Back By Popular Demand (Less Popular and More Demanding Really)
Life is fairly depressing without religion. It would seem that fact alone would go far towards justifying belief in religion whether or not the said religion corresponds to actual metaphysical truth. It doesn't really though. I could just end my blog there for another couple months but then you'd pester me as to my reason for shooting the argument down so flippantly. Here's why. In order for the avoidance of depression to be a motivating (or even just normative) reason to accept religion there has to be some value placed on the avoidance of depression. Since depression is fairly similar to general misery, which is fairly similar to pain, I don't think it's much of a stretch to see the above argument as an appeal to hedonism. We should pursue pleasure and the absence of pain and therefore accept religion in so far as it furthers that goal better than rejecting religion. This is a perfectly valid argument, but is it sound? In order to be sound it seems that a requirement is the truth of hedonism. Now don't get me wrong, pleasure is nice and all that, but what reason do we have for believing there is any inherent worth in pleasure or happiness? Without appealing to some sort of divine teaching there doesn't seem to be any way of proving that anything, pleasure or otherwise, has any worth. Why not pursue the deep contemplation of asparagus rather than happiness? Is there anything that logically entails one is better or more rational than the other? Perhaps pursuit of happiness is more rational in that we desire to be happy (I don't know anyone that desires to contemplate asparagus) and it is rational to will the means to our ends. I have no problem accepting this, but it still fails to provide a normative reason for pursuing happiness over asparagus contemplation. In order to generate a normative reason, one must premise there is a deity providing the said reason and that begs the question.
