Not really.
The reason I’ve persisted with this isn’t to annoy you (not at all), but because it’s something I’m honestly curious about. I’ve thought a lot about this question, the Dostoyevskian “If God does not exist, then all things are permissible” question, and the closest thing I’ve come to an answer is that if God exists, then there are things that you should do whether you want to do them or not, but if he doesn’t, and if you want to do something, and doing that something doesn’t conflict with other, bigger wants, then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t do it.
Now of course, you could try to make the point from a secular viewpoint that the moral person is straight-up happier than the amoral or immoral person, but that doesn’t really change the issue, as you still can’t say to someone “You should want to be happy” (It’s also a little weak, since it raises the sociopath to sainthood, but that’s incidental and not actually a logically valid objection). Why? Just because you want happiness doesn’t mean they do. Saying “you should want to be happy” is incoherent unless there is something that transcends human emotion and desire, namely God.
Let’s look at it another way. We both have noticed that both atheists and Christians have said things like “you *should want *to be happy.” Why do we say that? What is the reason behind our desire for other people’s happiness and our own? (I conceed the fact that
some people *do not *desire other people’s happiness, but nonetheless, I think **most **people wish the general wellbeing and happiness of others as well as themselves)
And when we approach the question from that angle (that is, “Why do we say things like ‘you should pursue happiness’?”) - we might come up with an evolutionary answer. Fact #1: Most people want to be happy. Fact #2: Happiness is usually brought about by the close company of family and friends, having children, raising a family, contributing to society, building friendships, accomplishing things, exploring (those are all facts - at the moment I’m saying nothing about *should *or
ought,
I’m just saying that’s the way things are. That’s generally what makes most people happy, with a few exceptions here and there.) So let’s move on with those two facts: (#1) People generally want to be happy and (#2) happiness is usually brought about by all those things talked about earlier.
**So *why *is that way? **That’s the question that interests me. I think evolutionary psychology has a response that I think is quite valid. We feel happy when we help eachother and when we raise families and have sex and grow and build - because those things advance the species.
If there ever were a species like human beings who got happiness from being alone, and rejecting everyone around them (like the hypotherical person with antisocial personality disorder who was perfectly happy ignoring his children that we were talking about a few posts ago) - they most likely died off. Why? Because if the brain gave you a positive emotion for destruction, it would generally case most members of that species to be alone and the species wouldn’t keep going.
But maybe that’s not an adequate answer to the question I raised above (that is, “Why do we say things like ‘you should pursue happiness’?”). I think there’s more exploration to be done, more experiments to be conducted, and more thinking to be done. But just because we don’t have a totally acceptable non-supernatural way of explaining it doesn’t mean we have to turn to the supernatural way of explaining it, like you have.
So, that all being said, let’s try and answer that question that you brought up. Why should people pursue happiness? My answer: I don’t know. My logical brain can’t give an answer for that.
I could say things like “being happy makes you feel good” - but other things can make you feel good that are quite destructive. I could come up with some complex ethical system like utilitarianism that wouldn’t be satisfactory to me. I could say a bunch of philosophical things, but they all wouldn’t be enough. It makes me think that we’re more than our logic. And that’s okay with me.
Is there a supernatural force behind it, as you suppose? I don’t know. Maybe. But it if it’s a personal God that loves me, we find ourselves smack dab right in the middle of page 2 of this thread.
But, I don’t know that there isn’t a secular way of being able to tell someone what they should want without making it contingent on human desires, so I’m constantly on the lookout for one. Most of the time, atheists just frustrate me by beating around the bush and trying not to admit that ultimately, they can’t say “should want,” though they usually grudgingly agree that that’s how things are in the end, as if there’s this vague sense in them that I’m looking at it all wrong which they can’t quite pin down (as a Christian, I would call that the Holy Spirit working in them implicitly, but of course that tidbit is for consistency’s sake only and not part of the argument). Now Sartre, Sartre I can pretty much understand. He’s one screwed-up guy, but his philosophy at least looks coherent to me. The reason I’m driving this point so hard is because I assume yours (though, as you said, you’re not particularly philosophical) is as well, or at least is as coherent as anyone else’s, and I want to understand it. My apologies if I annoyed you, I assure you that was not my intent.
No problem. You’ve finally gotten to your point, and that makes me feel good.
