I noticed you actually avoided a simple question and you’re demonstrating what I’ve been saying all along.
Can giving the opportunity to play such an RPG be benevolant toward the player of the game who steers the Sim?
I avoid nothing. Read what you’ve quoted. Or are you deliberately avoiding my point?
Such a being could easily be being benevolent to the players, but they are not being benevolent to the Sims. If the Sims are insentient, this is (arguably) not a problem. But if they are sentient, then the being is robbing Peter to pay Paul, and is at best selectively benevolent, and certianly not omni.
Not at all. I simply wanted a direct answer to a simple direct question.
Thank you. THat wasn’t so hard.
except in RPGs the sentient beings are the players not the Sims. In many religious theologies our souls are the players that live on after out bodies {the Sims} turn to dust.
regardless of your if you’ve proven my point quite nicely, since you’ve just agreed that god can be benevolent from a certain persepctive.
I’m not arguing that we are players and our bodies are only sims. I’m saying , as I’ve said all along, when we assume an omnimx being we create that possibility and it is that possibility that keeps the POE argument from being logically inevitable and actually proving anything. To bad it took so long to get here. I thought it was fairly obvious all along.
So essentially, you’re saying souls don’t suffer anything when our bodies do? That they’re inert passengers? Because that’s the only way that the soul’s immortality gets you around the PoE. And if so, where’s your much-vaunted learning experience in that?
No I’m saying there’s a lot we don’t know and a lot of possibilities. Ultimately we don’t need any knowledge of what does or doesn’t happen after our bodies die to do our best here and now.
You’re making a a mistake I see a lot in these arguments. It isn’t just about how suffering affects the individual. We’re talking about a being that comprehends how everything affects everything all at once. How every slight action affects the whole. How a butterfly’s wings affects the weather.
Physical suffering on all levels also affects us mentally and emotionally. How we choose to deal with it has a lot to do with our growth as a person. Not only that suffering affects others as well and they get to decide how to respond. We don’t just deal with our own suffering but all the suffereing we encounter in others, not only as individuals but in groups.
“The divine DM/player actually comes off as not being a jerk. Except from the standpoint of us game characters, of course” was pretty direct and explicit, I thought. Both times I posted it.
Which has zippo to do with our reality, because we know we are sentient and that we suffer. If God and our souls are chortling with glee each time we howl in pain, then that doesn’t help them on the omnibenevolence front - quite the contrary, in fact.
Trying to argue that human suffering doesn’t matter isn’t an argument for omnibenevolence on the part of the proposed supernatural beings, it’s an argument for sociopathy on the part of the arguer. Since you’re not a sociopath, you logically must be arguing that humans don’t actually suffer. Which is a perspective that would allow god to be omnibenevolent while deriving entertainment from the actions of serial killers, but it has the minor problem that it’s one of the very few things that we can disprove, cogito ergo sum style.
You might as well argue that because there is no life on earth, God is not non-omnibenevolent if he floods it. Such an argument would be equally compatible with reality.
For completeless I’ll note that if God was unaware that humans have the ability to actually feel actual suffering, that would reopen the door for omnibenevolence to him. Excepting omniscience and sparrows falling and all that.
I think it’s high time this thread was Godwinized - Hitler was benevolent from a certain persepective. If you were an aryan in his high command, or himself, then he was benevolent to you. Whoopdy-frickin’-doo.
Unfortunately for you, the fact that humans are not insensate Sims is also obvious and disproves the possibility that we are considered such by any omniscient perspective.
Though if you’d said outright that your position was that humans might not have minds*, we could indeed have disproved your objection to the POE much more rapidly.
- (other humans, such as yourself, might not have minds. But I know I do, and I’ve experienced some suffering, which is enough to disprove your objection to the POE.)
Irellevant since I’m talking about a perspective that encompasses all creation. It’s not about one human perspetive vs another human perspective. It’s about a limited perspective vs an unlimited one.
I see. So we can logically disprove the existance of god by flatly denying any other possibilities. You know we’re not spiritual beings in temporary physical form and no part of our consciousness lives on after we’re physically dead so , knowing that, you can logically prove there is no omnimax being with your inevitable POE argument.
That’s the long way around. Next time just say you** know** there is no god and we won’t waste as much time pretending it’s logic.
Irrelevent because any omniscient/unlimited perspective will be aware of the things experienced by the limited perspectives, and any omnibenevolent being would be empathic towards the experiences of those things. There is no ‘vs’ - by either our perspective or an unlimited perspective our suffering still matters.
As I’ve said repeatedly.
And as you keep deliberately ignoring because you are well aware that it destroys your argument.
Define “part of our consciousness lives on”, please. I assume it’s another self-contradictory impossibility where you manage to decide that neither the independent part of our consciousness or the spiritaulish part of our consiousness ever experiences suffering, through the miracle of rapidly moving the goalpost back and forth to avoid the flying footballs.
You’re really fond of the “You have not made an argument and are instead just asserting illogical things” strawman, aren’t you?
I’m too lazy to pit you, but the use of this morally and intellectually bankrupt tactic certainly merits it.
I understand this argument. That’s exactly why I’ve said the experience of duality and all the parameters it encompasses must be the point.
I’m not deliberately ignoring anyhing. It’s just that your argument isn’t as irrestible to me as it is to you. It’s an honest disagreement and you haven’t swayed me.
I’m not going to define anything and start another useless marathon. I gladly admit I don’t know and it may all be hogwash. My basic argument remains the same. The very proposal of some omnimax being oens the door to near infinate possibilities. The idea of soul being a pretty common one.
No. I never said the POE argument was not logical and reasonable in some fashion. My objection has only been to the earlier posts saying it was logical inevitable, that it proved an omnimax god can’t exist, that it was bulletproof.
I’ve said I thought it was logically incomplete or incorrect in it’s appraoch and explained why.
You’ve made a lot of arguments as well as a lot of assertions.
As I said quite a bit upthread. Aside from all the useless and unnessecary tangents, I’d be glad to invite other input on the logic or lack of it in my argument.
I’d be interested in a poll, not on the whether god exist or not, or the rules of logic, but on whether the logic of the POE is indeed bulletproof or not and whether my own position has any merit.
I’ve been worng before and I may be now, but you haven’t convinced me.
But what precisely does it mean when you say that duality and, er, the parameters it encompasses (I don’t know what you mean by that) must be the point?
Putting aside ‘parameters’, if duality is the point, then God is clearly not devoted to the extermination of evil, or the mitigation of suffering. He’s also not devoted to the extermination of good or the mitigation of happiness, either. He wants us to experience both.
As I’ve noted, omnipotence denies us the ability to theorize or imagine that God has subtle and meaningful reasons for wanting to subject us to hills and valleys on this journey - omnipotent gods don’t do things they don’t like for subtle reasons. So, duality god wants us to get smacked down occasionally because that’s what he likes to see.
Is this an impossible perspective for a god to hold? Certainly not. However, I am well within my right to point out that it’s not the perspective of an omnibenevolent god. Benevolence, as I’ve noted to the point of insanity, means something. And it doesn’t mean, “sometimes God wants you to get kicked in the 'nads for no particular reason but his own pleasure.” (Reiterating: omnipotent gods can’t have particular reasons besides their own pleasure.)
You can claim that there’s some subtle way that being bad occasionally for no reason is the same as being good, and you can keep claiming that until both our keyboards burst into flames from overuse, but even then this bird ain’t gonna fly. Again, the point is not that your duality-god is impossible -quite the opposite! I’m saying, to the point of exhaustion, that he is possible, because he is not omnibenevolent. He is not an exception to the POE - he’s explicitly accounted for as one of the many concepts not addressed by it.
Well, I’m running out of ways to explain what I think is obvious and ironclad - what am I supposed to do here?
Fine then - I will make your argument for you, to demonstrate that there is no model of the soul that avoids the evil problem. The only way to maintain the belief that is does is to avoid thinking about it. As you’re doing here.
I have a mind. It is, as best I can tell, fully functional and complete, with not a shred of eternal perspective influencing it. And the conscious mind I know as “I” experiences rather unpleasant experiences from time to time.
So at this point we have two options: to deny that my mind as I experience it exists in any way, shape, or form, or not. Denying it would deny that I suffer and allow the POE to be satisfied (assuming God’s not doing evil elsewhere). I however refuse to accept the claim that my mind does not exist in any way shape or form, as it’s one of the very few things about the world that I can assert with absolute certainty. Everything I percieve might be an illusion, but I am conscious of thoughts and feelings, and even if those thoughts and feelings are being edited and fabricated realtime I am still feeling and thinking them - and thus, experiencing any suffering included among them. Cogito ergo laboro.
So, that means that somebody is suffering (and it’s me). I’ll just note that we can stop right here, because no further deliberation can de-establish an established fact without making errors.
Okay, on to the errors! The most common way to use souls to justify/excuse/ignore suffering is to claim that we have eternal souls and the souls don’t suffer when we do. This of course does bad things with our congnition because suffering and the avoidance thereof is a major influence on our decision-making processes, so souls that disregard it can have little or very arguably nothing to do with our conscious minds. But that’s getting too directly to the truth - let’s get back to the errors.
A decent analogy for most people’s soul models is that of a hand puppet; the puppet is us and the person wearing it is the soul. When a person dies their soul just discards their hand puppet, etc. So anyway, when the hand puppet knight is recoiling in pain when the hand-puppet dragon is chewing on it, what’s actually happening? Options:
-
the soul is faking it - this is all a play and we are merely the mindless puppets of the players. This works great until we remember that we’re neither mindless nor living the experience of a puppeteer who’s faking it. Cogito ergo laboro - this option is not what is happening.
-
the puppet is sentient, and moves and acts independently. In this model, the soul is less of a puppeter than a passenger; the puppet still is getting itself into trouble and suffering basically on its own, while the soul looks on bemusedly. This model is compatible with our experience, but doesn’t solve the POE.
-
we’re sentient, but the soul is driving. In other words free will is an illusion and when we walk into the dragon’s mouth it’s because our soul is pupetting us there - but we still experience the actual pain once the soul puts us into that situation. This obviously doesn’t solve the POE; it makes the souls into apathists or sadists, torturing their sentient puppets for their own reasons, which may or may not include hearing us scream. And the god that allows it is little better.
-
some place on the continuum between 2 and 3. Perhaps souls dont drive us completely; perhaps they only nudge us now and then, as frequently or infrequently as you’d like to speculate. Of course, neither 2 nor 3 satisfied the POE, and I don’t see how anyplace on the continuum between is any better; we’re still suffering either way. (Regardless of the fact our souls might not be. Though I will belatedly add that any soul that doesn’t suffer when I do is no soul of mine, the unempathetic bastard.)
I can’t think of any other options - feel free to suggest some. But with the ones I have so far, nothing solves the POE except the one we know ain’t happening.
Don’t be coy - just say that all my arguments are made of assertions too and that I’ve said nothing at all of substance. I can take it.
The thing about logical arguments is that they don’t half-work. “Logically incomplete” isn’t a defined term, unless you mean “the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises”, in which the thing is completely invalid and utterly void of logical value in any circumstances whatsoever. Logic that’s incorrect in it’s approach doesn’t reach it’s conclusion at all.
If the logic is right and your thingus in question doesn’t match the premises, of course, then the logic is 100% right and 0% applicable to your thingus. It can’t be mostly-applicable any more than your thingus can mostly-exist. So on the soundness front it’s similarly uncompromising.
This is actually a feature of logic - you know that once you get your thingus properly described in premises, 100% of your certainty in those premises is transferred to the solutions, with no ‘maybes’ or ‘okay probably nots’ added in the process. But a side effect of this useful property is that I actually must reject your olive branch; either it’s ironclad, or it’s trash. The middle is excluded.
So as nifty as it would be to meet in the middle and declare we’re both half-right, I’m afraid that logic itself doesn’t allow it. It’s kind of like being half-pregnant, in that it’s something you can’t be. The logic is right, or it ain’t.
I’d be vaguely interested in a poll to stroke my ego when I discover that the entire universe agrees with me, though there’s this lingering fear that nobody does, and I would have to despair for the deplorable state of the world. But honestly an argumentum ad populum will do little to convince me I’m in error.
Which has no bearing on our suffering.
I never said it was. Doesn’t change anything.
Doesn’t matter.
But if god is omnipotent, we don’t need any of that. Basically, the problem here is suffering. And it’s *your *problem - you’re suffering - from a lack of imagination. It seems you fail to imagine exactly what omnipotence means. Omnimax god is not limited by anything as cruel as lessons taught by suffering. How could he be, he’s omnipotent.
In most religious mythology there’s some concept that we came from and possibly go back to some place of bliss. Eden , Heaven, something like that. Once Adam and Eve gained the knowledge of good and evil they were cast out of Eden.
In order for the illusion of free will to exist we have to have something to choose. Yin and Yang, good and evil, positive and negative. but in theory these are all part of the greater whole. The parameters would be, how good can good be, how evil can evil be etc.
So, if we as part of the greater whole are to experience duality we must have something to choose. Religion talks about seeing creation and your fellow man as an extension of yourself , the whole we are one thing. But what would we choose if we didn’t know that or believe that? What would happen if the cells in our bodies decided that instead of being part of one living organism they were independent and had their own interests to worry about not realizing that ultimately helping and supporting others is supporting yourself and harming or even not helping others is a negative against yourself?
That is the duality that we, through choice and consequence, deal with until we wake up to the whole we are one thing.
That’s the conundrum. You keep speaking of god as a totally seperate entity who created and rules the universe. THat is a common model, but much of theology also theorizes that we are part of god. first god was and then god created the universe. From what? From himself.
What if we are willing participants in experiencing duality as players in a RPG play of thier own accord?
The whole of creation and how dulaity fits in and how it all works together is something we can’t see, but it’s at lest possible that it’s benevolant.
If we from our limited perspective can understand how occasionally something negative is benevolent then we should be able to stretch our imagination around the idea that the total of all creation , even the things we see as horrific, can also be part of a benevolent whole.
take a break. I’m sure it will come up again.
I repeat, since we’re talking about all creation, every person that is, ever was, and ever will be, it’s about how all of it fits together into a whole not just one perspective.
remember Jesus talking about valuing things that time cannot corrupt. We choose what we value consciously or unconsciously. Sure we avoid pain and discomfort but we also get to choose what things, and when, our personal comfort comes in 2nd to something we value more.
Given the subject matter why would you expect to figure it all out?
What do we suffer for is a better question and how do we respond to our own suffering and the suffering of others.
Because I don’t think that way about the POE. I think it’s significant in that it helps dispel certain models and narrows the field. It’s the POE argument that brought me to the idea that the journey itself must be it, {if there is anything at all} and that as part of the whole we are not unwilling participents or even children. We are co creators playing our role. We get to decide where creation goes from here, day by day, choice by choice. That helps dispel the notion of a seperate all controling being, but not a creator of any or every kind.
Well okay then.
The POE argument fails to show that a benevolent creator cannot exist.
Then it’s trash cincerning the conclusion you’ve drawn from it.
The question of “how can god be benvolent when we see so much suffering” IMO is an important one.
That means you understand how I feel 
I haven’t failed to imagine that. I understand it quite well. THat’s why I reject the “god is trying to teach his children a lesson” model. That’s not what I’ve been saying at all.
It is not correct that people must have the ability/inclination* to choose evil to have the illusion of free will. When I choose to say “hello” instead of “hi”, in neither case am I choosing evil, yet I still choose. The fact that I was able to ponder and discard the option of greeting them by ripping their throat out did not enhance my free-willed experience in any significant way - and certainly not enough to justify when people do rip people’s throats out.
‘But if you couldn’t rip out their throat you wouldn’t think you had free will!’ No. I’m already massively constrained in what I can choose to do. I can’t choose to levitate. I can’t choose to inflate up to ten times my size. I can’t choose to move objects with my mind. Do these constraints mean I have no ability to make choices? Nope. So the loss of other options wouldn’t either, presuming I still had a decent selection of options remaining.
‘But those are physical constraints; it’s not the same thing!’ Says who? Whether we have souls or not, our minds (wherever they are) must use an organized calulative process to carry out our thoughts and decisions. (Especially if your argument is that we’re making choices.) Our thought processes, therefore, have rules. These rules, therefore, are constraints. I reject there’s any important difference between physical constraints and cognitive contsraints; both limit what we can do.
There is, thus, no reason why people should be able to choose evil. Unless god enjoys watching us choosing to do evil to done another.
Of course, I could have saved a lot of time and proved all this in one sentence by saying, “God supposedly has free will and doesn’t choose evil (since you keep claiming he’s omnibenevolent), therefore we could have free will and not choose evil either. QED.” But really, what would be the fun in cutting to the chase?
- I consider these to differ only by degree, not kind, since libertarian free will is an illusion.
I already specifically addressed this possibility in my prior post. Cogito ergo laboro - if we were willing participants role-playing suffering, then we would know it, and we wouldn’t actually experience any real suffering. Unless you think the way role-playing works is to take separately-conscious beings and subject them to the events in your game. “What did you roll? A one? Oh dear, you didn’t dodge the boulder. Here’s a bowling ball - now smash your hamster!”
Being part of god doesn’t help - we are also separately sentient, which needs to be accounted for. Models that conspicuously ignore this fact will inevitably fail.
Not even a little bit. There is no ‘or maybe there’s an exception’ in the premises or definitions therein, and the logic doesn’t introduce any, so there are no exceptions to the conclusion either.
Negative things can only be benevolent if they serve a more important cause, and the negativity is outweighed by the resulting positivity. If you would stretch your imagination enough to understand what you meant when you said your god was omnipotent, you’ll know that this can never happen for him.
Unless by “stretch your imagination” you mean “tell yourself lies about things you already know”. Why yes, I have no individual mind. Why yes, the world really is just a crude map on a table-top and I roll dice to decide whether I have to pee or not. Why yes, it really is quite painless and amusing when I get rolled over by a boulder.
Naah, I haven’t got that bored yet. Besides which, you seem at least intellectually capable of seeing reason - why should I give up on you?
Which changes nothing of what you responded to - regardless of whatever else is out there, my mind exists, and it experiences what it experiences, and it really is experiencing these experiences (even if the experiences are a lie, I’m really living the lie).
And by declaring your god is omniscient, you deny yourself the ability to pretend that ‘how all of it fits together into a whole’ does not explicity include accounting for my individual perspective.
When you attribute a descriptive word to something, you limit it, and thus yourself. If you would internalize this fact this would all go a lot smoother.
Which is exactly my point - an entity that did not feel this discomfort would not make the same decisions we do.
Have you ever played a computer game and deliberately had your character do something stupid and fatal just to see the results? I did just a couple days ago. (You can get surprising lift and distance crashing a motorscooter into a fence in GTA4 - probably because the game fences have no give.) Would I have done that if I had any connection whatever to the thought process of Nikko the character? Heck no! Actually if I was sharing Nikko’s personal experience I would conspicuously avoid almost all of the game activities; waaay too unsafe and painful. As things are now the dude is basically suicidal.
Heck, if I seriously thought the dude was separately sentient to any meaningful degree (like, say, a tenth as sentient as I cogito ergo sum I am), I wouldn’t touch the game with a ten-foot pole. After all, I’m an evil bastard, but I’m not that sadistic. The ability to play out my choices wouldn’t be worth being that evil.
I expect to figure it out because I’m using definitional divisions to parcel up reality, and in doing so all subtle possiblities are automatically accounted for in the categories, to the degree I correctly apply the definitions. After all, I’m aware of the fact that applying definitions limits the subject under discussion, and that conclusions can safely be drawn from those definitions because all subtleties and imaginary cases were accounted for in the definitions and my decision to describe entity X with them.
And we suffer because your god doesn’t give a crap about us and revels in our suffering. Or your god is not omniscience and is unaware that we suffer. Or your god is incapable of stopping our suffering without sacrificing some larger goal*. Or your god doesn’t exist.
- and choice can’t be that goal in the case of natural evil anyway. Remember natural evil? What part of choice is exercised by you having the ability to choose to be either 1) killed in an avalance, or 2) killed in an avalanche?
The POE never dispelled creators of any or every kind. It just dispells any and every kind of omnimax creators. (And omnimax things that didn’t create us too, for that matter.)
Your problem with it is that it narrows the field more than you want it to.
Then you’ll be able show the logical fallacy in it then.
Oh wait, you can’t? Then you’re just blowing smoke; in active denial.
If it was trash for my conclusions, it would be trash for the conclusions you’ve drawn from it too. But it isn’t - for either.
And that’s why we’re all happy that the POE has answered it! For a something to (exist and) be omnibenevolent in conjuntion with our world, it must be:
- non-omniscient,
- non-omnipotent, or
- both.
Isn’t logic great, in how it can take certainly-known things (like arbitrary definitions) and extrapolate them to other new certainly-known knowledge?
Since facts and logic and definitions won’t sway you, I certainly never expected a flimsy rhetorical fallacy to do so.
But it sounded like you were thinking it might sway me (since you bothered to suggest the idea), so I hastened to disabuse you of that assumption.
The line between considering and doing is an interesting one. In a lot of beliefs it’s about our true heart , our true intent, rather than just our action. Jesus said if we hate it’s the same as murder. The inner person is just as complex as our physical bodies. We do choose what to do and how to direct that inner person. Intent being the key.
I said duality didn’t I. Choosing whether to have ice cream or pudding for desert but it’s not duality. There are many subtle shades and nuances in the interplay of duality and the inevitable confrontations of life.
god emcompasses all creation. The great “I am” what is there to choose?
not at all. what we see as negative from our limited perspective of not seeing all of creation and it’s purpose is outweighed by the purpose of creation which as a whole is benevolent.
It does account for and include your perspective, in it’s proper place.
We’ve covered this already.
I already said all creation and all events several times. That covers natural evil.
Hardly. I’m in the same boat you’re in. I’ve explained my position several times and you’ve rejected it but completely failed to convince me I’m wrong.
I don’t think so. The only conclusion I’ve drawn is that it’s not logically inevitable and doesn’t prove anything.
What’s your point? That we’re able to want to do bad things? I never said we couldn’t. The question is why can we want to do bad things. Apparently God doesn’t (depending on how you’re defining ‘benevolent’ this millisecond), so it’s clearly unnecessary. So why did he make us able to do so?
I ask, but I already know the answer - because he likes watching us go at it like attack dogs. His omnipotence informs us that that can be his only rationale. Presuming for a moment that when you said he was “omnipotent” that that word meant anything.
What’s good about duality, then? I thought your point was that the illusion of choice is good, which I might tentatively agree with, but apparently that’s not it - duality itself is. Periodic evil for evil’s sake and no other reason, in other words. Which I personally don’t see a lot of value in, to benevolent beings anyway.
Whether or not to make parts of himself separately sentient and periodically torture them, for a start.
Which is the obvious reason to favor duality - if the torture is unrelenting, your victims get acclimatized to it. You need to fluctuate it some, so that the pain is always fresh when it occurs.
Well, according to the definition of omnipotent, this can’t possibly be correct, by definition.
It doesn’t become any less disproven as you continue to repeat it, you know. Now, if you tried to argue for some reason why omnipotence doesn’t mean omnipotence or why benevolence doesn’t mean benevolence, that might be interesting, but simply repeating assertions will get you nowhere.
It’s proper place - screaming on the rack!
Gotta love your god.
Of course we have. Repeatedly. Which is why it would be nice if you finally internalized the fact that definitions mean something so we could move on.
So natural evil that serves no purpose other than amusing God is benevolent…how?
Yes, I know, big picture - but you don’t need to actually do evil to paint a picture of it. Unless the suffering in your picture only satisfies your divine urges if somebody is really suffering, anyway.
If you want to be in the same boat as I am, you have to present coherent arguments that actually disprove my position, and have them be ignored. Asserting disagreement and making statements that lack logical or definitional coherence isn’t the same.
Then you don’t understand how logic works, because you can’t be half pregnant, and an argument can’t be half-valid or half-sound. No matter how convenient it would be to have a tool that worked when it was convenient for you, and then magically stopped working the moment you wanted to plead a special case.
Then what’s the significance of statements like this:
If your point isn’t that suffering is *necessary *for our growth (which in no way negates the PoE, but anyway…) then what is it?
With the limits of language I can understand it looking that way.
I prefer the eastern analogies of an awakening or a series of veils dropping away.
If there is anything else here’s my basic concept {translates to guess}
We are all part of a great spiritual reality and are experiencing this temporary physical reality. All events in this physical reality, action, reaction, choice and consequence, ultimately move us towards recognizing the greater spirutual reality, or becoming aware of the truth as it were. You can call that enlightenment or learning a lesson or whatever. side note; That’s why science and spirituality must ultimately reconcile. Both are paths to the truth.
How all events fit together to move us toward the truth is something only an omniscient being will know, but moving us toward the truth can be seen as benevolent.
Why does creation include suffering when an omnipotent being doesn’t have to do that? We might ask why creation at all.
I don’t see us as creations pulled from nothing and forced into experiencing the highs and lows of this life, some happy, some suffering horribly. I see us as part of the greater whole, not as being acted upon by a seperate supreme being. Like cells of the same body or drops in the ocean, we can’t really say the body or the ocean is being unnessecarily cruel to a portion of itself. All works together, but the drop or the single cell won’t see the purpose of the ocean or the whole body.
regardless, we’re getting into a lot of pointless speculation.
begbert2 I’m done going in pointless circles. We’re not going to agree and we’re not presenting anything new or interesting.
Actually, “Why does creation include suffering” and “Why creation at all?” are very nearly the same question, since god’s reason for creating must necessarily include his reason for creating the suffering.
And in both cases the answer must be “because that’s the way (uh huh uh huh) he likes it”, given that he’s omnipotent. Pretty basic, really - motivations only get difficult to divine with non-omnipotent beings, for whom one can’t deduce a lack of necessary steps the entity must unwillingly accept to achieve their goal.
Being bored of the conversation is always an acceptable reason not to post. Fare well.