It is obvious that man has a tendency to happiness. His deeds are oriented toward this goal, or at least, toward the goal of escaping unhappiness (as when one satisfies a need which was unpleasant).
A tendency is defined as a relation of attraction of subject to an object. This definition implies that where there is a tendency, there must be things that are included in its definition, that is, a subject and an object, otherwise, there would be a contradiction.
Therefore, the object of the man’s tendency must be real. It is really possible to be happy, and to escape unhappiness, not only for a short time, but forever.
But man is too weak and impotent to make himself happy by his sole powers.
Therefore, there must be a supreme being who has enough power to make man happy and keep this state of happiness for ever.
Therefore God exists.
Objection: someone who is in a desert and who is thirsty sees a mirage of an oasis. He moves toward this mirage, he seems to have a tendency to the oasis, even if the oasis does not exist. It shows, at least, that there could be false tendencies. And your argument could be an instance of these false tendencies.
Reply: One must not identify a particular volition with a tendency. A tendency is supposed by a volition, but it is not guaranteed that something real corresponds to all volitions. In your objection, the man has a desire for an unreal object, but before this desire, he has a real tendency, the tendency to water, and water exists.
Why do we need a supreme being for this? Any appropriate deity can be of service.
Add some good scotch to this and with the help of Caissa the goddess of chess to insure enough won positions, all that is necessary is the assistance of Ahriman in obtaining a six figure bank account.
For some reason though Christ never laughed. If he had realized that man’s goal was happiness, he would have taken the form of a Jewish comic like Henny Youngman and instead of raising the dead, he would have been killing the living with some incredible one liners. The Apostles would have taken turns standing beside him with a snare drum and after each one liner everyone would have heard a timely ba da dum. Whenever the Pharisees would give him a hard time he would laugh and say “I get no respect” It wouldn’t have taken long to make everyone happy and in setting such an example, world peace would have been assured.
But Jesus was too old fashioned and look how it turned out. Just another example of the results of a lack of contemporary education.
Do you have an argument for the part of premise 3 that says “… not only for a short time, but forever.”? Also, what about premise 4? Why do you think that our minds essentially lack the ability to make us happy? Some minds are not very good at being happy, but others seem very capable of it.
What men are seeking is not short happiness, but permanent happiness. A short moment of happiness, followed by painful states, is not satisfactory. But life cannot offer us something better than that.
Men are not able to reach permanent happiness, only some times of happiness, coupled with few times of pain. This is what we call a happy life, but only in a relative sense.
I think that people do indeed tend to crave an everlasting state of happiness, but I don’t think that this is rational. I mean, if in the 80 or so years that a person lives, his life contains more happiness than suffering, then that life was worth living. Do you disagree with that? And I think that we are, on our own power, capable of making the good outweigh the bad during the duration of our lives.
While there could be a happier life, such is still a life worth living.
I come back to the objection of the mirage: one could hold that, as well as a tendency involves the reality of its object in its definition, a volition involves the reality of its object in its definition, but it raises the problem of the “pseudo-volition”, like in the case of the mirage.
But if there are pseudo-volitions, there can be also pseudo-tendencies. And why can’t the "tendency I am speaking of be of such a kind?
To assume that man cannot acheive his own personal perminate happyness, goes beyond what some atheist would say.
And to say that the only way to acheive such a state would be a deity goes really beyond.
You could just as easily use this argument to prove that there is some perfect recreational drug without side effects. Wouldn’t that fuffil the same sort of role in the arguement.
Or for someone like Marx some perfect society that can be acheived mutually, could provide permeninate happyness for mankind.
You may have a decent arguement for hope in general. But not all hopes lean towards a God.
Here’s my objection: Just because something is real does not mean it is attainable. For example (math-nerdiness warning):
The number zero exists, in concept at least. The function f(x)=1/x is said to tend toward zero, and indeed as x gets larger f approaches zero. But no matter how big a number you substitute for x, f(x)>0. While the object of the tendency exists, a tendency need not always reach this object.
So: the concept of happiness may exist, but that doesn’t mean it is attainable. Like so much in the universe, we may be able to approximate it. Nonetheless, on this view it remains an unattainable ideal. The logic of premise 3 falls apart.
The drug does not make us immortal. Men shun death (in other words: they have a tendency to shun death), and the happiness they are tending to is permanent. It rules out the drug hypothesis.
As for Marx, the perfect society, even if it could exist, would not remove all pains that individuals are liable to experience in their lives.
Someone once said, Always look on the bright side of death. (MP?)
Anyway, You’ve created a gap between your 3 and 4 premises. 4 is kind of forced on you–we don’t have to accept this premise, that’s the problem. And again, a gap between 4 and 5.
In the mathematical example, the function is eternal, it tends eternally toward zero. Would it mean that human fate is to move more and more toward perfect happiness forever, even beyond the grave?
From an argument for God’s existence, it turns into an argument for the immortality of the soul.
What gap? Is not it true than man can’t attain by its own powers perfect and lasting happiness? Perhaps the disagreement lies in the definition of happiness.
As for 5, if it is not a supreme being, it must be a being powerful enough to make man perfectly happy. It’s even beyond the power of Matrix.
A rabbi once remarked, “He who has not suffered, what does he know?” Theism has always offered, at least Judaism has, the claim that suffering, and pain, is a means to attain a greater end (perhaps even a nessecary means).
Tolstoy, in War and Peace, presented his Christian interpetation of life that true suffering isn’t even possible. Man can grow accustomed, and able, to tolerate anything, he concluded.
Kant, offered the observation that the highest ideal is a good will (for only a good will is good in-and-of-itself); perhaps, you are misguided in placing happiness as the highest ideal? Shouldn’t Justice take precedence? Kant’s example, to illustrate, was that a man with a bad will, who is happy, is not moral, is not just–happiness for such a man would be an evil, not a good. Imagine, if a wretch like Hitler was happy with his actions–certainly in such a case we would much rather see a man like him unhappy.
Consider this question deeply: is the highest ideal of humanity to be happy? Or is is happiness a by-product of justice?
While it is obvious to me that there is a tendency to happiness, is there an as deeply-rooted tendency to justice?
My argument does not suppose that happiness is the highest good, but only that happiness is somehow within our reach. If happiness lies in justice, therefore justice could be possible.
I am thinking of a new objection. Not yet clear in my head.
I wasn’t drawing a strict parallel between humanity and 1/x. I was giving an example of something that exists and is tended toward but is yet unattainable. But, even granting an immortal soul and the strict parallel, since 0 is never attained by the function, perfect happiness is not attainable either.
Okay, just like what almost everyone here has already alluded to, it may be so that man has not attained “perfect and lasting happiness”, assuming the perfect and lasting happiness is the case, but it doesn’t mean that man can never attain it. My problem with the question is again one of those statements that almost cannot be found to be true because of the limitation of our method of knowing.
Yes. It is basically an indeterminate reference. And, add to that the question that TUM posed.
are you saying essentially that God must exist because He is the only means by which humans can reach immortality, and that that is the only way in which humans can reach happiness?
because that is begging the question: you are assuming that God exists in order to prove your point that God exists.
i.e. because God has the power to bestow immortality (life after death, heaven, whatever you wanna call it) he exists. yet to believe he has these (or any) powers, you must first assume his existence.
What I’m saying is that all your argument can show. Is that there is a way to happyness and immortality and everything else we want. I does not charaterise that way.
In fact, being that many people have an instinct to independance and can only be fully content if they don’t have to rely on anything greater, you might say your argument proves their is not a God, because no god could ever fuffil man’s complete ambition and indeed would stifle one of his most basic ambitions.
