Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Sceptical

by Timothy J. Keller

What is the cause of this seemingly inescapable condition, of this enduring discontent? One modern theory is summarized by Haidt as the “Progress Principle.” People find more pleasure in working toward a goal than they experience when they actually attain it. Evolutionary psychologists opine that this is an adaptive mechanism. That is, they conjecture that our forebears who experienced postattainment disappointment were more likely to work harder to achieve higher goals. These people were then more likely to live longer and so, having more children, they passed down their genes to us. Therefore, the discontent—the feeling that nothing in the world fulfills our deepest longings—is actually a chemical response in the brain that helped our ancestors survive. The sense we have that “something is missing” is therefore an illusion, a trick played on us by our genes to get us to be more industrious. Haidt even briefly uses this evolutionary theory to explain the Peggy Lee song “Is That All There Is?” 26 But the woman’s life depicted in Peggy Lee’s song undermines the theory. She finds the repeated disappointments of life not a motivation to work harder but rather a disincentive for doing anything but getting high at parties. And surely this is realistic. Though disappointment may, in the short term, drive some people to more attainment, it can just as likely undermine initiative and drive. And over time it usually will. Therefore, the feeling does not necessarily or even normally...