Yes. And for everyone else as well. Suffering seldom improves people; it warps and twists them. There’s no virtue to suffering; if I were designing a universe, I’d leave the capability to suffer out of the creatures I made.
Not really. But live it? Definitely.
I doubt it. Let’s say you never knew suffering. Never saw it. Never lived it. How would you even begin to appreciate what you have? I’m assuming you still want free will, and you do not want to be a puppet.
I refuse to believe that this is all just a big cosmic joke, where we are the punchlines. I know intellectually that I may be mistaken about this, but oddly enough, I am given hope from the weirdest place: Gödel’s Proof. We can’t know (by proof) everything that’s true, even when we make the rules. (Before anyone jumps down my throat, I know that this is a simplification, but please, just roll with it).
I am also given some hope from my understanding and interpretation of QM. Somehow there’s just enough rules so we can make sense of things, and just enough randomness so that it’s not all painfully predictable, and there’s just enough wiggle room in our understanding of logic that maybe, just maybe, there’s more beyond these circles of existence than mere memory. (thanks Tolkien!)
I feel strongly that if God made his presence truly known, his aura would be so strong and so compelling that the whole free-will concept would be heavily compromised. If I just freely WAG’ed, I could see this time on Earth as being a chance to develop an identity and to strengthen our own will, so that when the time comes, we won’t be completely washed away in God’s presence.
If I went with this idea (I’m free-associating right now), I could see why angels might not have a free-will (or a very weak will). Because they have never known an existance without God’s presence, their own identities could never freely develop.
Ah well, sounds like the basis of a good pseudo-biblical novel, at any rate 
Sure; entirely possible. The primary reason for the assumption is that it’s taught in conventional prevailing Christianity in the U.S., so most of us are most familiar with it. But the Egyptian Book of the Dead, for instance, observed that our life here is preparation for the struggle and judgement we face in the next life. Catholicism’s “second chance” in Purgatory is another variation on this: people who are only moderately bad get a way to avoid Hell.
As others have, you leave out the middle course: a world with an awful lot less suffering. Okay, fine, I can agree: a little frustration, a little pain, a few checks and setbacks, a little heartbreak: these all “build character.”
2,000 people die in an earthquake: this builds…what? How is this morally defensible? How is this tied to our free will?
Sure. Makes sense. If the world were totally unpredictable, human intelligence would serve no purpose. If the world were totally predictable, human intelligence wouldn’t be needed: we would get by just fine with insect-like tropisms. Intelligence serves us well because the world is nicely in-between: a bit chaotic, but with rules that we can discern. (e.g., heavy monsoon rains beginning in June…most years, but not all years.)
Well, some have said this is why God sends hints, shadowy revelations, appears to farm-children and not to universities, poses lessons in parables, etc. God could “tone down” his power. (Zeus could tone down his mighty presence; Semele was foolish enough to demand he reveal himself to her in ALL his glory. Oops!)
I’ve heard this notion before. The countering notion, of course, comes from the idea of the “Revolt in Heaven.” If that story has any validity, the Angels must have had free will – at least enough to stand up and say “No” to God. (The story also impugns their intelligence! They, if anyone, know God is omnipotent! Maybe they were hoping the revolt would succeed on a symbolic basis. Students who occupy classrooms in protests sometimes get a sympathetic hearing from the university chancellor…and sometimes go to jail.)
I wish I could say with confidence that they are “good,” but I’ve written four of them!
Ok, if there is a god then he/she/it needs to do a much better job of getting its message out. Just take the Bible for example. In the first two chapters there is already a rather glaring contradiction. I realize god didn’t sit down and write the thing, only inspired it, but you’d think he could have inspired it in a way to be consistent and rational. If a god is unwilling to make himself understood, then it would be better not to know.
Because it would feel good. And why should I care if I “appreciate what I have” if the price is suffering? That’s like saying it’s a good thing for someone to beat me up so I can appreciate what it feel like to not be beaten.
Free will as normally formulated isn’t even a logically coherent concept. And even if it was, an omnipotent & omniscient creator god makes it meaningless; God knew exactly what everyone and everything would do when he created them, and planned it all along.
A responsible, moral god would simply make us that strong to begin with.
If an omnipotent god existed,he’s perfect,so nothing short of him, would be on Earth,as people supposedly made in same’s image.
If we were in a video game we wouldn’t be aware at all. But perhaps you mean, what if we were software entities in some vast computer simulation … then of course anything is possible, including that we are the subjects of a cruel experiment in prolonged torture. I don’t see how speculation on such unprovable matters helps the discussion here at all.
Well, I guess we then get to the internal contradiction of all those omnis … for instance omnipresence cannot be hidden (as we have an omnipotent entity who is everywhere all the time, and so could not be hidden anywhere) whereas omnipotence can do anything include hide omnipresence … rather like the “can god create a rock too heavy for him to lift” thing.
What would be the meaningful difference between a god who was omnipotent but refused to deploy some of that power, and one who was not omnipotent? One who was omniscient but chose not to know some things? IMO nothing; by refusing to use the omnis he exempts himself from the very premise of this discussion - that is, he’d not be the god we started talking about here.
The cosmic background radiation is omnipresent. Can you point at it?
How do you know that?
With my finger, or with special tools designed for the job?
Of course; you can’t not point at it if you have a finger to point with.
Isn’t the classic analogy A Sponge Full Of Water: wherever there’s sponge there’s water, and wherever there’s water there’s sponge – but neither is the other, even though one is shot through with the other, or something?
That said, I’m curious as to whether you’d be okay with a hidden omnipotent being who simply isn’t omnipresent. (In fairness, you’re the one who kinda assumed the other guy was eliding over omnipresence; as far as I can tell, he only ever really wanted to dwell on omnipotence.)
I dunno. I mean, we’ve all seen President Obama pardon folks and veto bills and so on, right? So imagine he didn’t pardon anyone or veto anything; on the one hand, he’d have been no different from me – I also didn’t pardon anyone or veto anything during the last four years – but on the other, it seems like we’re missing the point to compare him with me; it seems a heck of a lot more meaningful to compare him with his predecessor.
Better yet, we can map it, showing those regions in space where it is stronger, and regions where it is weaker, to a fairly fine detail.
On the other hand, I do have to agree with Koxinga in one respect: if we lived in a video game, we might be able to deduce it. We might not, of course, but I think it is going too far to say that we absolutely could not. Look how close we are, now, to deducing that we live in a holographic universe. (We may be wrong, but the point, I think, has validity.)
If the video-game is of a complexity and richness comparable to our real world, it might just possibly be that some of the underlying structure would show through. For instance (just as a really rough example) secret rooms might be detectable by measuring the areas of surrounding rooms. We might eventually stumble on to the door whence issue Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde…and find our way inside it…and emplace big nasty electrified spikes against them the next time they materialize! WIN!
Easily. And, patently, it can be detected or we wouldn’t know about it. This example actually supports my argument, so thanks for that.
I’nm taking it as read that video game characters (as you and I know them, of course) are not sentient. You are really quibbling with that?
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That said, I’m curious as to whether you’d be okay with a hidden omnipotent being who simply isn’t omnipresent.
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But being omnipotent he *could *be if he wanted, yes? He’s simply choosing not to exercise the full extent of one of his superpowers. So we’re back where we started.
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What would be the meaningful difference between a god who was omnipotent but refused to deploy some of that power, and one who was not omnipotent?
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I dunno. I mean, we’ve all seen President Obama pardon folks and veto bills and so on, right? So imagine he didn’t pardon anyone or veto anything; on the one hand, he’d have been no different from me – I also didn’t pardon anyone or veto anything during the last four years – but on the other, it seems like we’re missing the point to compare him with me; it seems a heck of a lot more meaningful to compare him with his predecessor.
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The US president has limited powers, so the analogy fails right there - this all about the internal contradiction of a being with unlimited powers. But let’s run with this - say the President had been granted unlimited powers over every political entity and every person on earth. He uses them to re-appoint every head of state and government exactly as they were before (including himself), to grant each person exactly as must autonomy as (s)he had before. Does he then actually have unlimited powers, or does he have the powers he has today?
How is that agreeing with him? He’s saying we couldn’t be aware we were in a video game, or rather that we would be unaware of the video game creator.
Have you forgotten you asserted this? No worries, it happens to the best of us.
And in any case, aren’t there quite a few quantum foamy, plancky lengthy things that we suspect may be underlying all of creation but we can’t point at or really figure out whether it’s really there or not? A far cry from an erupting volcano.
This isn’t about the meaning of God, by the way, but merely the meaning of simple words. You keep saying “omnipresent.” I do not think it means what you think it means.
I’d say that analogy (and, come to think of it, mine) fails by dint of going too far.
So imagine that our President – who can of course pardon a wide variety of federal offenses – only ever pardons federal drug offenses; you and I both know he can veto bills put before him regardless of their content, but now imagine he only ever vetoes gun-control bills. I don’t see a contradiction in saying that such a President could, at will, start pardoning rapists and kidnappers easy as vetoing a piece of copyright legislation, or whatever.
And now imagine a deity who could – but never does – use his omnipotence for omnipresence; like a President who never actually happens to pardon statutory-rape convictions, said deity never actually happens to fire up the ‘omnipresent’ effect. But each of 'em still has the power in question, right?
Have you forgotten you asserted this? No worries, it happens to the best of us.
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Of course not, but I’m not following you as to why you think I might have.
Yes, and? Are you really now saying that God only exists at the Planck length? Because if not, I’m lost as to what your point is here.
Note that I didn’t say that an omnipresent God would be unmissably obvious because he presents in the same fashion as a volcano, that was merely an example of a thing that could not be hidden. I’m saying that were God literally everywhere, he cannot also be hidden - they are contradictory states.
OK then, what do you think it means?
As I read it, you said we couldn’t be aware of it, and he questioned that. I agree with the question.
I apologize if I’ve gotten the implications upside down. But, anyway, I hold that we might be able to discover if we were in a video game. I don’t think anyone can be certain either way, especially if the game itself is of a level of complexity comparable to our world. Donkey-Kong, maybe not.
What would be the point of putting us in a “game”, and then allow us the ability to figure out that we’re in a “game”?
Sounds like would kind of defeat the point. It would be like running an experiment with human subjects who already have an idea of what hypothesis is being tested. Such knowledge will undoubtedly mess up the results. How free is one’s free will if one’s actions are driven by fear of godly judgement?
These questions ultimately prevent me from taking to religious beliefs. Not only does stumbling upon The Truth seem as unlikely as firing a cannon into outerspace and hitting another planet with intelligent life on it, but the way existence is set up, I see no good reason why we should even know The Truth. If we needed to know The Truth, it seems like all of us should be born knowing It.