Marilyn McCord Adams is a religious philosopher. One of those people who is religious and tries to rationalise it. On this episode of Philosophy Bites she put forward an argument that you can't be rationally optimistic without believing in a higher power.

The argument goes a little like this:

1. There is evil in the world that people can't do anything about. Atrocities like the holocaust, Stalin's efforts, all the fun of the Balkans... It's not really looking like these things will ever stop happening, and it won't because people are neither smart enough or good enough to stop it.

Fair enough. I can dig that.

2. A higher power could stop it.

Again fair enough. I guess they could if they were a higher enough power.

3. If we are to believe these evils will ever cease, we must believe in a higher power.

And finally, fair enough. If I agree with the first two, which I suppose I do, then I must agree with the third. It turns out I agree with Marilyn McCord Adams' argument that you can't be rationally optimistic without believing in a higher power. Praise the Lord?

Not quite. Even though I agree with it, I've still got issues with this silly argument:
- it calls us to believe in something without any evidence of its existence,
- it doesn't help that God is able to stop the evil if he doesn't do so, and
- her definition of optimism.

The point of the argument is silly for starters. It is akin to saying there is something we can't stop with anything we know about, and to believe we can stop it means believing in something imaginary. I would much rather go along being a pessimist than believe in something that probably doesn't exist.

She says the value in this is that if you don't believe in God you can't be optimistic, and optimism helps you leader a fuller happier life. Bollocks! I might not be optimistic about major atrocities never happening again, but I'm optimistic about a hell of a lot of other things. She recognises that certain kinds of optimism can still be rational, but she's wrong in thinking that these kinds of optimism are not important.

Marilyn McCord Adams defines optimism as believing that things can be fixed which only a higher power can fix. Taking that definition it's impossible to disagree with her, but it should make the argument completely uninteresting. It is compelling that I am compelled to discuss it.