The Human Question

If you have a utilitarian understanding of God (as beholden to the principle of seeking the greater good for the greatest number), then a philosophical reflection on the problem of pain is capable of making you an atheist.  And as a matter of fact, a lot of pain related arguments against the existence of God rely upon a utilitarian understanding of good and evil.  But to make such an objection is to assume that the only or best reason for affirming God's existence is likewise utilitarian. Perhaps the uitilitarian/deist thinks that God made the world for God's pleasure, and has since left it alone (as in "been there, done that").  But such basis for theism, if it exists, would be a straw-man.  If you are a theist in the face of pain, it is because you have a non-utilitarian understanding of God: God wants you to be fulfilled in the exercise of your freedom by living that freedom in communion with Him.  God wants you to be childlike in your trust, but an adu...

It seems that Paley was a utilitarian (sez Copleston) much like J S Mill, except that the former was a theist. Pleasure/pain are the measures of happiness. Non-sequitur move from my feeling like pursuing my happiness to my obligation to seek the greater happiness of all. Obligation as coercian (Austin?). A worthy project: to compare the klunkiness of this very instrumentalist ethics with the inner teleology of Aristotle, and then to draw an analogy between this comparison and Paley's use of teleology in the service of natural theology and Aquinas's 5th way. My point: Aquinas's way as superior to Paley's design argument as is Aristotle's ethics of human flourishing is to Paley's klunky utilitariansim.