The whole argument about the problem of pain preventing the existence of a benevolent god and the counter-argument of this is the best of all possible worlds seemed nonsensical to me.
I've always thought as the response: "And what if we lived in a world with an atmosphere of acid, with life expectancies of three, and venomous snakes that fly everywhere?"'And don't tell me God works in mysterious ways,' Yossarian continued, hurtling on over her objection. 'There's nothing so mysterious about it. He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about - a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?'
'Pain?' Lieutenant Scheisskopf's wife pounced upon the word victoriously. 'Pain is a useful symptom. Pain is a warning to us of bodily dangers.'
'And who created the dangers?' Yossarian demanded. He laughed caustically. 'Oh, He was really being charitable to us when He gave us pain! Why couldn't He have used a doorbell instead to notify us, or one of His celestial choirs? Or a system of blue-and-red neon tubes right in the middle of each person's forehead. Any jukebox manufacturer worth his salt could have done that. Why couldn't He?'
'People would certainly look silly walking around with red neon tubes in the middle of their foreheads.'
'They certainly look beautiful now writhing in agony or stupefied with morphine, don't they? What a colossal, immoral blunderer! When you consider the opportunity and power He had to really do a job, and then look at the stupid, ugly little mess He made of it instead, His sheer incompetence is almost staggering. It's obvious He never met a payroll. Why, no self-respecting businessman would hire a bungler like Him as even a shipping clerk!'
The thing is, isn't all pain relative? I mean, if we lived in a world where the worst pain anyone could derive in life was a sprained ankle, wouldn't our entire culture and mentality revolve around the fear and angst of getting a sprained ankle, of the suffering of the ankle, and praying for a deity to cure us of the Almighty Sprain? It seems really subjective to call a deity a shoddy creator- if all of the major flaws in the universe were deleted, we'd just think of the lesser flaws as major ones.
Of course, Leibniz's "this is the best of all possible worlds" is as nonsensical as well. You don't have to read Candide to know that the world is fucked up.
Is the problem of pain a valid argument at all?
