Problems with this section; for Frank (Agnosticism)

by Frank Paris , Thursday, November 26, 2009, 02:59 (5259 days ago) @ dhw

Okay. Back to your post, from the beginning!-One thing I've noticed is that you're extremely fond of sifting through past posts of mine and quoting what I've said verbatum, dilligently looking for contradictions. This requires a lot of thought and a high degree of intelligence. At my senile old age, I'm no longer good at thinking and am no longer very intelligent. Therefore, frankly, I'm not the least bit interested in what I wrote ten minutes ago let alone yesterday for heaven's sake. But I feel that I'm still pretty good at feeling and then letting those feelings talk. I'm best at speaking from my heart, so I'll let you do the thinking and analysis and I'll just react to it. That way we'll each do our thing and perhaps be able to move forward with less intertia.-"You've stated that God is not responsible for Life on Earth..."-Hmmm. I thought I've said that God is not responsible for the particular forms that life takes on Earth. That's a huge difference from what you say I've said. Well, there you go. I don't care what I said prior to this second. This is what I'm saying now, from my heart. Let me elaborate. First, I don't know whether God knew what would happen after he chose the fundamentals, but I suspect he did. He probably knew that life would evolve from the fundamentals, but he didn't know where, or what biochemistry would evolve, or what forms would evolve from that biochemistry. But he might have had a pretty good idea because of all his past experience creating universes. Probably no planet ever did exactly the same thing as any other planet, even if there were an infinite number of them, which of course there were.-"...and is therefore not responsible for the world's suffering"-Let me elaborate. First of all, until human beings came along, on the average there is not much suffering in the world. Most animals lead painless lives until the throes of death, so percentage-wise, there's very little pain in the world. They may have led exciting lives, like an antelope being chased by a lion, but most of the time they get away. Eventually of course most of them get caught, but they only get caught once. Meanwhile, life is just one adventure after another.-Second, God knows that every animal must die. Can you imagine a universe in which there is life and no death? If you want change and evolution, death is part of the bargain. So in that sense, God is responsible for death and the pain associated with it. But proportionally speaking, it's a tiny fraction of what's going on, so overall, life is pretty successful and most of the time is a bowl of cherries. I know this isn't what is pictured on Animal Planet and all the other sensationalist TV shows, but showing nothing but the day to day wouldn't capture much of a paying audience.-Third, the horrendous amount of human suffering I believe is a mere blip in the history of any intelligent species. We just happen to be in the middle of it. This is one of those "chances" that God takes. It's worth the momentary blip for what will emerge on the other side of the blip. And during this blip, God is there for anyone who will listen, and if enough will listen, the intelligent species will get over the blip and explode into Paradise on Earth. Perhaps most don't, but they'll only last a few thousand years compared to the couple million years the average species lives. So once again, it's a good trade-off.-This was originally part of a longer post but the site won't let me post it because it's too long! So in pieces...