Hannibal Lecter, God?
You prove your ignorance.
I can see you never read The Silence of the Clams.
That metaphor was scary as shit, Scylla. :eek: [Chicken Run]I don’t want to be a gumbo![/Chicken Run] Perhaps you should have stuck with the art metaphors!
Incidentally:
Really? My definition of beauty does not include suffering as a necessary or even important part. A painting made from mashed-up mice is not inherently more beautiful than one made with plain ol’ cruelty-free paint. I suppose Eden must have been a hideously ugly place, then, hm?
I was thinking more along the lines of Van Gogh, or the self-torture that must be endured to become a world class athlete, ballerina, or even to play a musical instrument like the violin or piano.
Self-torture, note–if someone wants to poke their eyes out because it will make them a better musician, that is their choice–it is not that miserable shit always makes people stronger and better. In a scant few cases, brutal abuse or insanity or utter misery and horror can cause a person to channel their energies into brillant art; yet far more often, it just cripples the person to some degree. For every Van Gogh, there are thousands more people whose misery does not result in sixty-billion dollar paintings. Certainly you cannot claim that the benefits of suffering are so great that they always make up for the suffering itself. As an analogy, I daresay if I have ravenous lions chase fifth-graders around, those who survive will be the fastest runners ever seen. Similarily, those who thrive despite atrocious circumstances may have great gifts–but you are discounting all those who fall to the lion’s teeth and claws as you winnow out those few who “win”. I believe the Christian God urges “do unto others as you would have done unto you”…do you think it right for someone else to force you to suffer for the sake the small chance that you will be a brillant artist, though they know you may die or be crippled emotionally or physically in the effort? Should we make all people suffer terribly against their will because a scant few will excel as a result?
You misunderstand me. Turning lions loose on 5th graders wasn’t what I had in mind, as I’m sure you know. Nor do I advocate self-mutilation as the path to artistic merit.
For those not naturally gifted though, being or doing something exceptional is difficult. One suffers while running a marathon.
The demands of greatness require sacrifice to all but those few who find it naturally and easily for some inexplicable reason. Those demands and sacrifices entail choices that cause suffering.
Try this: Think and post several different things off the top of your head that entail great beauty. Then step back and consider what suffering must have occured to create them.
Try the same thing with things that are only mundane, and see if there is a difference.
In addition, do you think Van Gogh is an example of the wonderfulness of suffering? Because he created brillant art that makes us happy, does that make it right for us to claim benefit from and endorse his misery? He lived in poverty without any genuine recognition of his genius most of his life, painted over works that would be worth a fortune today, drank too much, cut off his ear after a fight with Gauguin, suffered from severe and repeated bouts of loneliness and depression all his life, imagined he was being poisoned and had to be hospitalized, tried to eat his own paint and was hospitalized yet again, recovered and had several more attacks, finally shot himself in the chest and died a lingering death. “This sadness will last forever”, he said, rejecting his brother’s hope of recovery.
What right do we have to demand that he suffer, that his suffering is good, because we like his paintings? Is a person’s happiness of less worth than the benefit that his misery may be to others? And are we certain his suffering was more help than hindrance to his genius? What brillance would we have seen if he had been allowed to mature in his art rather than ending his life at 37?
“As for me, I am rather often uneasy in my mind, because I think that my life has not been calm enough; all those bitter disappointments, adversities, changes keep me from developing fully and naturally in my artistic career.” --Van Gogh, 1889, one year before his suicide.
A landscape. Hm, no suffering needed there; whether or not someone suffered in the creation of the landscape makes no difference in the creation of the beauty. A beautiful painting. No suffering needed there, either. A beautiful animal. No suffering needed there, yet again. A horse would still be beautiful if it did not need to brutally murder blades of grass to live, right? If you are arguing that nothing exists in this world without suffering, take it up with God, not Beauty. 
Mundane? What is mundane in this world? <grin> I think, oh, say, Kathie Lee clothes are mundane, and they were created with child labor in sweatshops. Sorry, I don’t think your suffering==beuaty holds true.
I think you misunderstand the nature of beauty. It is in us, in our perceptions, not in the world…and no, I do not see the need for terrible suffering for beauty to exist. And if you do, your heaven must be a very ugly place.
No, you apparently argue for God-mutilation. At least self-mutilation is chosen by that person!
Even for those naturally gifted, it is no cakewalk, IMHO. But it is their choice.
By your own free choice.
Again, if chosen freely, I have no problem with this. But to endorse terrible suffering forced upon others because a tiny percentage of them may rise above it…I think that is wrong.
Sorry to distract from the point of your argument with a nitpick Gaudere, but in the interests of tightening the logic…
I think that I see a flaw in your force field, Gaudere. Namely that it is often asserted that God wanted the world to be explicable and scientifically determinable. A magical God-controlled force field would not come into this category.
What is more, something as blatent as a God-operated force field would rather answer the question of whether God exists, don’t you think? In a system where God wants us to have faith without proof, this would be somewhat silly.
And I would note that we do have the capacity to kill others and so forth. We just don’t have the power to do it in supernatural ways. Once again - explicable.
However these are nitpicks with the specific examples chosen really. I have no problem with your general argument that the world could be a better place with no noticable loss of free will. I’d just suggest instead (for example) something like a biological consequence of sexual abuse that would render this form of child abuse impossible (or at least impossible to repeat).
pan
Oh ye of little faith. <grin> God is omnipotent, ya know, and if he wants to set up a world where forcefields exists, I can’t see any reason why he couldn’t use science to do it. If he can use science to create the entire universe, a little force field seems trivial.
Well, I frankly don’t see the use of God’s “faith without proof” hoop to jump through either. My Omni-God doesn’t see the need to play hide-and-go-seek. However, we could just as easily tie the forcefields to psychic perceptions of “intent to abuse”, which would remove the appearence of God’s direct interference.
Just to reiterate, God could set up any method of killing in a non-supernatural way. He is omnipotent, ya know, bound only by logic, and I can’t see any reason why insta-kills and forcefields are logically impossible.
That could be an interesting idea. I agree, my forcefields example is more of an explication of a general principle rather than the be-all-end-all solution.
Did you see that? Kabbes called me a nitpicker! Ouch, I’m insulted. The nature of beauty is a nitpick?
Well, it is a hijack.
Rather than continue it here, let me synthesize my thoughts into a complete and unasailable thesis, and start a new thread.
Then, Gaudere and others can bang there heads against it fruitlessly in frustration (or knock it down like a house of cards.)
Gaudere,
When did this thread get ressurrected? 
I’ll respond directly to your last post directed at me shortly but I wanted to ask a question first.
In what way(s) is your force field scenario better at preventing child abuse than God making it impossible for people to even think about abusing children in any form?
Grim_Beaker
When I got access to my computer back.
Well, God’s the one who doesn’t want to take away people’s freedom to desire the most horrible atrocities, so that kind of rules out the “can’t let them even think of it.” Although, we have no way of knowing if we are indeed restricted from thinking about certain evils. Let’s say fleebleflurbing is a horrible sin, and God hates it so much we can’t even conceive of it. How would we ever know?
I think we have pretty much hashed this out, although you seem to keep gamely trying to avoid a complete reliance on “mysterious ways” so I keep arguing. 
Under normal circumstances, everyone agrees vehemently, “child abuse is really bad! It sucks! I wish it didn’t exist!” Yet, ask why God doesn’t avail himself of his capacity to greatly reduce it (and not harm free will at all, either), and suddenly theists start praising the great accomplishments of people who were abused as children, and how we can’t be certain of what would happen if children weren’t abused, and hey, if children weren’t abused, maybe their parents would just kill them when they grew up and wouldn’t that suck. This seems a rather frightening attempt to justify the goodness of child abuse, and I cringe to see it. Simply say: “Child abuse sucks. The good does not appear to come anywhere near to make up for the evil. I don’t know why God did it this way.” The end.
I object strongly to what I consider flimsy justifications of suffering because I think it encourages a perception of all unwilling suffering as inherently good. Mother Teresa herself talked of the beauty of the suffering of the poor; if people feel they must perceive suffering as so all-fired great to continue to hold firm to their belief in a omnibenevolent God, they will likely then lose any desire to truly end that suffering. I mean, you argued that abusive parents prevented from abusing would therefore kill their children once they were past the “safe zone”–which logically means we should not try to stop child abuse at all. Yikes; even as random conjecture, that seems as bit disturbing to me. If a faith in God requires this sort of belief, I find it downright dangerous, and such justifications for God’s allowing abuse (which we’d never buy at all if it weren’t that theists must accept that the Big G must have set up everything perfectly Good, and must therefore reason that child abuse is somehow perfectly Good) are absolutely unecessary in the first place, IMHO. “Mysterious ways” (although I think it weak since I’ve never met anyone who could even concieve of a way to justify certain evils) at least does not require finding ways to make the evils “good” here-and-now, which would lead to a endorsement fo those same evils. I would honestly far rather see a total reliance on “mysterious ways”–though it’s an assertion that can never be disproved, so it’s a debate-killer–than the reasons I’ve seen that attempt to show why greatly reducing child abuse would be wrong.
[Edited by Gaudere on 01-22-2001 at 04:06 PM]
You didn’t answer my question Gaudere.
I didn’t ask about God not wanting to take away people’s freedom. I asked how your force field scenario is better at protecting children from abuse.
Grim
Gaudere:
You are not having the same argument I am. One perceiving beauty in the overcoming of adversity, does not mean one is pro-adversity. Nor does it mean that one is unsympathetic to those who fail to overcome unfair burdens.
In your own example, Mother Theresa saw beauty in the suffering of the poor, but this didn’t stop her from dedicating her life to easing it.
You and I and Van Gogh may speculate on what his art might have been without his depression, but we’ll never know. Without it, maybe he would have been an accountant. Surely one of his most famous works “The Scream” reflects his inner pain. The “tortured artist” is a cliche throughout history. You right to think that idea that one must suffer to create great work is a dangerous and stupid one to emulate, nevertheless there is truth in the idea that often the greatest beauty comes from great suffering. This in no way suggests that going around causing suffering or hurting children is ok because it will make them stronger or better somehow.
Some of what you describe as beautiful is to me merely pretty.
The two most beautiful things that I know of are my daughter, and a nameless lake in La Verendrye reservation in Canada.
My Daughter:
Her birth entailed the greatest suffering I have ever witnessed, and my wife bore it without complaint and with epic reserves of stoicism that left me humbled. It was not a regular delivery, and before she went into the operating room the transplant surgeons asked me about organ donation.
A caesarian is a shockingly violent operation. From the time the anesthetist said “go,” they had the baby out in about 90 seconds. All in all it was a horrible experience that I wished hadn’t happened, and would never wish upon anybody else.
My wife’s dignity, strength, and commitment throughout; as well as the product of that experience, my daughter remains to me the most beuatiful thing ever.
The Lake:
Graduated high school and was determined to spend 3 weeks by myself traveling through La Verendrye reservation in a wood strip canoe I built myself.
About a week in, I came to a portage. On the map it was nothing. However, I got lost going over the mountain to the next lake, and spent a day and a half in July without water lugging a heavy canoe and packpack along game trails. I just kept climbing uphill until I reached a vantage where I could see enough to try and get my bearings. Below me lay the lake. Half an hour later I paddled out to where the lake was clear and perfect, drank the best tasting water ever to pass my lips, and eased my sweaty aching stinking body into pure liquid heaven. It was a beautiful perfect moment.
Wandering off of a trail and getting dangerously dehydrated isn’t an experience I would recommend or care to repeat. Frankly it sucked. One can hate the suffering but still appreciate the beauty that sometimes is its product.
Hello, im new to this board and thought i would post my first reply on this message (first one i viewed actually).
I have actually had alot of thought of subjects similar to this, and have come up with these opinions.
Pain is good, to suffer is to grow. A sword is only made by putting raw steel in a fire and beating it into shape (unless you go for the cheap, flimsy molded kinds which break the first time you hit something hard with it)
To suffer is to learn something, and to get out of suffering is to have achieved something.
I know that if i were the pinnacle of wisdom and power as in what God is, i would want my followers to grow, to be strong, and to gain wisdom.
Just a thought =)
Scylla: *You and I and Van Gogh may speculate on what his art might have been without his depression, but we’ll never know. Without it, maybe he would have been an accountant. Surely one of his most famous works “The Scream” reflects his inner pain. *
[nitpick]That’s by Edvard Munch.[/nitpick]
Kimstu:
[Homer Simpson]D’oh!!![/Homer Simpson]
White Raven:
Let me be the first to welcome you!
I agree that adversity builds character. My role as a parent sheds some light on this.
It soon became clear that if my daughter was going to learn to walk, she was probably going to fall down and maybe bonk her head a couple of times.
I did the best I could and provided a safe environment. However the floor was hard enough that falling down became undesirable because it hurt.
She learned to work without serious incident.
What I think Gaudere is complaining about, and what makes sense is that the world that we live in is pretty tough. Positing a God, the analogy might be teaching my daughter how to work by placing her on a plank 100 feet in the air over a tank of alligators.
While that which doesn’t kill you may make you a stronger is occasionally a trite truth; the corrolary; that which kills you painfully doesn’t really help at all is never false.
By your logic, there should be only controlled and beneficial adversity. In the case of child abusers and murderers, this is clearly at variance from reality.
Gaudere I think takes this as sign that there is no God (and it’s a good argument, as what merciful God could endorse pointless suffering or even allow its existence.) One counterargument is the “mysterious ways” argument already alluded to. Still another is the “greater good that only God can understand,” which is similar. A third is that it goes to free will. One way of thinking is that God chooses not to reveal his/her presence since to do so would cause us to be good to please him, taking away dominion over our lives. We must choose to be good because of ourselves, not out of fear of divine retribution or reward. By interfering with our ability to cause suffering he also cripples our capacity to do good.
This to me is the point of the classic book “A clockwork Orange.” Without both capacities and their consequences we are merely machines.
Grim Beaker:
It isn’t. So what? I never claimed it was, nor does it hurt my argument to admit that. I utterly fail to see your point.
Scylla:
Yet she gave the distinct impression she wasn’t interested in eradicating it, because the poor’s suffering was beautiful.
Well, Van Gogh himself thought his art would have been better without his pain. Should we not trust the man to know his own heart? Certainly his career would have been longer without his suicide.
And I, as an artist, do not think suffering is as necessary to art as the cliche makes out. Picasso had a phenomenally respected, well-paid career, and the worst emotional trauma he seems to have suffered is domestic quarrels. And he was brilliant. Fucked up artists may be slighly more common than in the general population for all I know, but most artists I know of seem to lead lives no happier or sadder than anyone else. IMHO, the nuts get all the attention, because they’re interesting and it fits the “tortured artist” sterotype. While I’ve done some good pieces as a result of emotional pain, I’ve also done some hideously trite ones; I mean, paintings so bad I currently have them turned to face the wall so I don’t have to look at them. I doubt anyone else would think them so horrid, since even at my talentless worst I am technically competent–but I know they’re not what they could have been, despite the high emotional state I was in at the time. And strong emotions are specifically important to my particular work, being of an expressionist bent; a realist or cool abstract artist would likely not be helped by such at all. And also, in my one experience of true blue depression, I did not–could not–paint at all. So I wish to refute this belief that artists are tortured, and that suffering invariably makes good art–'cause it just ain’t so, and I would know. Sometimes the lions make you run faster than ever before; sometimes (more often, I suspect) they pull you down and eat your liver.
What, landscapes, beautiful animals, healthy, happy children are “merely” pretty? I think you’re trying too damn hard to glorify suffering here, and denoigrating things that most would unequivocally call “beautiful”. Beauty is a subjective perception anyway, and while suffering may be a necessary component to beauty for you, it is most defintitely not so to me or many others. I can see beauty in anything, so far as I can tell; I simply choose not to in some instances.
Yet wasn’t that your argument, that God allowed suffering he could relieve becuase of the beauty that may come from it?
Your daughter would be less beautiful if her birth had been painless and easy? Or would she be not beautiful at all, then?
Sure. But you admit that the suffering was not worth the pleasure? Making the best of shitty situations is a good trait, but it does not magically make the suffering “good” in all cases. Sometimes it makes up for it, sometimes it doesn’t.
No. It raises serious issues with an omnibenevolent God (why do theists so often assume their perception of God is the only one anyone can have? ::sigh:: ), but even if the world was vastly improved, I lack belief in God because I have not seen suffcicient evidence to believe.
They’re the same argument, dude.
Holds true, AFAIK, to show that man must have capacity to desire evil, yet does not support the belief that we must be physically capable of all evils we currently are.
Then I guess God should shut up about that whole heaven/hell thing, eh? ROFL!
How so? If I was physically incapable of murder, it would not infringe on my ability to do good at all.
[Edited by Gaudere on 01-22-2001 at 09:24 PM]