The inference from this claim to the general statement that there exists unnecessary evil is inductive in nature and it is this inductive step that sets the evidential argument apart from the logical argument. The hidden reasons defense asserts that there exists the logical possibility of hidden or unknown reasons for the existence of evil along with the existence of an almighty, all-knowing, all-benevolent, all-powerful God.

Not knowing the reason does not necessarily mean that the reason does not exist. Similarly, for every hidden argument that completely or partially justifies observed evils it is equally likely that there is a hidden argument that actually makes the observed evils worse than they appear without hidden arguments, or that the hidden reasons may result in additional contradictions. A sub-variant of the "hidden reasons" defense is called the "PHOG"—profoundly hidden outweighing goods—defense. The theory of karma refers to the spiritual principle of cause and effect where intent and actions of an individual cause influence the future of that individual effect.

Many Indian religions place greater emphasis on developing the karma principle for first cause and innate justice with Man as focus, rather than developing religious principles with the nature and powers of God and divine judgment as focus. According to Arthur Herman, karma-transmigration theory solves all three historical formulations to the problem of evil while acknowledging the theodicy insights of Sankara and Ramanuja.

Pandeism is a modern theory that unites deism and pantheism, and asserts that God created the universe but during creation became the universe. No longer existing "above," God cannot intervene from above and cannot be blamed for failing to do so. God, in pandeism, was omnipotent and omnibenevolent, but in the form of universe is no longer omnipotent, omnibenevolent.

Sociologist Walter Brueggemann says theodicy is "a constant concern of the entire Bible" and needs to "include the category of social evil as well as moral, natural physical and religious evil". Instead we encounter a variety of perspectives Consequently [the Bible focuses on] moral and spiritual remedies, not rational or logical [justifications]. It is simply that the Bible operates within a cosmic, moral and spiritual landscape rather than within a rationalist, abstract, ontological landscape.

Philosopher Richard Swinburne says that, as it stands in its classic form, the argument from evil is unanswerable, yet there may be contrary reasons for not reaching its conclusion that there is no God. There are, essentially, four representations of evil in the Bible: While the post-Enlightenment world does not, the "dark spiritual forces" can be seen as "symbols of the darkest recesses of human nature.

Jewish theodicy is experiencing extensive revision in light of the Holocaust while still asserting the difference between the human and divine perspective of evil. It remains rooted in the nature of creation itself and the limitation inherent in matter's capacity to be perfected; the action of freewill includes the potential for perfection from individual effort and leaves evil in human hands.

In the Hebrew Bible Genesis says God's creation is "good" with evil depicted as entering creation as a result of human choice. Chapter 4 The book of Job "seeks to expand the understanding of divine justice Job Hebrew Bible scholar Marvin A. Yahweh's identification with the conqueror, Yahweh's decree of judgment against Israel without possibility of repentance, and the failure of Yahweh's program to be realized by the end of the book.

In the Bible, all characterizations of evil and suffering reveal "a God who is greater than suffering [who] is powerful, creative and committed to His creation [who] always has the last word. John Joseph Haldane's Wittgenstinian-Thomistic account of concept formation [] and Martin Heidegger's observation of temporality's thrown nature [] imply that God's act of creation and God's act of judgment are the same act.

God's condemnation of evil is subsequently believed to be executed and expressed in his created world; a judgement that is unstoppable due to God's all powerful will; a constant and eternal judgement that becomes announced and communicated to other people on Judgment Day. In this explanation, God's condemnation of evil is declared to be a good judgement. Irenaean theodicy , posited by Irenaeus 2nd century CE—c. It holds that one cannot achieve moral goodness or love for God if there is no evil and suffering in the world. Evil is soul -making and leads one to be truly moral and close to God.

God created an epistemic distance such that God is not immediately knowable so that we may strive to know him and by doing so become truly good.

Moral Arguments for the Existence of God (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Evil is a means to good for three main reasons:. St Augustine of Hippo — CE in his Augustinian theodicy , as presented in John Hick's book Evil and the God of Love , focuses on the Genesis story that essentially dictates that God created the world and that it was good; evil is merely a consequence of the fall of man The story of the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve disobeyed God and caused inherent sin for man. Augustine stated that natural evil evil present in the natural world such as natural disasters etc.

Augustine argued that God could not have created evil in the world, as it was created good, and that all notions of evil are simply a deviation or privation of goodness. Evil cannot be a separate and unique substance. For example, Blindness is not a separate entity, but is merely a lack or privation of sight. Thus the Augustinian theodicist would argue that the problem of evil and suffering is void because God did not create evil; it was man who chose to deviate from the path of perfect goodness. Saint Thomas systematized the Augustinian conception of evil, supplementing it with his own musings.

Evil, according to St. Thomas, is a privation, or the absence of some good which belongs properly to the nature of the creature. All realities are in themselves good; they produce bad results only incidentally; and consequently the ultimate cause of evil is fundamentally good, as well as the objects in which evil is found. Both Luther and Calvin explained evil as a consequence of the fall of man and the original sin.

Calvin, however, held to the belief in predestination and omnipotence, the fall is part of God's plan. Luther saw evil and original sin as an inheritance from Adam and Eve, passed on to all mankind from their conception and bound the will of man to serving sin, which God's just nature allowed as consequence for their distrust, though God planned mankind's redemption through Jesus Christ.

Christian Science views evil as having no ultimate reality and as being due to false beliefs, consciously or unconsciously held. Evils such as illness and death may be banished by correct understanding. This view has been questioned, aside from the general criticisms of the concept of evil as an illusion discussed earlier, since the presumably correct understanding by Christian Science members, including the founder, has not prevented illness and death. Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Satan is the original cause of evil.

Satan caused Adam and Eve to disobey God, and humanity subsequently became participants in a challenge involving the competing claims of Jehovah and Satan to universal sovereignty. God's subsequent tolerance of evil is explained in part by the value of free will.

But Jehovah's Witnesses also hold that this period of suffering is one of non-interference from God, which serves to demonstrate that Jehovah 's "right to rule" is both correct and in the best interests of all intelligent beings, settling the "issue of universal sovereignty". Further, it gives individual humans the opportunity to show their willingness to submit to God's rulership.

At some future time known to him, God will consider his right to universal sovereignty to have been settled for all time. The reconciliation of "faithful" humankind will have been accomplished through Christ , and nonconforming humans and demons will have been destroyed. Thereafter, evil any failure to submit to God's rulership will be summarily executed. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints LDS Church introduces a concept similar to Irenaean theodicy , that experiencing evil is a necessary part of the development of the soul.

Specifically, the laws of nature prevent an individual from fully comprehending or experiencing good without experiencing its opposite. By allowing opposition and temptations in mortality, God created an environment for people to learn, to develop their freedom to choose, and to appreciate and understand the light, with a comparison to darkness [] []. This is a departure from the mainstream Christian definition of omnipotence and omniscience , which Mormons believe was changed by post-apostolic theologians in the centuries after Christ.

Islamic scholars in the medieval and modern era have tried to reconcile the problem of evil with the afterlife theodicy. Alternate theodicies in Islamic thought include the 11th-century Ibn Sina's denial of evil in a form similar to "privation theory" theodicy. According to Jon Levenson, the writers of Hebrew Bible were well aware of evil as a theological problem, but he does not claim awareness of the problem of evil.

The problem of evil gained renewed interest among Jewish scholars after the moral evil of the Holocaust. The 10th-century Rabbi called Saadia Gaon presented a theodicy along the lines of "soul-making, greater good and afterlife". The ancient Egyptian religion, according to Roland Enmarch, potentially absolved their gods from any blame for evil, and used a negative cosmology and the negative concept of human nature to explain evil. The gods in Ancient Greek religion were seen as superior, but shared similar traits with humans and often interacted with them. Later Greek and Roman theologians and philosophers discussed the problem of evil in depth.

Starting at least with Plato, philosophers tended to reject or de-emphasize literal interpretations of mythology in favor of a more pantheistic , natural theology based on reasoned arguments. In this framework, stories that seemed to impute dishonorable conduct to the gods were often simply dismissed as false, and as being nothing more than the "imagination of poets. Influential Roman writers such as Cicero and Seneca , drawing on earlier work by the Greek philosophers such as the Stoics , developed many arguments in defense of the righteousness of the gods, and many of the answers they provided were later absorbed into Christian theodicy.

Buddhism neither denies the existence of evil, nor does it attempt to reconcile evil in a way attempted by monotheistic religions that assert the existence of an almighty, all powerful, all knowing, all benevolent God. Buddhism accepts that there is evil in the world, as well as Dukkha suffering that is caused by evil or because of natural causes aging, disease, rebirth. The precepts and practices of Buddhism, such as Four Noble Truths and Noble Eightfold Path aim to empower a follower in gaining insights and liberation nirvana from the cycle of such suffering as well as rebirth.

Some strands of Mahayana Buddhism developed a theory of Buddha-nature in texts such as the Tathagata-garbha Sutras composed in 3rd-century south India, which is very similar to the "soul, self" theory found in classical Hinduism. This premise leads to the question as to why anyone does any evil, and why doesn't the "intrinsically pure inner Buddha" attempt or prevail in preventing the evil actor before he or she commits the evil. Further, the Tathagata-garbha Sutras are atypical texts of Buddhism, because they contradict the Anatta doctrines in a vast majority of Buddhist texts, leading scholars to posit that the Tathagatagarbha Sutras were written to promote Buddhism to non-Buddhists, and that they do not represent mainstream Buddhism.

The mainstream Buddhism, from its early days, did not need to address the theological problem of evil as it saw no need for a creator of the universe and asserted instead, like many Indian traditions, that the universe never had a beginning and all existence is an endless cycle of rebirths samsara. Hinduism is a complex religion with many different currents or schools. Further, deities in Hinduism are neither eternal nor omnipotent nor omniscient nor omnibenevolent. Devas are mortal and subject to samsara. Evil as well as good, along with suffering is considered real and caused by human free will, [] its source and consequences explained through the karma doctrine of Hinduism, as in other Indian religions.

A version of the problem of evil appears in the ancient Brahma Sutras , probably composed between BCE and CE, [] a foundational text of the Vedanta tradition of Hinduism. In his interpretation and commentary on the Brahma Sutras , the 8th-century scholar Adi Shankara states that just because some people are happier than others and just because there is so much malice, cruelty and pain in the world, some state that Brahman cannot be the cause of the world. For that would lead to the possibility of partiality and cruelty. For it can be reasonably concluded that God has passion and hatred like some ignoble persons Hence there will be a nullification of God's nature of extreme purity, unchangeability , etc.

Thus on account of the possibility of partiality and cruelty, God is not an agent. Shankara attributes evil and cruelty in the world to Karma of oneself, of others, and to ignorance, delusion and wrong knowledge, [] but not to the abstract Brahman. There is evil and suffering because of karma. According to Swami Gambhirananda of Ramakrishna Mission, Sankara's commentary explains that God cannot be charged with partiality or cruelty i. If an individual experiences pleasure or pain in this life, it is due to virtuous or vicious action Karma done by that individual in a past life.

A sub-tradition within the Vaishnavism school of Hinduism that is an exception is dualistic Dvaita , founded by Madhvacharya in the 13th-century. This tradition posits a concept of God so similar to Christianity, that Christian missionaries in colonial India suggested that Madhvacharya was likely influenced by early Christians who migrated to India, [] a theory that has been discredited by scholars. Madhvacharya asserted, Yathecchasi tatha kuru , which Sharma translates and explains as "one has the right to choose between right and wrong, a choice each individual makes out of his own responsibility and his own risk".

According to Sharma, "Madhva's tripartite classification of souls makes it unnecessary to answer the problem of evil". Epicurus is generally credited with first expounding the problem of evil, and it is sometimes called the " Epicurean paradox ", the "riddle of Epicurus", or the "Epicurus' trilemma ":. Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?

Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? There is no surviving written text of Epicurus that establishes that he actually formulated the problem of evil in this way, and it is uncertain that he was the author. Epicurus's argument as presented by Lactantius actually argues that a god that is all-powerful and all-good does not exist and that the gods are distant and uninvolved with man's concerns. The gods are neither our friends nor enemies.

Whatever he wills is executed: But neither man nor any other animal are happy: Therefore he does not will their happiness. His wisdom is infinite: He is never mistaken in choosing the means to any end: But the course of nature tends not to human or animal felicity: Therefore it is not established for that purpose. Through the whole compass of human knowledge, there are no inferences more certain and infallible than these.

In what respect, then, do his benevolence and mercy resemble the benevolence and mercy of men? In his Dictionnaire Historique et Critique , the sceptic Pierre Bayle denied the goodness and omnipotence of God on account of the sufferings experienced in this earthly life. He argued that this is the best of all possible worlds that God could have created. Imitating the example of Leibniz, other philosophers also called their treatises on the problem of evil theodicies. Voltaire 's popular novel Candide mocked Leibnizian optimism through the fictional tale of a naive youth.

The population and economic theorist Thomas Malthus stated in a essay that people with health problems or disease are not suffering, and should not viewed as such. Malthus argued, "Nothing can appear more consonant to our reason than that those beings which come out of the creative process of the world in lovely and beautiful forms should be crowned with immortality, while those which come out misshapen, those whose minds are not suited to a purer and happier state of existence, should perish and be condemned to mix again with their original clay.

Eternal condemnation of this kind may be considered as a species of eternal punishment, and it is not wonderful that it should be represented, sometimes, under images of suffering. Malthus believed in the Supreme Creator, considered suffering as justified, and suggested that God should be considered "as pursuing the creatures that had offended him with eternal hate and torture, instead of merely condemning to their original insensibility those beings that, by the operation of general laws, had not been formed with qualities suited to a purer state of happiness. Immanuel Kant wrote an essay on theodicy.

Kant did not attempt or exhaust all theodicies to help address the problem of evil. Michael Martin Nov 5, at 7: You made a few good points there This is the type Oppy, besides being a Did God Really Command Genocide?

Problem of evil

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Have they proved anything? It does appear that in a naturalistic universe we would expect a process of Darwinian evolution to select for a propensity for moral judgments that track survival and not objective moral truths. Mark Linville , — has developed a detailed argument for the claim that it is difficult for metaphysical naturalists to develop a plausible evolutionary story as to how our moral judgments could have epistemological warrant. However, if we suppose that the evolutionary process has been guided by God, who has as one of his goals the creation of morally significant human creatures capable of enjoying a relation with God, then it would not seem at all accidental or even unlikely that God would ensure that humans have value beliefs that are largely correct.

Some philosophers believe that the randomness of Darwinian natural selection rules out the possibility of any kind of divine guidance being exercised through such a process. What can be explained scientifically needs no religious explanation. However, this is far from obviously true; in fact, if theism is true it is clearly false. From a theistic perspective to think that God and science provide competing explanations fails to grasp the relationship between God and the natural world by conceiving of God as one more cause within that natural world.

If God exists at all, God is not an entity within the natural world, but the creator of that natural world, with all of its causal processes. If God exists, God is the reason why there is a natural world and the reason for the existence of the causal processes of the natural world. In principle, therefore, a natural explanation can never preclude a theistic explanation. But what about the randomness that is a crucial part of the Darwinian story? The atheist might claim that because evolutionary theory posits that the process by which plants and animals have evolved in one that involves random genetic mutations, it cannot be guided, and thus God cannot have used evolutionary means to achieve his ends.

However, this argument fails. When scientists claim that genetic mutations are random, they do not mean that they are uncaused, or even that they are unpredictable from the point of view of biochemistry, but only that the mutations do not happen in response to the adaptational needs of the organism. It is entirely possible for a natural process to include randomness in that sense, even if the whole natural order is itself created and sustained by God. A God who is responsible for the laws of nature and the initial conditions that shape the evolutionary process could certainly ensure that the process achieved certain ends.

The Theistic Implications of our Ethical Commitments Ritchie presses a kind of dilemma on non-theistic accounts of morality. Subjectivist theories such as expressivism can certainly make sense of the fact that we make the ethical judgments we do, but they empty morality of its objective authority.

Objectivist theories that take morality seriously, however, have difficulty explaining our capacity to make true moral judgments, unless the process by which humans came to hold these capacities is one that is controlled by a being such as God. The moral argument from knowledge will not be convincing to anyone who is committed to any form of expressivism or other non-objective metaethical theory, and clearly many philosophers find such views attractive.

And there will surely be many philosophers who will judge that if moral objectivism implies theism or requires theism to be plausible, this is a reductio of objectivist views. Furthermore, non-theistic moral philosophers, whether naturalists or non-naturalists, have stories to tell about how moral knowledge might be possible.

Nevertheless, there are real questions about the plausibility of these stories, and thus, some of those convinced that moral realism is true may judge that moral knowledge provides some support for theistic belief. Like subjectivists, constructivists want to see morality as a human creation. However, like moral realists constructivists want to see moral questions as having objective answers. Constructivism is an attempt to develop an objective morality that is free of the metaphysical commitments of moral realism.

It is, however, controversial whether Kant himself was a constructivist in this sense.

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One reason to question whether this is the right way to read Kant follows from the fact that Kant himself did not see morality as free from metaphysical commitments. For example, Kant thought that it would be impossible for someone who believed that mechanistic determinism was the literal truth about himself to believe that he was a moral agent, since morality requires an autonomy that is incompatible with determinism.

When we do science we see ourselves as determined, but science tells us only how the world appears, not how it really is. Humans can only have this kind of value if they are a particular kind of creature. Whether Kant himself was a moral realist or not, there are certainly elements in his philosophy that push in a realist direction. If the claim that human persons have a kind of intrinsic dignity or worth is a true objective principle and if it provides a key foundational principle of morality, it is well worth asking what kinds of metaphysical implications the claim might have.

This is the question that Mark Linville , — pursues in the second moral argument he develops. Clearly, some metaphysical positions do include a denial of the existence of human persons, such as forms of Absolute Monism which hold that only one Absolute Reality exists. Daniel Dennett, for example, holds that persons will not be part of the ultimately true scientific account of things.

A naturalist may want to challenge premise 2 by finding some other strategy to explain human dignity. Michael Martin , for example, has tried to suggest that moral judgments can be analyzed as the feelings of approval or disapproval of a perfectly impartial and informed observer. Linville objects that it is not clear how the feelings of such an observer could constitute the intrinsic worth of a person, since one would think that intrinsic properties would be non-relational and mind-independent.

Another strategy that is pursued by constructivists such as Korsgaard is to link the value ascribed to humans to the capacity for rational reflection. The idea is that insofar as I am committed to rational reflection, I must value myself as having this capacity, and consistently value others who have it as well.

It is far from clear that human rationality provides an adequate ground for moral rights, however. Many people believe that young infants and people suffering from dementia still have this intrinsic dignity, but in both cases there is no capacity for rational reflection. Wolterstorff in this work defends the claim that there are natural human rights, and that violating such rights is one way of acting unjustly towards a person. Why do humans have such rights? Wolterstorff says these rights are grounded in the basic worth or dignity that humans possess.

When I seek to torture or kill an innocent human I am failing to respect this worth. If one asks why we should think humans possess such worth, Wolterstorff argues that the belief that humans have this quality was not only historically produced by Jewish and Christian conceptions of the human person, but even now cannot be defended apart from such a conception. In particular, he argues that attempts to argue that our worth stems from some excellence we possess such as reason will not explain the worth of infants or those with severe brain injuries or dementia.

Does a theistic worldview fare better in explaining the special value of human dignity? In a theistic universe God is himself seen as the supreme good. Indeed, theistic Platonists usually identify God with the Good. If God is himself a person, then this seems to be a commitment to the idea that personhood itself is something that must be intrinsically good. This argument will of course be found unconvincing to many.

Some will deny premise 1 , either because they reject moral realism as a metaethical stance, or because they reject the normative claim that humans have any kind of special value or dignity. Others will find premise 2 suspect. They may be inclined to agree that human persons have a special dignity, but hold that the source of that dignity can be found in such human qualities as rationality. With respect to the status of infants and those suffering from dementia, the critic might bite the bullet and just accept the fact that human dignity does not extend to them, or else argue that the fact that infants and those suffering mental breakdown are part of a species whose members typically possess rationality merits them a special respect, even if they lack this quality as individuals.

Others will find premise 2 doubtful because they find the theistic explanation of dignity unclear. Another alternative is to seek a Constructivist account of dignity, perhaps regarding the special status of humans as something we humans decide to extend to each other. Perhaps the strongest non-theistic alternative would be some form of ethical non-naturalism, in which one simply affirms that the claim that persons have a special dignity is an a priori truth requiring no explanation. In effect this is a decision for a non-theistic form of Platonism.

The proponent of the argument may well agree that claims about the special status of humans are true a priori, and thus also opt for some form of Platonism. However, the proponent of the argument will point out that some necessary truths can be explained by other necessary truths. The theist believes that these truths about the special status of humans tell us something about the kind of universe humans find themselves in.

To say that humans are created by God is to say that personhood is not an ephemeral or accidental feature of the universe, because at bottom reality itself is personal Mavrodes As already noted, the most famous and perhaps most influential version of a moral argument for belief in God is found in Immanuel Kant Kant himself insisted that his argument was not a theoretical argument, but an argument grounded in practical reason. Morality is grounded in pure practical reason, and the moral agent must act on the basis of maxims that can be rationally endorsed as universal principles.

Moral actions are thus not determined by results or consequences but by the maxims on which they are based. However, all actions, including moral actions, necessarily aim at ends. However, I must seek the highest good only by acting in accordance with morality; no shortcuts to happiness are permissible. This seems to require that I believe that acting in accordance with morality will be causally efficacious in achieving the highest good. However, it is reasonable to believe that moral actions will be causally efficacious in this way only if the laws of causality are set up in such a way that these laws are conducive to the efficacy of moral action.

Certainly both parts of the highest good seem difficult to achieve. We humans have weaknesses in our character that appear difficult if not impossible to overcome by our own efforts. Furthermore, as creatures we have subjective needs that must be satisfied if we are happy, but we have little empirical reason to think that these needs will be satisfied by moral actions even if we succeeded in becoming virtuous. If a person believes that the natural world is simply a non-moral machine with no moral purposiveness then that person would have no reason to believe that moral action could succeed because there is no a priori reason to think moral action will achieve the highest good and little empirical reason to believe this either.

Even if the Kantian highest good seems reasonable as an ideal, some will object that we have no obligation to achieve such a state, but merely to work towards realizing the closest approximation to such a state that is possible See Adams , Without divine assistance, perhaps perfect virtue is unachievable, but in that case we cannot be obliged to realize such a state if there is no God. Perhaps we cannot hope that happiness will be properly proportioned to virtue in the actual world if God does not exist, but then our obligation can only be to realize as much happiness as can be attained through moral means.

Kant would doubtless reject this criticism, since on his view the ends of morality are given directly to pure practical reason a priori, and we are not at liberty to adjust those ends on the basis of empirical beliefs. Morality requires me to sacrifice my personal happiness if that is necessary to do what is right. Yet it is a psychological fact that humans necessarily desire their own happiness. Reason both requires humans to seek their own happiness and to sacrifice it.

Sidgwick himself noted that only if there is a God can we hope that this dualism will be resolved, so that those who seek to act morally will in the long run also be acting so as to advance their own happiness and well-being. Interestingly, Sidgwick himself does not endorse this argument, but he clearly sees this problem as part of the appeal of theism. A contemporary argument similar to this one has been developed by C. The critic of this form of the Kantian argument may reply that Kantian morality sees duty as something that must be done regardless of the consequences, and thus a truly moral person cannot make his or her commitment to morality contingent on the achievement of happiness.

From a Kantian point of view, this reply seems right; Kant unequivocally affirms that moral actions must be done for the sake of duty and not from any desire for personal reward. Nevertheless, especially for any philosopher willing to endorse any form of eudaimonism, seeing myself as inevitably sacrificing what I cannot help but desire for the sake of duty does seem problematic. The critic may reply to this by simply accepting the lamentable fact that there is something tragic or even absurd about the human condition.

The world may not be the world we wish it was, but that does not give us any reason to believe it is different than it is.

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If there is a tension between the demands of morality and self-interest, then this may simply be a brute fact that must be faced. This reply raises an issue that must be faced by all forms of practical or pragmatic arguments for belief. Many philosophers insist that rational belief must be grounded solely in theoretical evidence. The fact that it would be better for me to believe p does not in itself give me any reason to believe p.

This criticism is aimed not merely at Kant, but at other practical moral arguments. For example, Robert Adams argues that if humans believe there is no moral order to the universe, then they will become demoralized in their pursuit of morality, which is morally undesirable , The atheist might concede that atheism is somewhat demoralizing, but deny that this provides any reason to believe there is a moral order to the universe.

Similarly, Linda Zagzebski argues that morality will not be a rational enterprise unless good actions increase the amount of good in the world. However, given that moral actions often involve the sacrifice of happiness, there is no reason to believe moral action will increase the good unless there is a power transcendent of human activity working on the side of the good.

Here the atheist may claim that moral action does increase the good because such actions always increase good character. However, even if that reply fails the atheist may again simply admit that there may be something tragic or absurd about the human condition, and the fact that we may wish things were different is not a reason to believe that they are. So the problem must be faced: Are practical arguments merely rationalized wish-fulfillment? The theist might respond to this kind of worry in several ways.