I do not think anyone can be a failure, we can fail at doing certain things, but we can learn from them,the only person that could be called a faliure is one who has died and had done nothing at all during their life time. Every one has had failures and successes.
Monavis
We, in my belief,are a part of a greater whole,our physical bodies are connected to our brain and hence we feel pain. The word soul comes from the latin anima,meaning life. If one could suffer in an after life then he would not feel physical pain. If we become the atoms etc. that we were before birth there is no pain for the spirit to suffer.
I have heard parents tell their children that God is in pain when they do wrong.This is not my belief. If we go against the truth we and our fellow humans suffer the consequences of our bad actions. I taught my children that if they steal then all those who love them, and them selves, will be paying higher prices for things,the stores add the price to every thing they sell. The same is with harming someone bodily, If one is free to harm another then they should expect that when they do, are giving the right for others to harm them.
Monavis
Turns out it was LDS
I’m curious. Do you follow a specific discipline? After years of study mine is made up of things from many sources. What I’m saying is that we very much dramatize the suffering of people her on the physical plane but we know that is limited. If we truly believe we are spiritual beings then we know that any physical suffering is fleeting at best. We try to alleviate it when we can, but we don’t have to embrace the drama of the moment as if this world were the prime and only reality.
I agree with you. I believe in that our actions are connected in a way we don’t see. I also believe in Karma. Wherever we send out comes back to us in some way. Very often people can’t connect Karmic events so they continue on with their negative energy.
But completely random?
Thats why those beliefs make no sense to me. I don’t even believe thats what Jesus teaches in the very bible that people embrace. It amazes me how they interpert select scriptures to formulate a doctrine and then rationalize all the other scriptures that seem to contradict to fit the doctrine.
requires registration so I couoldn’t read it.
and there are lots more options as well.
Imagine God as the ocean and us as drops of water. Each drop believes it is a seperate entity when in fact it is not. We describe God as a seperate all knowing being that is out there somewhere when in fact the essence of what God is and the true essence of what we are is the same. When we come to the full knowledge of who we are than all the fear that being seperate entails will fade away.
Perhaps hell is just chooseing to remain seperate and stay in the cycle of suffering.
I’ve never bought this argument. Okay, my one-year old daughter probably has a life expectancy of 80 years, so if I cause her 60 seconds of excruciating pain, it’s okay because her suffering is small as a percentage of her total lifespan, right? Wrong! I would have to have a damn good reason for causing this pain. Does God have a good reason to cause pain to people? (And much pain that people suffer is not caused by other people, but is instead caused by disease, etc.). I think not.
Who said God causes the pain? Not me.
I see the arguement. When it comes to natural disasters and sickness, these are things we have no “choice” over but God allows to happen too us.
If we even entertain the notion that we are eternal spiritual beings then we have to realize how very much we do not see or understand in this mortal realm.
Perhaps we cause the pain by seeing this body as our primary reality? Perhaps the pain and suffering provide some nessecary step in the educational reincarnation process. Perhaps it was we who chose to be in this mortal existance to begin with and so we deal with it until we choose to return to God.
If my child has a nightmare I can only comfort them after they wake up.
Right you are. Just after hitting “submit” i realized that Satan is not the Supreme, Omniscient, Omnipotent etc., etc.
However, there is at least one well-known case where evil came to someone who did not in fact fall for Satan’s temptations. I refer to the case of that poor man, Job.
God: Hi, Satan, whatcha bin doin?
Satan: Just hangin out.
God: How bout ole Job over there. Ain’t he great?
Satan: Yeah but he’s just a suck up who’s in it for what he can get.
God: I’ll show you. You can mess with him all you want and he’ll still love Me.
Vile and reprehensible in my view.
Oh yes, come to think of it, who am I to question? Was I around when God laid down the foundations of the earth? And I certainly can’t call down the lightning or draw out leviathan with a hook so I certainly am not qualified to question God’s act of allowing Satan to make Jobs life a living hell just to prove a point.
Exactly. Moral Atheists will go to heaven while immoral Christians/Jews etc will not. Behaving in a moral way shows something parallel to believing in God’s teachings, which seems harder for people than believing in Gods. Any three-year-old can believe -with very little evidence- whole-heartedly in beings who may or may not exist, but to believe that you should think of others instead of only your selfish interests? That requires a strength of character that mere belief does. I don’t think it matters why you act in a moral way, but just that you do.
And for all we know, at death everyone is presented with empirical evidence that God does exist. I doubt even the stubbornest atheist would answer “no” to a shiny being standing in front of them asking “now do you believe I’m here?” It would be believing their own eyes, wouldn’t it?
In any case, many Christians believe that atheistism isn’t enough to keep a good person from heaven.
Sorry about the link, registration does not seem to be required in the UK.
I have to admit, your last statement makes a lot of sense, this seems to be a philosophy that I could come to terms with. At least with this approach I don’t get theists jumping up and down condemning my non belief.
In fact the whole gist of your statement here reminds me of a bhuddist world view to a certain extent. This could be something for me to investigate further.
Of course, if I were omnipotent, I would make it so that my child didn’t have nightmares in the first place!
I guess how you respond to this depends on your starting premises. I theist thinks, “There must be an explanation for why God allows this suffering, even if I can’t figure out what it is.” An atheist, such as myself, thinks, “No just God would ever allow all of this suffering.”
Now we’re back to free will. The only way you can make sure your child never suffers is by totally controling every aspect of their lives. Would you call that an act of love?
I hear it already;" Yeah but if you’re omnipotent you can just make them happy without having to choose anything." Having known nothing else what would that make my kids? Blissful zombies? Perhaps God wants more than that for his children.
I think a more appropriate question is why we allow it, since we chose much of it.
I’m pretty fond of Buddhism and other things. Babba Ram Dass is a good blend of east meets west. Reading the NT apart from the Christian interpertation you see a lot of similarities between the words of JEsus and Buddha. There’s a great book called Jesus and Buddha as brothers.
The drop and the ocean imagery is from Buddhism I think. It’s simple and easy to understand and I think others have borrowed it {like me} 
I think you have to distinguish between moral evils (which result from human free will) and natural evils (which don’t, like disease and natural disasters). Your argument would justify God permitting the former, but not the latter. (Although incidentally, I don’t think free will requires the ability to choose evil. But that’s a topic for a different thread.)
Anyhow, we seem to have wandered far from the OP. Is that bad? This isn’t a hijack; it is the natural progression of the thread.
I’m familiar with the story in a superficial way only.
In another thread there’s a link to an audio in which Julia Sweeny of SNL fame does a bit from her one woman show. I recommend it.
She points out that other people have suffered as much or more than Jesus did. Her brother lingered for years fighting cancer. It is very hard to look at great human suffering that didn’t seem to be a choice {like tsunami} and try to understand God’s love in light of this. Even when I talk of my beliefs I fear I will in some way appear to be trivializing someone’s experience. That is not my intention. After my parents died I realized that I had compounded my own suffering and possibly theirs by liveing in fear of that moment. After faceing it I felt differently. Grateful for the experience even with it’s pain. Without it I would continue to live in fear.
You’re Right** David Simmons** and I are discussing that very thing. check it out.
I admit, those are much harder to figure. As I suggested earlier perhaps we chose to come to this physical plane.
If free will doesn’t require the ability to choose evil then what would we choose?
good or gooder? 
Some suggest that each choice boils down to the same choice. Not good or evil, but love or fear, or love or power.
I think we’re still discussing if God is just or not.
Well, actually, yes. The philosopher Daniel Dennett once gave the following example: I could not possibly choose to torture someone to death for $1,000. Does that mean I am not free? No, it just means I am a decent person. Only a psychopath could possibly choose to perform such a hideous action. What does this example show? It shows that free will doesn’t require that one be able to choose just anything; free will is compatible with there being significant psychological constraints on what we are capable of choosing. This is why I never bought the free will explanation for the existence of certain evils. God could have made human psychology so that we find it very difficult to choose evil. We would still be free.
The Christian must admit that a creature can be free, yet nevertheless morally good enough that it shies away from the prospect of performing any evil act. After all, a Christian would want to say that God is free, but surely His good nature would prevent Him from ever choosing evil, right? So a person can be free, while his nature nevertheless prevents him from ever choosing evil.
Good point. I think for some people they are already in that frame of mind. Part of the process is figureing out exactly what evil is, or the difference beween love and fear. Fundies think gays are chooseing evil. I think they’re homphobic bigots.
Some people will choose between two good acts. Do I give $20 to charity or $50.
Some will choose between two evil. Do I steel the DVD player or the stereo.
Regardless of what Dennett said I think for it to be free will the option must be open. The spectrum of human behavior seems pretty wide to us. It may not look that way to God. Consider what Jesus said about thinking adulterous thoughts and hating. If you truly consider it, you’re guilty. Should God make it so we can’t even think it. IS that free will?
another Good point. True spirituality is about discovering the truth about our nature. How much love is enough? What standard do we use? Do we settle for less than our full potential?
My belief is ,hat we are all a part of a great whole, we are in a sense God experiecing different things in different ways, When our bodies decay we go back to the sorce I do not believe there is a heaven or hell,except in our imaginations. We help our selves when we help others. Pain is a way of nature to let us know something is wrong, whether it is mental or physical. We can thus make corrections and try to right it.
Monavis
Maybe I’m a cynical bastard (well, I am a cynical bastard), but I just can’t bring myself to adopt the attitude toward suffering that you and cosmosdan ** do; it seems too touchy-feely to me. If someone is suffering from river blindness, and is being driven mad by larvae burrowing through their skin, into his eyes, that is not just an experience, and he can’t make it right–it is living hell, hell right here on earth, and I do not accept that such a person has necessarily done anything to deserve this, or that rewarding him later somehow cancels out the evil of the pain he has suffered. I guess I need a more convincing explanation from the two of you (if you feel inclined to provide it) for why diseases like river blindness shouldn’t just make me say, "Fk you, God!"