If you are pushed into faith by fear, suffering and despair, that kind of seems to violate free will. It also seems to imply that the “optimal” number of God’s followers is zero, considering the nature of a God that would behave that way.
Which is a major problem for the various Christian explanations for evil; they tend make God look like a selfish or outright evil being himself.
Especially when it would be so easy for an omnipotent God to reveal himself to all and remove all doubt.
That’s very kind of you. I’m happy to say that dark time was a few years ago and things are considerably better now.
The usual arguement I hear against that is that if he reveals himself, faith will not be required to believe in him, and this will somehow violate free will. I’ve never understood how that was supposed to justify anything; it seems another example of the “faith is the only good” attitude I mentioned upthread.
I keep getting sent flyers promising to tell me this if I buy their book. If I ever take them up on it I’ll let you know.
Another explanation one sees sometimes is that any amount of suffering, no matter how terrible it might seem from our perspective, is completely insignificant compared to what is to come in the eternal afterlife. In this view, God’s Heavenly healing is so great that whatever suffering we may have endured in this life, in Heaven we are made completely whole, as if the suffering had never occured.
An attitude which is great for justifying a lack of compassion, or worse. Why help anyone if their suffering is “trivial” ? Why not torture someone into converting, if the agony is “unimportant” compared to the joys of heaven ?
When you get right down to it, most justifications for God permitting evil also justify us permitting ( or committing ) evil, especially if done in his name.
Here’s another thing to consider:
God is God. He’s not bound by logical limitations or human rationalism. It is meaningless to say that God is accomplishing goal X via step Y, because God can skip directly to X for any X and Y. God can create all positive effects of human suffering without the human suffering bit involved. Ergo, human suffering is not just a side effect but a deliberate goal of God, since He has chosen to create it.
I agree. The argument assumes that faith is necessary and an independent good. It is similar to the claim that we must have bad things so that we will appreciate the good. As if there must be children going to be hungry every night so that Bill Gates can appreciate how well off he is. Of course the answer to that one is that our limited minds can’t possible understand God’s purposes. And around and around she goes.
IANAC. On this board I most often identify as theistic, but at some point it’s a choice of vocabulary and terminology, and you could deprive me of theistic terms and I could still communicate about it as an “atheist”.
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Suffering, like happiness, is rigged in us to be relative. No matter what the individual or social circumstances, the healthy human will generally find at least some joy, hope, satisfaction, and happiness in life; and will find at least some discontent, misery, thwarted fury, sadness, shame, loneliness, malaise, etc.
Emotions have a purpose, same as eyesight. We’re supposed to have feelings, and they don’t exist just like so many bonbons from Godiva Chocolates®, to smack our lips over the tasty ones and decry the existence of the ones we don’t like. They exist in order to give us motivation and direction. Human improvement, on an individual or a societal level, can be approached and attained by understanding the circumstances that maximize the good feelings, and/or mimimize the bad ones, and seeking to make those circumstances commonplace.
Emotions are the metaphorical fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They are the apple, and it is right and proper that we eat of it, to know for ourselves what we should and should not be doing.
As things get better than they once were, the “zero settings” adjust accordingly, and things that perhaps didn’t bother us so much before become emotionally troubling to us.
That may not address what you meant to be asking, though. Are you (the OP) asking “why do bad things happen to good people” rather than “why do we experience things as bad”? (Saying it that way assumes that there are “bad things”, objectively speaking, and bypasses the “evaluation-as-good-or-bad” entirely). Some “bad things” happen for no particular reason (a random meteor flies out of the sky and smashes your kid before your eyes). Other “bad things” happen as a consequence of underlying situations that, after dwelilng on the misery the event brings, we decide we can do something about (a cruel martinet of the dictator’s security forces bashes in your kid’s head with a billy club before your eyes). Perhaps, though, even the things that seem “random” and beyond our ability to do anything about could be protected against if they were common, if we had the appropriate insight or technology, and/or if we had solved enough of the other shit that those were the ones that still existed to give us torment? (Maybe we’d build a meteor-tracking device to ensure that no more babies got killed by meteor strikes)
Can’t believe there are so much discussion on this already. This is amazing. I guess there is nothing new under the sun? 
I would like to thank you all for your contributions.
Here is some info
http://biblia.com/philosophy/jesus8.htm
Basically I have seen a variety of explanations
Suffering is a tool to become a better, deeper person. This is believed by many montheistic religions as well as new age religions
Suffering is due to someone that used to work for God and turned on him
Suffering is due to punishment for some evil act(s)
The best explanation for suffering I have ever heard is the simpliest when you leave out the philosophy. Hundreds of millions of years ago when multicellular organisms were evolving (suffering seems dependent on a functional nervous system, and only multicellular life has those) those that felt suffering were more likely to survive than those who didn’t. Suffering is a tool to manipulate our consciousness and free will to cause us to act in ways that causes us to avoid suffering. From what I have seen suffering is just due to events that threaten our biological, personal or social integrity (ie, events that force us into situations that are different than our desired social/biological/personal situation). A million years ago if you eat some berries that are toxic and you are lying on the ground screaming everyone else will avoid the berries. Plus they will be cautious with trying new foods for fear of something like that happening so they may test the food first. Innocents will get caught in the gears (you may suffer due to a disease that isn’t your fault) but overall suffering keeps us alive. Imagine a world where there was no shame, it’d be like a world where everyone was high on alcohol & PCP all the time, the entire social structure would break down without conformity and shame. Imagine a world where people responded to hurricanes and natural disasters ripping apart their jobs and houses and killing their families by not caring or feeling bad. People wouldn’t make an effort to avoid geographic areas where that happened or building hurricane resistant homes. Imagine a world where people didn’t feel physical pain (most people with this condition get hundreds of infections before they turn 20 and die even with modern medical treatment, death would be guaranteed millions of years ago w/o physical pain). None of these people would survive very long, but those who did feel it would survive. That is basically all there is to it. But because suffering is so horrible (it is meant to be horrible, if it wasn’t horrible we wouldn’t give an arm and a leg to avoid it) people try to philosophize on it.
The problem is that suffering is not some all powerful force. As we understand more and more about neurophysiology and biology we will be able to combat suffering more and more. We have benzodiazepams to combat the suffering from anxiety, SSRIs to combat depression suffering, alcohol to combat the suffering from shame, etc. A thousand years ago it was taken for granted that life was filled with physical suffering in the form of hard work, disease, illness, birth defects, etc. Nowadays we take it for granted that for most of us, most of the time our lives are free of physical pain. I’m sure in 100 years when emotional pain is as rare as physical pain is today (not totally gone but most people know it isn’t something they have to fear or worry about due to medicine) people will look at us and our intense emotional pain and wonder how we managed to deal with it. Point is, 500 years ago people considered physical pain to be a ‘cross to bear’, but now we consider it an abberation to be treated with modern medicine and if need be painkillers. I haven’t felt meaningful physical pain since I broke my hand 10 years ago. Aside from that it has just been minor aches & pains here & there that lasted a day or so. No one on morphine fears a torture chamber.
There is even research showing drugs that physical & mental pain are linked in the brain. It makes sense, antidepressants (tricyclics) treat physical pain and pain killers (morphine) treat depression.
My point is, even if you want a philosophical answer don’t leave out the evolutionary answer in your debate with yourself. We suffer because it is effective at keeping us alive. It is horrible, inexcusable, inefficient, wrong and unforgivable that we suffer, but we do it because all our great great ancestors who didn’t suffer when something bad happened didn’t live long enough to reproduce.
Martin Luther felt God condemned billions of humans to eternal damnation due to predestination. He couldn’t make sense of why a good God would damn billions and not give them a choice in the matter. He eventually came to the conclusion that ‘Gods logic is not man’s logic. Man is fallen, God is not. So as fallen humans we cannot expect to understand omnipotent God’s logic’. That is the philosophy that allowed him to explain to himself why God was evil.
Sorry, was too busy reading all the very informative links and did not clarify.
I am actually looking for the answer for “why do bad things happen to good people?” Rather than why we feel pain.
How could we reconcile God with “Meteor dropped on your head” or “Genocide”?
Nevertheless, thank you for your response. It’s very interest to look at this from a totally different perspective.
You can’t, without abandoning the classic 3 O’s God ( omnipotent/scient/benevolent ), logic ( we can’t understand, so don’t worry and have faith ! ), or morality ( if God does something, it’s right because that’s the definition of right ! ).
Because, like Iago says in Othello , the Verdi opera, not the play, though he may say it in the play as well, "Credo in un Dio crudel ", I believe in a cruel god. To assume god can not prevent evil renders him non-omnipotent, and omnipotence is a necessary characteristic of god. Therefore, since evil and suffering exists, he chooses to allow it for his own amusement.
There may be no reason why we suffer on a case by case basis. At the end of the day the suffering is just due to brain chemistry. You suffer because your brain chemistry fires in a way that causes suffering and the brain chemistry exists due to evolution. Are you specifically looking for a religious reason for suffering? If so
Becoming a better, deeper, kinder person and to pursue spiritual evolution. Suffering will be eliminated in the afterlife so it doesn’t matter.
A test to see if you are worthy of God
Punishment for misdeeds
Because some force other than God created suffering
Because God’s logic and morality is above/beyond humans.
All come to mind. Only #3 implies you did something bad.
I’ve heard God can be all powerful, all good and all knowing, pick two. Its as good of an explanation for suffering as any I suppose. God must be either powerless, inept or bad. I have never seen a good argument for God being good, powerful and all knowing at the same time.
The question is “Why do so many bad things happen to good people.” Some bad things are inevitable - say two good people are going after the same girl. But all the usual arguments about why suffering is good for us fail, because to accept them you’d have to say, for instance, that no person killed by the tsunami could have been spared without decreasing the amount of good in the world. That is very, very hard to defend.
The problem with the argument that our suffering is trivial compared to that in the afterlife is that it justifies well meaning people to torture those who they think are proceeding on the wrong path. What is a day or two of torture to get someone to convert against an eternity of bliss? That argument went out with the Inquisition.