UNHAPPINESS THE MERE ABSENCE OF HAPPINESS?

 
How can a good God who makes all things make evil? The Christian answer is that evil is really good in the wrong place and time so it does not exist and thus cannot be created. Evil is there mere absence of good or good that is not good enough. Good is a power and evil is not.
 
I have never seen this ever admitted in any religious book but the fact is that the argument denies the doctrine that goodness is real happiness, the happiness that comes from being caring. The doctrine talks about goodness as a theory. It is a cold detached doctrine.
 
Happiness is a real power. So is unhappiness.
 
To say unhappiness is happiness which has not reached its full potential (or that it is the absence of happiness) is to tell people they are wrong and mad to sense that their unhappiness is a power. They experience its power. You are insulting them. This leads to disregard of others and a form of positive thinking that fails to notice the suffering of others. When you are talking about their suffering you are using the word suffering but you don't know what the suffering means for them. To tell people who experience suffering that they don't for suffering is not real is evil and arrogant.
 
Unhappiness cannot be dismissed as being happiness in the wrong time or place. That is saying that it is happiness that feels wrong. To say happiness is real but unhappiness is not real is to say that happiness needs to be taken seriously and unhappiness does not!
 
Suppose evil does not exist for it is just an absence of good. Suppose that unhappiness is an experience and it is not real. Then how could happiness be real either for it is an experience too? If unhappiness is a bad feeling and not a real thing happiness is not real either for it is a feeling too. You could even choose to say that unhappiness is real and happiness is not if you are willing to say that happiness is real and unhappiness unreal.
 
Happiness is central to what we want for our lives. A doctrine that has to insult and desecrate happiness for the sake of religious belief is just anti-human. Happiness is not possible if we make out that unhappiness is more good than bad.
 
If unhappiness is the absence of happiness, then is unhappiness the opposite of happiness? Not if happiness is real and unhappiness is just faulty happiness!
 
If you are neither happy or unhappy you are in fact both at the one time! One balances the other so that it ends up feeling like you feel neither! When you feel hot and cold at the one time that means you feel both or you feel neither. Either way means the same thing. If happiness has an opposite, then feeling nothing, feeling dead inside, feeling indifference is the true opposite of happiness.
 
It is possible to be both happy and unhappy at the one time! That is possible. But it does show that it is nonsense to say happiness is real and unhappiness is not. The unreal and the real cannot meet half-way.
 
The doctrine that evil is the absence of good ignores feelings and experiences of happiness and suffering. It is thinking of a theoretical and abstract good. This is the kind of good the argument cares about. The argument says that that goodness is independent of pleasure, and happiness is a pleasure. That is just a way of saying that pleasure is really evil. So the argument is very cruel and can be even crueller. A cruel and unwarranted and cold-blooded murder and murderer can be good in this view. It is safe to insist that belief in God forbids happiness. The good this argument seeks to defend is pure evil or make-believe. The religious people are redefining evil and good in order to get devotees for God. God is their idol.

The argument or defence cannot admit that pain is the absence of pleasure for pain is a power. It is a power that God made. This insinuates that suffering is not bad but a great thing! To say suffering is great and good is incoherent. This proves that the argument is totally unable to say what good is. It doesn't really believe in good at all. How could it tell what evil is when it can't tell what good is?

Augustine of Hippo, like his Church, assumes that we should not be perfectly happy in this world and that God is right not to bestow perfect happiness on us. How can he say this? He sees suffering and evil and misery in the world and agrees that God is right to look down on it and refuse to eradicate it. He just simply says it but that will not do. It is condoning the evil God does. It's an assumption - it is not even a reason or an excuse. That is the assumption that lies behind his assertion that evil is a privation of a good that should be there. But this is philosophy-time not speculation-time. An assumption is not good enough and will not do. We have asked can a good God allow evil and he has answered it with an assumption about evil but what use is that? Assumptions in such serious matters are terribly wrong and callous. The argument itself is evil. It makes it evil to believe in God. End of story. Augustine in his eagerness to trick people to adore evil as God even tries to make out that evil is not evil but is good for it comes from God.
 
Happiness is one form of good among many others. Health is good but not much good without happiness. Money can only be enjoyed by the happy but it cannot make you happy. Happiness is the supreme good - it is top of the list of good things. If we dismiss the supreme importance of happiness, we may as well not bother with morals or religion or anything. To say happiness is unimportant is to say people are unimportant. Happiness is the most important thing. It would be insane to tell people, "Okay obey these laws of God but try your best to find no joy in them or be willing to do nothing to make yourself happy." That is like playing football and avoiding the goals. The argument that God the creator of all is good because evil is not real is a red herring. The issue is happiness. And happiness and unhappiness are real forces. Their reality proves that God cannot exist and it is in some way heartless to say he does. It is heartless to worship him.
 
Some say that happiness comes automatically if you do good without thinking about being happy or trying to be. But it follows that it is our programming then gives us the happiness. If we do good and end up happy, it does not follow that the doing good was directly responsible. The way we are is responsible. If you study and end up smart, it is not the study that does it but the potential of your brain.

Christianity says that if you want the chance of happiness you have to repent of your sins.  So does unhappiness include the absence of repentance?  Is unrepentance the mere absence of repentance? Absolute unrepentance is more than just a vacuum.  It is a real thing.  The Christians promote evil by redefining it into something it is not.  That is what it condones us suffering for! 

 
We all know by instinct that happiness and unhappiness are powers. We have been fooled into thinking we really want faith in God. We do not! Happiness is a power and we want to feast on that power. Does it really matter where it came from as long as we have it? No.