An argument from physical disability against naturalism

1. On average, severely disabled people report not being dissatisfied with life.
2. Thus, probably, on average severely disabled people are rightly not dissatisfied with life.

The defeasible inference is due to the presumption in favor of the correctness of people's judgments about their wellbeing.

But (2) is very surprising on naturalism. Given naturalism, one would expect that human wellbeing be extremely tenuous, and that any significant downward push, such as from disability, should push people into the illbeing range. The theist, on the other hand, has a rather better explanation of (2).

Of course the naturalist can talk about evolutionary and social mechanisms that make severely disabled people report satisfaction even though their lives are on balance unsatisfactory. But that isn't a naturalistic explanaton of (2). It is an explanation of (1) coupled with a patronizing denial of (2).

The theist, like the naturalist, might question people's self-reports. But she could also accept (2). Of course, the theist will then have a serious problem of evil in the case of the large numbers of severely disabled people whose life satisfaction self-report is negative. But since the theist has very good reason to think that life continues infinitely beyond death, a dissatisfaction—even a rightful one—over a finite initial period is not perhaps quite that surprising.