Tristan Latour
Tristan Latour. “Humor Against Theodicy.” A Priori, vol. 7, 2024, pp. 67–80.
The problem of Evil in the face of an omnibenevolent God is simple: how can such an almighty being allow for suffering and injustice? In the past millennia, many thinkers tried to solve that issue: Building a theodicy, a defense of God's perfection, they aimed at exonerating the Supreme Being from causing evil. To counter these attempts, this paper offers a new argument, "from humor," which disproves the perfection of God, and therefore, undermines any foundation for belief in such an entity. Its sole requirement is the very existence of a joke, a laughter, or even a pun. Using the Incongruity Theory of humor, Wittgenstein's aesthetics, the Ireneaen theodicy, and even The Name of the Rose, this paper thus presents an original and definitive objection to any defense of God's perfection in the light of evil in the world. The argument depends on two premises: the perfection of any world created by a perfect God, and the assertion that humor arises from subverted expectations. With these premises in mind, I demonstrate that humor, by showing the failure of our suppositions, reveals a world that often does not fit our needs, does not match our hopes, does not fit human purposes, and thus, fails to earn the designation of "perfect." In a perfect world, humor would be impossible, for all expectations would be correct; no imperfection, no incoherence, no failure would give rise to our humor, because none of these phenomena would exist! Humor reveals an abyss, separating our human conjectures from reality's punchlines. This abyss is an imperfection, often unfit for humanity's needs; and the imperfect God creating a world with such imperfection is unworthy of a capital letter.
One of the most common arguments against a theistic worldview is often called the problem of evil (which I will later simplify as the problem of imperfection): How can a perfect and benevolent individual create an imperfect world where evil exists? Theologians of all eras have tried to answer this question by creating a theodicy (a term invented by Gottfried Leibniz, literally a "vindication of God"), an explanation justifying the existence of evil while exonerating God from the blame. To examine these theodicies is crucial to decide whether a perfect God exists or not, whether his nature is good or not, and whether our lives' purpose relies on him or not.
One of the most serious theodicies, called the Irenaean theodicy, claims that God did create evil, purposefully. For Hick, evil is real and can be divided into two categories: moral evil, that God seems to allow, and non-moral evil, that occurs because of the world created by God. Moral evil is a consequence of the divine gift of free will, so that humans would be able to make a moral choice between good and evil. Concerning non-moral evil, Hick tries to prove that all the natural disasters, coincidences and accidents which constitute this type of evil are, in fact, serving the purpose of the universe, which he designates as "soul-making." He argues that these difficult conditions give us the best opportunities to become good, and therefore, to become worthy of God's love and rewards.
For every theodicy, it is logically argued that an almighty, all-knowing being would create a perfect world. A perfect God implies a perfect world: anyone claiming that God could have unwillingly created an imperfect world would find themselves denying God's perfect power; on the other hand, anyone claiming that God could have willingly created an imperfect world would simply be denying God's perfect benevolence. Thus, it is inevitable to realize that an imperfect world is incompatible with an almighty, all-knowing, and benevolent (i.e., theistic) God, and that imperfection would indeed disprove the God hypothesis.
The Incongruity Theory of humor states that humor arises from the perception of "something incongruous — something that violates our mental patterns and expectations." On the one hand, there is an expectation, rooted in psychological assumptions, that tries to predict the outcome of a situation; on the other hand, there is an actual, different outcome, a punchline that breaks this expectation and causes laughter. Humor thus lies in the failure of the perceiver to correctly predict the outcome.
With this definition in mind, it is time to realize that humor, by showing the failure of our expectations, reveals a world that often does not fit our needs, does not match our hopes, does not fit human purposes, and thus fails to earn the designation of "perfect." In a perfect world, humor would be thoroughly impossible, for all our expectations would be correct; no imperfection, no incoherence, no failure would give rise to our humor, since none of these phenomena could be observed. Humor reveals a gap, separating our human conjectures from reality's punchline. This gap is an imperfection, often unfit for humanity's needs; and a world containing such an imperfection is unavoidably imperfect.
With the imperfection of the world now assured, it becomes possible — perhaps, obligatory — to use that knowledge to disprove the existence of God. Thus, the complete argument from humor proceeds as follows: (1) A theistic God cannot have created an imperfect world. (2) Humor shows that the world is imperfect. (3) Therefore, the world cannot have been created by a theistic God. Premise (1) originates from the incompatibility between an imperfect world and the theistic God, who must be perfect for him to be God at all. Premise (2) is based on the inherent imperfection of our understanding of the world, revealed by our mistaken expectations. Thus, the undeniable existence of humor, jokes, puns, laughs, and irony is a constant argument against all theodicies, which are doomed by their implied assertion of God's perfection.