Mister Gone (

mistergone) wrote,
@ 2008-04-22 15:14:00

Being Good at Being Stupid Doesn't Count!
The essential problem with trolling is that being good at being stupid isn't really an accomplishment.

At any rate, today I'll be voting in the Pennsylvania primaries for the first time ever. I'm not really a Democrat (I'm not a partisan-type person), but the paperwork says that I is.

OMG TOPIC WARNING - RELIGION: This weekend, I talked to friends about my thought experiment, "What kind of god allows bad things to happen to good people?" The answers I see are thus:

1.) A malignant god. "Screw good people."
2.) An indifferent god. "Ehn."
3.) An inscrutable god. "I work in mysterious ways."

Inevitably, sensible theists of all varieties resort to Option 3. But a god who is inscrutable in his morality or sense of justice is a useless god. After all, morality and justice do not come from any gods (and anyone who intends to argue this point had better prepare to denounce pre-Mosaic laws). As

relaxatorium and I discussed, it then goes back to Euthyphro: "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious? Or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" What is right is right - people knew that murder was wrong before the Ten Commandments.

Moreover, if we further explore Possibilities #1 and #2, we can ask, "If god has no morality, what is right?" Is murder acceptable when god doesn't care? Is murder acceptable when god does it himself (for instance, if YHWH uses bears to kill kids [2 Kings 2]) or is murder always wrong? If you murder someone who god was about to murder, is it wrong or right?

Furthermore, if justice on earth is desirable (if we humans are supposed to behave in a pursuit of justice), why is there no divine evidence of this? With respect specifically to Christianity, if justice on earth is desirable, why is the ultimate quality of divine judgment one of belief and not one of earthly behavior?

I tend to say I'm not a firm disbeliever nor a firm believer in anything, but I am, realistically, a gut-check atheist. When it comes right down to it... yeah, I just can't believe in or care about a "divine" being.

This is the stuff I think about when I'm bored. And I vote.

(Post a new comment)

pyrtolin
2008-04-22 08:57 pm UTC (link)

#4) An abstract or naturalistic god. "Shit happens, but the overall trend is still positive"

If someone equated "God" with, for the sake of a clear example, "Computers" then the question would essentially be "Why does god crash well maintained computers" And the answer becomes "Because all computers crash occasionally- but following God's dictates helps reduce the overall likelihood of a crash and makes it easier to recover from one."

Intent, per se, is a red herring. That concept isn't allowing computers to crash or not crash- that's a concept totally tangential, introduced by trying to personify them.

The example has its limitations, of course. But when you switch out to something closer to what some people believe- equate god with "human society", "life", or "the laws of physics"- it becomes more clear. God doesn't allow or disallow anything. Bad things happen to people as a natural part of life; following a common set of moral standards helps reduce the chance of that happening and help people recover when things do happen.

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	booklegger 2008-04-22 09:24 pm UTC (link)
	As I'm reading it, all you've done is elaborate on WHY god might be indifferent. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	mistergone 2008-04-22 09:41 pm UTC (link)
	That is either #2 or #3. Since you're allowing the insertion of "good" then that is #3. Thusly, the "divine" morality is still inscrutable and/or unacceptable by human standards. "Sometimes I steal stuff and murder people, but that's a minority of the time, so I'm still a good person" is not a maxim of positive morality. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	apestyle 2008-04-22 09:30 pm UTC (link)
	I had a notion about deity this morning. I prefer a creator who built up everything, put His creations on the planet, gave them the free-will - then...let it ride. A laissez-fair God. When your back is inevitably up against the wall, you can call on Him and hope for the best. (Reply to this)(Thread)

mistergone
2008-04-22 09:43 pm UTC (link)

Yes, but he either assists you or he does not. This decision is inscrutable and beyond human understanding. Thus, his place in the universe is irrelevant.

Human morality must still be discerned and enforced by humans, as god is nowhere to be found.

The point being - human morality is not defined nor enforced by god. Ergo, god's existence is essentially irrelevant.

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	apestyle 2008-04-22 09:58 pm UTC (link)
	God's place in the universe may not be relevant to me, but it doesn't mean that His Place is irrelevant. If God enforced human morality, humans would be highly disinclined to employ free will, which I posit was the point for us to be around in the first place. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

mistergone
2008-04-22 10:02 pm UTC (link)

Well, that's fine. I'm all in favor of an unprovable god who has very little of substance to say about human morality.

I am disinclined towards gods who judge human morality but ultimately decide their place in the afterlife based on belief in a human son who died so that human moral failings wouldn't ultimately matter.

That demands a sort of internal dissonance that is unresolvable.

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apestyle
2008-04-22 10:19 pm UTC (link)

Yeah, I hear you. Aside from the whole "evil gays" thing, the "Jesus died for your sins" thing never worked for me, hence my problem with Christianity. They're my sins, and if I want to make reparations for the mistakes I've made well, that should be on me.

I don't want my rep (Jesus, Mohammad, whoever) to take the fall for my fuckups. In fact, I rather insist that he (or she) doesn't.

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	mistergone 2008-04-22 10:34 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, it's also sort of wonky to me that the punishment is eternal and the crime is not accepting Christ. Seems lopsided. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	xayber 2008-04-22 09:33 pm UTC (link)
	5) space-faring god "why does god need a spaceship?" joking aside, perhaps god is just an absent father. of course that means he could not be omnipresent. hey other stuff is occurring in the universe. this may be better than a stay at home god, if my experience with the sims, black & white, etc... are any indication. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	mistergone 2008-04-22 09:45 pm UTC (link)
	Space-faring god is probably #1, absent father is either #2 or #3. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	xayber 2008-04-22 09:49 pm UTC (link)
	yeah i am not thinking straight. the s4 announcement has me sort of peeved. :) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	mistergone 2008-04-22 09:56 pm UTC (link)
	OMG NO FREE EPICS Well, still S3 free epics... And S2 now... (Reply to this)(Parent)

	red_haired_girl 2008-04-22 11:03 pm UTC (link)
	Hmmn. How about 4. Sorta-Buddhist God. "This Ain't heaven, this is the place you learn stuff. Sometimes, learning is hard." or does this count as part of 3? (Reply to this)(Thread)

	mistergone 2008-04-23 01:22 am UTC (link)
	If you asked this god "Why do bad things happen to good people?" they would likely respond as #3. #1 says, "I like doing bad things to good people." #2 says, "I don't care." #3 says, "It is not for you to understand." (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	red_haired_girl 2008-04-23 01:58 am UTC (link)
	See, I'm thinking more, "Now, what did you learn?" (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	mistergone 2008-04-23 12:52 pm UTC (link)
	Most people would not think that, say, a poor person dying from a curable disease because they don't have health coverage as a "lesson" that can be learned from. Thus, I must ask why your proposed god allows that. (Reply to this)(Parent)

theadana
2008-04-23 03:18 am UTC (link)

If you ask Jehovah's Witnesses (or recovering ones, in this case...):
http://www.watchtower.org/e/200611/article_01.htm

Here's a summary of the second page (but you're missing grotesque pictures):
"First, it is not wrong to ask why God allows suffering.
Second, it is important to understand that God feels for you in your plight. He is not aloof and mysterious; he is “a lover of justice,” and he detests wickedness and the suffering it causes.
Third, God is never the source of wickedness. The Bible makes this quite clear. Those who attribute such things as murder and terrorism to God are maligning him.
The foregoing still leaves us with the question, If God is loving, just, and powerful, why are we surrounded by evil? One common misperception needs to be cleared up first. Many people think of Almighty God as the ruler of this world, the one who is in direct control of everything.Not at all. Many are surprised to learn what the Bible actually says about who rules the world. For example, 1 John 5:19 states: “The whole world is lying in the power of the wicked one.” Who is this wicked one? Jesus Christ identified him as Satan the Devil, whom he called “the ruler of the world.” (John 14:30) Now, does that not make sense? Satan is cruel, deceptive, and hateful—traits that underlie much of the suffering that people experience. Why, though, does God allow Satan to rule?"

"Hence, Jehovah has not been behind the scenes preventing all the crimes and tragedies that result, directly or indirectly, from disobedience to him.* Jehovah would never be party to the harmful lie that Satan’s system can succeed, that it has found the key to happiness!"

I can't summarize anymore, it makes me feel a little ill in its cloying familiarity. Read it yourself. Pick it apart.

It's complicated, but I guess it's internally consistent?

God has the power to prevent tragedy, but stays his hand to prove a point. He lets the child touch the hot stove to learn a lesson: "Satan is not the awesomest. God is the awesomest." And eventually... God will fix the place up, destroy Satan, and everything will be hunky-dory.

A waiting game.

Does that particular explanation still fit into your 3 categories? Not malignant, because he's not doing or promoting the tragedies. Not inscrutable, because there's a reason, timeline, and plan to stop tragedy...eventually. Maybe indifferent? But if indifferent, why have a plan to stop it?

But, as always, my main problem with Witnesses is that they are all stuck in a mindset of, "Everything will be better... later. Could be any day now." That, and the WHACKED opinions on sexuality.

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	jameel 2008-04-23 11:55 am UTC (link)
	Jehovah is a douche. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	cocotopia 2008-04-24 08:25 pm UTC (link)
	Heff was reading the Old Testicle (as he called it) while visiting here for 5 days. Kept me updated on the latest shenanigans chapter to chapter. Man, the situation is much, much worse than douchebaggery. Have you read the whole thing? I hadn't. Jehovah, it turns out, is a narcissistic paranoid psychopath. With a side of fries. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	jameel 2008-04-24 08:30 pm UTC (link)
	Not only do I play a Vampire who hates Jehovah with a fiery passion, Fred and I came up with an entire order (The Righteous Brotherhood of Job) of Vampires who want nothing more than to bring that overblown sky-daddy down. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	klari 2008-04-23 01:43 pm UTC (link)
	Thanks for this explanation. (Reply to this)(Parent)

drquuxum
2008-04-23 11:43 am UTC (link)

As has been stated somewhere else....

FIND A
NEW GOD

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	mistergone 2008-04-23 12:54 pm UTC (link)
	Regardless of the god in question, people still suffer in ways that are not "lessons" but rather simple tragedies. Any being that cannot end this suffering does not meet my requirements for godhood. (Reply to this)(Parent)

cocotopia
2008-04-23 06:55 pm UTC (link)

#1 says, "I like doing bad things to good people."
#2 says, "I don't care."
#3 says, "It is not for you to understand."

Mine, #4, says, "Wrong question."

Little kids who think of getting their teeth drilled by a dentist as cataclysmically bad will nevertheless grow up to take their own beloved kids to the dentist because they have learned there is more to the issue than suffering. The question i think you're asking of a hypothetical god is "If you love me why do you let me suffer?" And the answer, whether you believe in any god or not, is that all suffering is part of having a nervous system and living in the physical world. To a disembodied consciousness, pain and pleasure would be equally rich and unique experiences. Suffering is a by-product of actual events and is a response that one can learn to transcend, and at the same time become even more compassionate for those experiencing it. You can ask people who have learned to remain at peace despite physical or emotional pain whether or not they think it was "good" that they learned how, and I suspect they will all say they do. (Start with women who have given birth with no pain killers, and still chosen to do it again!)

As a panentheist, i believe in a god who both encompasses and transcends everything we can comprehend. Like a really loving parent, this entity has too in-depth and nuanced an understanding of each person to think of any of us as ‘bad’. This god is as intimately involved with what happens with us as we are with what’s going on with our heart cells, and has no more intention to be inscrutable to them.

One of the most valuable things i have ever learned was that the less you judge in terms of “good” and “bad”, the more deeply you will understand the nature of whatever you’re examining. People mistake this concept as a repudiation of morality, but it’s only a tool for greater understanding. The wider your perspective, the more effectively compassionate your actions can be.

Edited at 2008-04-23 06:57 pm UTC

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mistergone
2008-04-23 07:40 pm UTC (link)

No no, I'd much rather ask, "Why does suffering occur without a chance for lessons learned?" A child dying in birth, an old woman being hit by a train, a 12-year-old with leukemia, Siamese twins and other birth defects... what are the lessons learned?

Again, if god has an inscrutable morality or no power to do anything about senseless suffering, then his existence is irrelevant with respect to almost all aspects of human life.

Saying nothing of the "Intelligent Design" as an explanation for abiogenesis, a belief in the divine generally necessitates a belief that there is an "intelligent design" to our morality and behaviors. If a god exists who does not think of any of us as "bad", then that god really has no bearing on human morality.

But human morality is still a concern for humans. And religions profess to have the laws of human morality in their holy books.

The three premises of god's perspective on suffering offer a single conclusion - that regardless of the situations, humans have a concept of morality that defies the "senseless suffering" of others - we feel bad for people who suffer undue tragedy where no lesson can be learned.

Since we do see such things as useless tragedy, but any god that might exist obviously does not (or has no desire or no power to stop useless tragedy), then why does this god's "intelligently designed" human system have that strange feedback loop, unable to learn anything from tragedies like birth defects and random cancers?

It's because human morality is not derived from any designer, but rather it is a product of a creature that must be empathic and communal in order to survive in a world full of useless and/or senseless tragedy.

Compassion and "good" and "bad" are inherently subjective to situational factors, which is partwise why black and white concepts of morality that supposedly come from gods cause so many problems when applied to actual human life.

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first half of a too-long response

cocotopia
2008-04-24 01:56 am UTC (link)

A- You have to ask every single one of the people who have experienced the tragedies you enumerated if there were lessons learned and if so what they were before you assume there weren't any. I've heard people who didn't cite any sort of god or religion say that the death of their young child gave them some insight they cherish, that Downs syndome children are all about love and make families much warmer, etc. etc. etc. You have no business deciding whether or not anybody's tragedy but your own has led to anything valuable.

B- I believe in a general sort of reincarnation. God or no god, i think it's just the way consciousness works. That greatly extends the opportunity to learn something from a tragedy. Adjunct to that i also believe in karma. Not a simplistic 'what goes around comes around', but that harm done to another person creates a bond that affords reconciliation and remains until it is reached.

C- I agree human morality evolved with us as basic survival strategy. No argument there at all. I consider "holy book"s, all of them, to be: At best, originally a memory tool for those whose livelihood depended on reciting lots of traditional words (or a personal statement of belief that somebody else made too big a deal about). In most cases: a conceit on the part of the author that they have the only truth on the planet. And at worst: very deliberate manipulation of the easily hoodwinked.

D- Try replacing the word "god" with the word "parent" in this sentence: "If a god exists who does not think of any of us as "bad", then that god really has no bearing on human morality." If it doesn't seem silly to you, then i can't explain why it's a nonsequitur with the word "god" in it. As a parent, i know i could never condemn either of my kids, or see them as fundamentally bad. If one of them did a string of terrible things, i would still always see them as needing help and would always be willing to try again to provide it. Ask them if the fact i'm like that is relevant to their morality. I give any god worth the title credit for being at least as understanding and unconditionally loving as i am.

Edited at 2008-04-24 01:57 am UTC

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Re: first half of a too-long response

mistergone
2008-04-24 12:56 pm UTC (link)

A - What does the young child learn from their own death? Death is sort of the opposite of a lesson to the dead person. Sure, we can learn from others' deaths, but learning from our own is unlikely.

B - In order to learn, you'd have to have some memory through death. There is no evidence of such memory. Also, if reincarnation is real, then murder is not a serious moral violation anymore.

C - I agree.

D- A parent should very much be able to see that their children have problems. But if a parent has a murdering, thieving child and says "I have a good boy!", then that parent's position is not based on morality. Their opinion is useless to the rest of us, who must maintain justice. Furthermore, your proposed god does not reliably demonstrate this love or forgiveness, making the god like a completely absent, estranged parent at best.

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Re: first half of a too-long response

cocotopia
2008-04-24 07:57 pm UTC (link)

A-The kid who dies is just like anybody else who dies, as far as what they have an opportunity to learn from the experience. Either consciousness continues and they can or it doesn't and they just stop suffering. The people left behind when a child dies are the ones whose suffering doesn't end at that point. And their despair is generally greater than when an elderly person dies. That’s because it is widely assumed that the loss of the potential of the years the young person could have lived is somehow unfair to the child. Well, i reject that. I think it may be just as valuable to a spirit to have lived a short life as it would be to have lived a very long one. All lives are finite and really pretty short (the older you get the more profoundly you realize this), yet every moment of every one has infinite dimensions. Any life may well contain the satisfaction of the goals for that incarnation. OK, accepting that requires some of my more esoteric beliefs... But on the even the most mundane of levels, the length of a life doesn’t correspond to how significant an effect it has on the community around it. Anyway, i contend that the survivors of any beloved departed person feel pain mostly because they themselves face the rest of their own life without the person. The sense of injustice is really that it’s unfair to them not to see and share the potential life that child would have had. So it’s the grieving family that has the opportunity and need to learn something from the tragedy. Well. Frequently (and I can give you specific examples aplenty) the parents of a child who dies find that because of their deep bond with the child, they experience events that convince them there is indeed a continuation of consciousness, and that the kid is fine and in all ways but physically, still close. You can say it’s wishful thinking, but that’s beside the point. This is a thing they feel they’ve learned, and consider immensely valuable.

B- In cultures where reincarnation is assumed, everybody knows people who have just such memories. Our mainstream culture here in the US has a belief screen that negates all such evidence the instant it is expressed. (Much as it has long had a belief screen that negated any evidence of benefit from playing video games.) There’s as much hard factual evidence of such memories as you could ever want if you only took the trouble to look at and open your mind to it.

“...if reincarnation is real, then murder is not a serious moral violation anymore.” Isn’t rape a serious moral violation, even in cases of no permanent physical repercussions? Murder is a serious violation not because it ends a consciousness forever, or stops it from ever being in a body again, but because it is a violation of what is personal, i.e.the dissolution of the complex relationship between the spirit and the body.

D- To say “I have a good boy!” and leave it at that would be a position based only on blind love. It’s lousy parenting to be in denial of your kid’s weaknesses. But neither would a parent, who tended the boy as a newborn infant, conclude that the boy was purely bad. Where’s the morality in simply condemning a child who is a bully because of underlying emotional issues?

“...your proposed god does not reliably demonstrate this love or forgiveness, making the god like a completely absent, estranged parent at best.” If a kid refuses to listen to his parents, is that an absent, estranged parent?

Love/forgiveness is not irreconcileably at odds with with justice/ morality. That perception of conflict is endemic to the western world, and the current state of our two-party political system is a parallel to it. Maybe finding an internal balance between the two is necessary to imagining a god who isn’t negated by the existence of suffering.
*********

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second half

cocotopia
2008-04-24 01:57 am UTC (link)

E- I agree completely about black and white concepts of morality causing problems, and saying they come from god is a typical religious-person rationalization for the combination of paranoia and superiority they tend to have. But you have contradicted yourself about Compassion. It is not subjective, it is what you describe when you say "we feel bad for people who suffer undue tragedy where no lesson can be learned". We feel bad for people who suffer, period. It's hard-wired. It's empathy, which -as you said- is a survival tool.

F- The god i believe in doesn't condemn anybody eternally. Everybody will get to an understanding of reality. But the journey is tougher the more stubborn and selfish we are, because failure to learn how to be at peace is its own punishment. We are responsible for cleaning up our own messes. That is how maturity is taught. Contrast this with the Abrahamic-type god who threatens his children with eternal damnation out one side of his mouth while he's telling them how special they are and how dearly he loves them out of the other. That makes them profoundly insecure and codependent. Then he says, oh, by the way, even if you do all the shit i said you'd burn forever for, you can still get to heaven just by saying this guy over here is your personal savior. This teaches children they can be irresponsible, while deep down undermining their trust in their own perceptions. So no big surprise we have a whole lot of pathological narcissists running around the planet these days.

G- I dunno about a divine designer. But i do believe there are higher levels of consciousness that i can't fully grok any better than my big toe can grok what it is to be me. And i believe it as a result of the same kind of observation and extrapolation that we use to support the understanding we have of evolution.

H- I believe that there is a gestalt consciousness of all of this universe, and it surrounds and pervades everything, and that is what i mean by "the god i believe in". But i don't think it matters to that being if we worship or even believe in it. It matters to me that i do. What you believe is your call. I think the nature of all energy is simply to explore and create new things, and that every possible variant of reality comes into existence somewhere in space and time and that's just how it is. You will probably say i therefore believe in a god that is irrelevant. But i don't agree. Because I believe in these things, i feel safe and hopeful, i don't worry at all about what will happen to my consciousness after i croak, i take responsibility for my actions, and i have weathered some pretty damn tragic shit and come out grateful for the insights i got from it.

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Re: second half

mistergone
2008-04-24 01:08 pm UTC (link)

E - We don't all feel that compassion. There are sociopaths. There are religious zealots, who show some of the best examples of a complete lack of compassion, perhaps ironically. I wish it were true that we all felt bad for those who suffer undue tragedy because then we could really start applying Rawlsian justice to the world. Sadly, we are as possessed of greed and ignorance as we are of such compassionate feelings.

F - That's a fine god. It can also be replaced by simple logic. I believe in karma (an action produces results based on its motives) but not as a supernatural force at all. Karma is a simple rule because evil acts produce empty feelings, empty feelings produce inhumanity, inhumanity produces dissatisfaction, and life spirals downward from there. The Buddha's Fourfold Path and Eight Noble Truths are not a statement about a higher plane of existence to me, but rather a statement on the nature of consciousness and human psychology. Again, I don't believe morality (or Buddhism) necessitate any god at all.

G - I believe that too, because I believe that consciousness is a form of emergent complexity. (I highly recommend watching this Nova piece.) So, if our level of intelligence is emergence, more complex things could very well exist in more complex systems. Heck, the universe could be one big intelligence, given the complexity of it. (I doubt it is an intelligence in any way we define it, however.)

H - See last line of paragraph above. Could be, but I doubt it is a consciousness as we understand the word. In a way, Newtonian physics could be said to be a type of emergence, but emergence does always end with consciousness, I think.

H2 - I feel safe and hopeful, I don't worry at all about what will happen when I die, I take responsibility for my actions and I'd say my tragedy really is not important at all. I feel this way because I believe in human potential - the potential to be giving, to be moral, to use consciousness in a way that produces happiness and peace all around us. That is a beautiful thing to behold and requires no appeal to the supernatural.

IJKLMNOP - And while I might say that your god is morally irrelevant, or would be irrelevant to me because of my own pseudo-materialistic views, I know that god is not irrelevant to you and I don't presume to be insulting at all.

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Re: second half

cocotopia
2008-04-24 07:59 pm UTC (link)

E- Oh, ain’t it the truth! OTOH we don’t all have melanin either. Doesn’t mean it isn’t part of an average person’s genetic heritage because it is beneficial for the species’ survival. But i understand your points better now and see you weren’t contradicting yourself.

FG&H1- For me, physics, metaphysics, and spirituality are all the same thing.The difference between natural and supernatural is just that some of the way things work seem to be quantifiable with gizmos and formulae we have constructed so far and some of it doesn’t. An inability to track a phenomenon with an instrument doesn’t mean it isn’t happening, and likewise, the fact that we understand how some chemical process works should not rob it of its wonder.

I agree morality absolutely does not depend on the existence of any sort of god, but is intrinsic to the way reality works. I just find it useful to think of the way reality works as including consciousness at all levels. Emergences, gestalts, oversouls, aspects of deity; all are simply logical phenomena. The Shaivite Hindu concept of the Dance of Siva is that he, the ultimate gestalt of consciousness embedded simultaneously in the core of every particle, dances out the cycles of existence; on every level from the twitter of a quark, to the heartbeat of an animal, to the seasons of the earth, to the expansion and contraction of galaxies. Einstein and Carl Sagan (among many other scientists) have described this as the best metaphor for the workings of the universe.

H2- I think i have less faith in humanity in general than you do. The emergent qualities of our species are a blight, and individually we are the only animal (as far as i know) that ever causes pain solely as entertainment. I was the source of such amusement to my mother and many of my schoolmates as a child. It is to defend my sanity against members of my own species that i have developed my perspective on all these things we’ve discussed.

I-Z- I don’t feel the least bit insulted. I feel rather honored that you have taken the time to read and respond to what i‘ve written. I mainly responded in the first place just to point out another possible description of god. I concede that if you pick it apart from a perspective outside my head, it does reduce to a combination of indifferent and inscrutible. It just doesn’t feel like either one to me. Thank god. ;^)

(Reply to this)(Parent)

That is a simple question, and it has a simple answer

crazyjim0
2008-04-24 04:02 am UTC (link)

Why does God allow suffering? Because he allows free will. God could supernaturally stop everyone from doing something bad to another person, and he can even judge the grey areas, but God's goal wasn't for Earth to be perfect with sin in it. God wants to terminate evil and separate it from his Kingdom. In order to do this he had to set up the Old Testament things so the New Testament could take place.

Here is a simple example:
You get bitten by a rabid creature. The cure is painful, but dying sucks worse. Obviously we pick the cure even though it is painful.

We live on Earth, and sometimes we suffer. The end result is that we get to live in Heaven with God because Jesus suffered and died for our sins. It is a pretty cool reward, eternal life. Eternal life without suffering too.

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mistergone
2008-04-24 01:12 pm UTC (link)

Do people go to Hell?

If people go to Hell, how am I to have an eternal life without suffering? Assuming I go to Heaven, given the lessons on Christ, I would feel bad for the people who go to Hell. How can I not suffer while I feel pain for those who suffer in Hell?

Regardless, I find your "simple answer" utterly irrelevant. Suffering on Earth is very real to those of us who are here on Earth. We should seek to end it. Waiting for death doesn't seem like an efficient way to do so, especially when sending people to Heaven (murder) or sending ourselves to Heaven (suicide) are considered sins.

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Do people go to hell?

crazyjim0
2008-04-24 06:20 pm UTC (link)

I think I have a good answer for this too. I'll be as to the point as possible, but if you want me to go verbose, I can expand it into several pages.

I believe that there is the *possibility* that all people may end up in Heaven. Hell is reserved for evil. People are sinful, but it is hard to point out a person as being eternally evil. Even if someone doesn't repent in their lifetime, there is a chance that upon meeting Jesus and learning about him that they can accept or reject him. Rejecting Jesus means the person would not accept Jesus' judgments eternally, so that person might end up messing up the Heavenly order of things by doing evil in Heaven.

One black and white example is: Say a person got enjoyment from inflicting pain upon others. If this person was to get their way in Heaven, then Heaven would have pain in it because it made this person happy. Suddenly Heaven is no longer a perfect paradise. Now if this person lived their life sadistically, but found out that he can't do this in Heaven, and accepted Jesus, he could probably find other enjoyable things to do throughout eternity. If instead this person did not accept Jesus and instead wanted to inflict pain eternally, this person would probably end up in Hell.

So the next question is: How many people do you think will end up in Heaven, and how many in Hell? You know a lot of people have different views on this. Some people will claim for certain they know a lot or a few will go to either place. No one except God knows how many people are going to Heaven. NT scripture says many are on the road to Hell, but NT scripture also says that Jesus has the power to save those who don't seem possible to be saved.

The finality of it all is Jesus is the most compassionate and loving being possible. Think of the most loving person you know. Imagine them being even more loving, and then realize that Jesus is even more loving still. Jesus came to Earth to save us from Hell. He isn't going to be quick to toss us in a fire and forget about us.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

Part 2 of your post

crazyjim0
2008-04-24 06:30 pm UTC (link)

'Regardless, I find your "simple answer" utterly irrelevant. Suffering on Earth is very real to those of us who are here on Earth. We should seek to end it. Waiting for death doesn't seem like an efficient way to do so, especially when sending people to Heaven (murder) or sending ourselves to Heaven (suicide) are considered sins.'

I wasn't verbose when I explained my "simple answer". The point I wanted to get across was that Jesus suffered by the hands of sinful men and Jesus did no wrong. On the scales of universal balance, why should we deserve a better fate than Jesus?

I wanted to get another point across in that God 'had to do it this way' in order to separate Good from Evil.

Which reality would you rather have:
A: Eternal life on Earth with no suffering but with God constantly interfering with your free will.
B: Eternal life on Earth with all the sufferings that sin and disasters can cause.
or
C: A short life on Earth with sufferings that sin and disasters can caused, followed by Eternal life where there is no suffering.

I'd pick C, and I'm happy because that is the way things are.

I'm not advocating waiting for death. I'm with you on attempting to end suffering. I think most people on Earth want better lives for the next generation.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Part 2 of your post mistergone 2008-04-24 07:00 pm UTC (link)
	I'm fine with B. I don't see how C is possible while remaining human, and I'm not sure I'm interested in any sort of transcendence. If Jehovah were real, I'd be fine with A, too. I mean, a being without free will doesn't really have the perspective to appreciate free will, so they might as well be happy. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	Re: Part 2 of your post jameel 2008-04-24 11:36 pm UTC (link)
	B, please. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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