Why would an omnipotent being who “loves his children” (who are nothing more than pets) let them suffer through disease and, why would he set a demon loose in the realm of his spawn?
The responses to this question form the theological field of theodicy, which has been discussed (without conclusion) since the conception of an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent deity.
For an interesting and humorous book on this topic (albeit anti-theistic), I recommend James Morrow’s “Blameless in Abaddon” (ISBN: 0156005050).
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away”. - Phillip K. Dick
Suffering builds character.
Oh, relax. It’s just His way of having fun.
Ummm…because he can?
Good lord. You couldn’t put that question in a six-shooter. You’d need a whole magazine to hold it and at least a semi-automatic to fire it.
[Beginning the daunting task of unloading the question…]
First, this: nothing more than pets
To those of us who actually have pets and love them, this bullet is obviously intended to lower the status of the precedent children to that of animals — that is; a “pet” on the order of a trained tiger that is held in custody by the circus trainer, but is certainly neither loved nor trusted. It is merely a rhetorical technique designed to misdirect, redirect, or mislead, giving the writer’s own answer in the body of his own question. In other words, the writer of the question, by this rhetorical technique, implies that God sees us as occupants of His ant farm, and therefore allows suffering (the almost hidden point of the question) because we don’t matter.
So let’s take that out, and we’re left with:
Why would an omnipotent being who “loves his children” let them suffer through disease and, why would he set a demon loose in the realm of his spawn?
Putting a phrase in quotation marks when you’re not quoting typically implies sarcasm, indicating here that the write believes God actually does not love His children. This is another useless editorial that again distracts from the point of the question. So let’s kill that, too.
Why would an omnipotent being who loves his children let them suffer through disease and, why would he set a demon loose in the realm of his spawn?
Now we are beginning to get down inside this Russian egg.
We discover that there are, in fact, two questions: one about why God allows suffering, and the other about why He allows evil, although the latter question is again loaded by use of the phrase “set a demon loose”, and by use of the word “spawn” in a rather odd context. The writer again uses rhetorical technique, this time to evoke the image that God has raped the women of the earth to produce His “spawn”, and then has sicced His doberman demon on them to chase them down and torment them. We’ll just leave “realm” alone since the writer at least attributed it to the spawn, and not to God. Unforunately, this auxilliary question will have to be completely paraphrased to alleviate its inherent taint.
So let’s try this:
Why would an omnipotent being who loves his children let them suffer through disease and, why would he allow evil to exist?
Whew.
Now we need merely paraphrase the first question to unload it (almost) completely, correct the grammar, and subdivide the compound question properly, providing appropriate tags to make referencing its components more convenient:
(A) Why does God allow His people to suffer, and (B) why does He allow evil to exist.
Regarding (A), there is a vestigial loaded implication in using the word “allow”, because the word can connote different things in different contexts, but substitution of some other word here might not be helpful, since it might pin down the meaning too precisely, thereby completely bleaching the writer’s intended point. So all we have to do is clear up what we mean by “allow”.
If the implication is that God ought to disallow suffering, then I have to protest, “But what is wrong with suffering?” More precisely, “What is morally wrong with it?” I believe the notion that suffering is immoral is a modern one, fostered on pampered people by rulers who must operate in a semidemocratic context to exchange favors for votes — i.e., you are “suffering” if you have one iota less than your neighbor has. A chicken in every pot for every person. A car in every garage. Not to mention a garage on every house. And not to mention, further, a house for every person. And so on.
The writer makes a subtle connection between suffering in the sense of nerves sending messages to the brain (thus the mention of “disease” in the original loaded question) and suffering in the sense of having a broken heart or guilty conscience. The former is entirely natural contextually, and is the product of cellular interaction, intended to benefit us by alerting us to environmental instabilities. The latter, on the other hand, while supernatural contextually, is not attributable to God, but to man, by proxy of his supernatural spirit.
In other words, it is our own cruelty (or sin) to one another that causes instabilities in our spirits. The guilty conscience and heavy heart are like the signals from the brain, meant to alert us that something is wrong.
That means that God “allows” suffering because, if He didn’t, then we wouldn’t be free moral agents simply because our lives would exist without any moral context, which brings us to part (B) of the compound question.
If the set of your experience, A, contains a single element, X, such that A = {X}, then how on earth will you make any choices within your set? How would you know joy never having known sorrow? How would you know fulfillment never having known want? How can you choose chocolate when only vanilla is available?
But given a set, A, such that A = {X, Y}, now you may choose between X or Y, and that is exactly what a free moral agent does, he chooses. Life on earth is a tapestry of good and evil, giving a rich context from which we, as free moral agents, may make moral choices.
You see an old lady on the street corner — will you push her in front of a car, or will you help her cross? She is a moral element in your frame of reference (your moral set), and you are a moral element in her frame of reference (her moral set). Each of your spirits will make moral decisions regarding each other. If you push her in front of a car, will she forgive you or curse you for it? If you help her, will she thank you with a moral humility or dismiss you with a moral arrogance?
Our views on the issue addressed (deep down) in the Opening Post will manifest according to how we view what man is. Is he a brain or a spirit? If he is merely a brain, then suffering is an amoral product of nature, and there is no God anyway Whose motivations we may ponder. But if man is a spirit — that is, if his essence, his heart, is spiritual — then both suffering and evil are necessary to his growth and discovery of himself.
For people of faith, atoms aren’t real anyway. There’s no joy or fulfillment in them. When we eat bread made of atoms, we always get hungry again.
“I am the bread of life. He who eats the bread I give him will never hunger again.” — Jesus
Okay, here’s an old one, but what’s your response?
If God is omnibenevolent, he cannot allow evil to take place. If God is omnipotent, he can stop absolutely anything from taking place. However, he doesn’t stop evil from taking place. Therefore, he cannot be both, and therefore, is not the Christian God. What then?
A hush fell over the courtroom, killing six.
Breckinshire
Huh?
Due to time constraints, I am limited to unloading one question per day. Will you be a dear and unload yours for me? You can start by explaining why you link whatever you mean by “the Christian God” with whatever you mean by “omnibenevolent”.
Why? Because he’s bored, being omnipotent and all. Look at Q - why else would he keep pestering Picard?
“It’s hard to work in groups when you’re omnipotent.”
Esprix
Libertarian: But then, why did God create cancer? Gangrene? Childhoold leukemia? Why did the Jews have to suffer for the Nazi’s moral freedom?
Breck: Very few Christians portray God as omnibenevolent.
I realize that “God is love” might lend itself to that interpretation, as well as references to His “infinite love,” but for the most part, most assume that God’s love is infinitely deep, rather than infinitely wide. He loves the world as a gestalt, he loves those who accept Him, but time after time we hear about His hatred of sin and his almost dispassionate anger at sinners (not that anger and love are exclusive, of course).
-andros-
(waiting for a practicing Xian to correct me)
“Why would an omnipotent being who “loves his children” (who are nothing more than pets) let them suffer through disease and, why would he set a demon loose in the realm of his spawn?”
Short answer: The omnipotent being allows you to choose whether you will suffer in given circumstances or not. That is YOUR omnipotence.
The ‘demon’ is a characterization of fear, as ‘god’ is a personification of acceptance. Without one the other is meaningless.
Well, He had to do something after He didn’t stop beating His wife.
Guess you’ll have to ask the Nazi.
Lib: Don’t duck the question regarding disease and suffering due to “natural causes.”
You asserted that, “The writer makes a subtle connection between suffering in the sense of nerves sending messages to the brain… {This phenomenon} is intended to benefit us by alerting us to environmental instabilities.”
But, since you claim an omnipotent God, you have to accept that these horrible “environmental instabilities” were indeed created by God. Clearly, they cannot exist to allow us to be “free moral beings” and allow us to exist with a “moral context.”
So, why does disease exist?
The same applies to Nazis. God allows them their moral freedom, but the consequent suffering is experienced not by themselves, but by their victims. In this case, God seems to reserve His “benevolence” for the perpetrators, and shows none at all to the innocent victims.
A person’s physical body has to die of something, SingleDad, whether it is cancer or whatever disease. Some causes of death bring great physical and mental pain, others don’t. Some people die young, others don’t. If there is a god, I wouldn’t fault him for not saying, “Everyone gets the same life schedule – 70 years, then a painless quiet death.” I don’t consider the fact that we don’t all get this same schedule as evil, but just a fact of the universe. Whether or not a god is behind it all wouldn’t change my opinion, I don’t think.
Thanks for the book recommend, by the way. I always enjoy humorous books about serious topics.
Heck, let’s rephrase this in terms of…The Problem Of Evil!
Suppose there is a cute little wooden house. Further, suppose there is a baby, say, 2 months old, in the house. Still further, suppose the house is on fire. Further yet, suppose that there is a man outside the building who knows that the baby is inside. The man knows that he can rush in and save the baby easily, without endangering his own life.
What if the man decides not to save the baby, despite the fact that doing so would pose no risk to himself? Most would call him evil for allowing the child to burn.
The fact is, babies burn in fires every day. Which, of course, leads us to three possible conclusions:
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God doesn’t know that babies are dying in fires. God is therefore not omniscient.
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God knows that babies die in fires, but cannot save them. God is therefore not omnipotent.
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God knows that babies die in fires and can save them, but chooses not to do so. God is therefore evil.
The usual cop-out of the religerazzi is, “God has a higher/greater purpose for allowing the child to die.” Perhaps, but what higher purpose could possibly be served by the immense suffering the baby endures in the fire before dying? You’ll never convince me that there is any purpose so grand that an infant should suffer for it.
Okay, there you have it, The Problem Of Evil. Run with it!
Whyzzat?
His ability to do everything does not necessarily imply that He did do everything. An a priori assumption on your part does not constitute an obligation to prove your assumption on my part.
That’s just something that happens with atoms. You are trying to ascribe moral responsibility to God for the amorality of nature.
That reminds me of a story from Kahlil Gibran’s Jesus, the Son of Man, which I’ll paraphrase:
John writes that Jesus and Judas were standing on a hill, overlooking the city of Jerusalem at night. It was a dazzling display of lighted torches and fires, like jewels strewn across the vast blackness of space.
“Oh, Master!” Judas gushed as he gazed at the sight. “Just look what you will inherit when you come into your kingdom!”
Jesus looked at Judas with sadness and pity. “Oh, Judas,” said He, “Do you truly believe that I have come down through the ages to rule an ant hill for a day?”
You are looking at only the atoms. Man is the steward over the atoms. God’s moral context is spiritual. His reward for those who suffer for Him is a spiritual one, as is his punishment for those who cause His children to suffer.
The atoms serve merely as a context for the morality, which is played out by our spirits, not our bodies.
You might not like that answer, but that is the answer. I ain’t duckin’ nothin’, but I could easily claim that that’s what you’re doing by refusing to acknowledge the points I’ve made. So let’s stop with the red herrings, and don’t turn the issue into who’s ducking whom here.
I gave my honest heartfelt answer to the Opening Post. If you disagree with that answer, then debate the issue, please, and not my character.
That which pains one man exalts another.
A baby dying in a fire is a result of the actions of every other human around it.
The physical properties of the world are fairly well known, when man makes a structure, he knows it can burn, given the proper circumstances. When a drunk woman falls asleep with a lit cigarette in her mouth, or an electrician improperly ties aluminum wire to copper wire, or lightning strikes a building that can’t withstand it, without igniting due to design, the fire is then the result of the exercise of the free will of humankind.
God cannot intervene, to do so would be to deny that we have free will. It’s not evil, it’s impartial.
Well, except God has intervened quite directly before, if you believe the Bible.
He intervenes in atoms, but not in volition.