So by your logic, Susan Smith doesn’t belong in jail, then? After all, she brought her sons into this world, so she should be allowed to take them out.
You speak of free will. Maybe you should wander into the free will thread and say what that means - I sure as hell haven’t figured it out. If there were a god, I can understand him letting his intelligent creations play things out as they strive toward being better, which does indeed involve suffering. I can even see him allowing murder, because without that how can we work at forgiveness and prevention? But I still don’t see the lesson taught by dumping hot lava on people.
As for the purpose of creation, the issue at hand is if God is omnibenevolent. He might have a purpose without being omnibenevolent. Plenty of gods aren’t. I never read anything in Hebrew School hinting that he is - it is kind of a hard concept to swallow if you’re Jewish.
If there is a gap between what you have and what you want, and you don’t get what you want for some reason, you will become unhappy. If not, no one would ever strive for anything, and you go back to stasis again. It doesn’t matter what you have already, as our population of billionaires amply demonstrates.
They’d have to be born at this local maxima, otherwise they might get frustrated on the way to it. There can be no conflict with anyone else, nearly infinite resources, and of course no one who is only happy bossing someone else around. I’m not saying this world is impossible - I can see happy jellyfish, floating in a warm sea, gobbling up bits of food around, and randomly mating with anything that comes past with no pleasure involved. Like I said, stasis. Search algorithms tend to get to local maxima, and thus require something to shake the search off of it. The happy universe can’t have any such thing, because that means becoming less happy.
Our psychology limits us. The sociopath must hurt people. Hell, I don’t have free will to be truly gay, and gay people don’t have the ability to become straight. In the other thread someone (nicely) said that he wouldn’t be able to shoot me, and I said likewise. You could probably think of tons of examples. Our careers are often driven by the constraints of our biology and experience.
Not at all; no amount of unhappiness will give you the drive to accomplish something. That’s why people afflicted with severe depression are passive. It’s pleasure that gives people the drive to do something.
I’m okay with the concept that free will doesn’t really exist. While we’re in a place where it at least appears to we still have to choose.
As for purpose, my point was that intent has a lot to do benevolence of a lack of it. How do we judge God’s benevolence or lack of it without considering purpose?
To some degree can’t we change our psychology with effort. Often we are motivated by subconscious feelings and thoughts. We can take steps to become more aware of those and change their influence on us.
I don’t think that applies to gay or straight except in a few rare cases. Careers often
center around a particular gift we discover.
With respect, that’s the fallacy of arguing from incredulity again.
I don’t see this happeing. Quoite the opposite, in some ways.
Why, indeed?
I think saying “what we percieve as suffering” is just a way of feeling better about the problem of evil. There is suffering, and it is real.
I meant, what evidence do you have.
I wouldn’t call “living” a way to “put experiences directly into your brain”, no. That would be stretching things a little too much. I meant it in the most plain sense - you are given the knowledge of duality directly from god’s mind to your own.
We are limited in our experiences anyway, simply by our nature as physical meatbags. What is so special about suffering, that only suffering can teach the lessons it has? I can go my entire life without breaking a bone. Does that somehow make me less human than someone who has?
Then we’ll come back to this when I’ve done my homework.
While I understand this I don’t agree. As bad as it is we see things like slavery fading and, women’s rights, human rights, slowly advancing.
It is. When I have a bad dream the dream is real but when I wake up I realize I’m okay. Sadly that works for the really good dreams as well. Pamela Anderson wasn’t there and crazy for me.
Only the subjective type
There’s those sci fi shows where someone is created complete with memories. Just kidding really.
I don’t think only suffering teaches us. I think the concept of duality and choices does. The contrast and range of choices and experiences does, and that varies from person to person.
Because there is so much suffering in the world that any purpose behind it doesn’t matter, and because God has no right to torture billions for his purpose, whatever it may be.
Your analogy is flawed because the effects of real suffering is worse, and more persistant than a normal dream.
Your theology gives me a vision of an afterlife filled with billions of traumatized or outright insane disembodied souls, lacking even the hope of oblivion, with a demon-God lording it over them.
I’ve been watching this thread a lot and the concept of suffering comes up a lot.
If you had a guaranteed million-year lifespan, I think you’d look at suffering differently. A year spent “suffering” would be a drop in the bucket compared to your lifespan and you’d probably have a different view of it. Heck, you’d probably experiment with different conditions just for the novelty of it.
If your soul is truly immortal, than a (physical) lifetime of suffering is almost immaterial.
I think it’s safe to assume that what God calls suffering and what man calls suffering are different. If God sees you as a spiritual being, then your physical comfort isn’t that important to him. Certainly plenty of people on this earth fit some definition of physical, emotional, or financial “suffering” but yet they do still firmly & truly believe in God.
From God’s point of view, I’d suggest, he thinks they’re doing just fine.
By that logic doctors should never preform any treatment that might cause pain to the patient.
Comparing a dream to a lifetime, and then a lifetime or part of one to eternity, it doesn’t seem so flawed.
You had that vision before I typed a word on these boards.
As you can see, I tend to agree. I also completely understand people not being able to reconcile the amount of suffering we observe with a loving God. I do want to read this book. I’ve read a couple by Mt Ehrman and they are always interesting and well thought out.
We can work at stuff, but I could no more be gay than a gay person can become straight. No doubt I could put on an act if I had to, but that is different from actually feeling that way. We’re both driven by this non-freely chosen urge.
As for career, I’d love to become a theoretical physicist, but I don’t have the inherent math ability at that level. I think it is genetic, because my kids have exactly the same math ability that I do. On the other hand, I have this inherent skill at programming, which led to my career. In a sense I chose it, but the choice was pretty obvious. If we had total free will we’d be blank slates. If you define free will as an apparent ability to choose at least some of our actions, then we have it.
Not me. We live in the now, and I don’t see how the percentage of our life we spend suffering reduces the amount. That I’ve been married over half my life doesn’t reduce the frustration (in several dimensions) I felt when I was younger.
Plus your example has a person choosing to inflict suffering on himself. Is it fine in your book for this immortal to torture another immortal, without permission, just because the time spent in pain is so small relative to a full life?
Purpose has little to do with it. God has a choice of how his purpose gets fulfilled. He can do it with minimal suffering or by not caring about suffering. Unless you can convincingly argue that our world has minimal suffering, it looks like the latter. I obviously can’t prove it, but I hope you at least admit that the evidence so far backs my contention.
Okay, now I’m sure you should reread what I wrote. If you recall, we are talking about a theorized alternate world created by a different god, who was omnibenevolent. I quite specifically stated that the humans in that universe would be created to “simply be unconcerned by failure and loss, and not driven to anger or feelings of frustration by the appearance of them”. This is certainly possible, under an omnipotent God. And virtually none of your protests apply to such a scenario. Trying to argue the alternate scenario by the psycology of humans in the real world as we know it isn’t going to get you anywhere.
Oh, so you meant that you’re using a definition of free will in which nobody in our universe qualifies either! Okay, I’m fine with that - I’m satified to limit my claim to be the humans in the “if God actually were benevolent” possible sceneraio I presented have no less free will than we do, for every vaguely reasonable definition of free will.
How does this differ from God not caring about human suffering? Remember he’s aware of it - this is the God that notes the fall of sparrows. And it’s completely unnecessary, given that with omnipotence whatever his goals are they could all be met equally well without the suffering. So, doesn’t that mean that he happily watches babies drown and kitten be crushed and all the usual emotional appeal moments, smiling his beatific smile as he watches his creations scream in agony?
Not to say that there’s anything internally inconsistent with a god that cares nothing for the momentary state of his creations, but calling that sort of passive uncaring “benevolence”, now that seems like a game of semantics twisting to me.
A terrible analogy. First, because doctors can’t do so against your consent. And second, doctors cause suffering in the process of helping people because they have no choice. THEY aren’t omnipotent.
What about an eternity of being insane because of the suffering you underwent ?
Of course, your philosophy isn’t really anything more than an excuse for being uncaring at best, and more likely outright brutality. Your view of suffering is one of the most evil possible, because it can justify ANYTHING. By your philosophy, torturing a billion people to death is trivial.
Not really, no. It’s been people like you, here with your rather horrifying attempts to defend God who have given me that specific vision.
Garbage. Pain is pain. It hurts just as much regardless of if you have ten minutes or ten millennia to live.
That’s the sort of statement that shows why believing in the soul is evil. It practically mandates sociopathy, if you take the belief seriously.
Well, so what ? We are the ones doing the suffering.
Because belief in God is a form of insanity.
That’s what an evil God would think, yes. Not a good one.
This whole “purpose” thing. I’m still waiting for someone to explain why a perfect god would create man to begin with. If he’s perfect, there’s no need for us. Not even for amusement purposes! Instead he creates an unnecessary universe full of unnecessary things and unnecessary life forms so we can…what, exactly?
A perfect being would not need entertainment. But he might like it. And, given that it costs him nothing to create it…
Not to mention a truly immense universe to house a puny little world. The cosmology of the ancients, with the stars more or less pasted on the outermost crystal sphere, made a lot more sense or a universe created for us.