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Old 07-19-2009, 12:31 PM
straggler straggler is offline
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It makes no sense to point to the suffering in this world to argue against "God"

People often point to all the suffering in the world as an argument against God. Sometimes it's to argue against the existence of God, sometimes it's to imply that if there is a God, he's evil.

Christopher Hitchens gets asked in this video what "anti-theism" has contributed to the world. Hitchens responds by saying that theism seemed to offer nothing to Joseph Frtizl's daughter.

But it got me thinking. Why do atheists so often point to the suffering in this world to argue against God? If we take the Abrahamic faiths as our example, we know that the inhabitants of hell will suffer far beyond what any person has suffered in this world. Islamic tradition narrates the story of an inhabitant of the hellfire who will spend every waking moment thinking that nobody could be suffering as much as he is, when in actual fact, he will be the person who is suffering the least. To put it another way, every single inhabitant of hell would, by all accounts, trade their spot with Fritzl's daughter in the blink of an eye. Or, I'll put it another way: If you want to talk about the worst kinds of suffering, you look silly talking about anything earthly.

But silly seems to be how a lot of God bashers don't mind looking.

The Abrahamic faiths also seem to indicate pretty strongly that those who suffer the worst in this life, will have it "the best" in the next life.

If we say for the sake of argument that the God of Abraham is the one true God. I then ask you which scenario is worse:

Spending 24 years locked in a cellar, being raped by your father nearly every day, eventually being freed, living (most likely) for no more than 90 odd years, in which you then transition to the next life, where you will enter a state of eternal bliss, the likes of which you couldn't ever hope to experience here on earth.

Or..

Live a fairly comfortable life here on earth, but due to a pretty selfish existence, burn for an eternity in hell.

If eternal bliss was offered to me for the price of an earthly torment, I'd take it.

Wouldn't anyone?

Last edited by straggler; 07-19-2009 at 12:33 PM.
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