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I would like to test out a thought that occurred to me recently: - To many people the primary difficulty with belief in God is suffering. If God is good and the cause of all that is, why has he made a world with so much pain? In response it can be suggested that in order to make a world which has its own integrity, in which there are free, responsible creatures, suffering is unavoidable, at least along the way to something better. To me, this is reasonable. But it still leaves this question, which is often asked: Even if there is perfect peace at the end of the day, is it worth it? As it is starkly put in The Brothers Karamazov, if the torture of just one child were necessary, would the project be justified? - To answer that question is to explain suffering, and I don't believe we can do that. But I think there is something which can be said to those who still insist that God could not be just. And here is my thought. As humans we have freedom and responsibility. We can choose whether to continue to live or not. Many people are able to choose whether or not to bring more humans into the world. Collectively we can choose whether or not to keep the whole show going. We did not begin the project, but we have a choice about whether it continues. So,I ask this question of anyone who accepts that our freedom must limit God's ability to protect us from evil, yet still believes that God cannot be a loving creator: How can you also believe that it is loving to have children, when you cannot guarantee their protection from horrific suffering?

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To many people the primary difficulty with belief in God is suffering. If God is good and the cause of all that is, why has he made a world with so much pain? 
> But it still leaves this question, which is often asked: Even if there is perfect peace at the end of the day, is it worth it? 
> We did not begin the project, but we have a choice about whether it continues. So,I ask this question of anyone who accepts that our freedom must limit God's ability to protect us from evil, yet still believes that God cannot be a loving creator: How can you also believe that it is loving to have children, when you cannot guarantee their protection from horrific suffering? - I don't think we can know for an absolute certainty that God is loving. I strongly believe that we were created by a superbly intellectual force, but I cannot bring myself to succumb to the human necessity to apply anthropomorphism to that intellect. To disagree with Mortimer J. Adler, I don't 'know' that God is a personage like no other person. - I am thankful that we have been given life from inorganic matter. I find living a marvelous gift, and I thank God for the wonderful gifts that I receive from living. That is the way I pray to God, to thank Him for those gifts. I have never prayed for help. I have never needed it. I have the strength to handle my own adversities. Of course I love my children, my wife, some friends. To withhold love because of the problem of evil, is not to use the living gift of love that we are allowed to feel in the way we have been created. - I know that our freedom of choice creates evil. I know that the process of evolution created evil living organisms,for example, the parasite, Plasmodium, that causes maleria, that has killed and is still killing millions of people, because the world of humans stupidly stopped proper use of DDT. We make horrendous mistakes as humans and God does not stop the results. Therefore, we cannot say God is loving, only hope religions are correct, and they really don't know any better than we individuals, who don't accept the Bible as inerrant, or even the true word of God.

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Mark: "To many people the primary difficulty with belief in God is suffering." - GPJ: For me the primary difficulty with belief in God is the lack of evidence for such a being. - Mark: "If God is good and the cause of all that is, why has he made a world with so much pain?" - GPJ: Indeed. This is a problem for those who insist on believing in a God. But for a 'naturalist' like myself there is no such theological problem. It is just part of nature. - Mark: "In response it can be suggested that in order to make a world which has its own integrity, in which there are free, responsible creatures, suffering is unavoidable, ///" - GPJ: It is indeed difficult to imagine an alternative world in which there is no suffering. Leibniz (or was in Maupertuis?) philosophised that ours is "the best of all possible worlds", but was satirized for his theory by Voltaire. - Mark: "/// at least along the way to something better. To me, this is reasonable. But it still leaves this question, which is often asked: Even if there is perfect peace at the end of the day, is it worth it?" - GPJ: This desire for some future perfect utopia or heaven is another aspect of religious belief. I prefer to settle for gradual amelioration, such as has been provided by scientific medicine and humanistic morality. - Mark: "As it is starkly put in The Brothers Karamazov, if the torture of just one child were necessary, would the project be justified? To answer that question is to explain suffering, and I don't believe we can do that." - GPJ: No. The end does not justify the means. That is a basic humanist ideal. Of course in practice it is not always clear cut. You cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs. To cite another cliche. More generally it is a balance of evils and benefits from any course of action. - Mark: "But I think there is something which can be said to those who still insist that God could not be just. And here is my thought. As humans we have freedom and responsibility. We can choose whether to continue to live or not." - GPJ: At present I choose to continue to live, since my current sufferings are not so terrible, and there is much I stil want to do with my life. But I can envisage a day when I might choose to end it. - Mark: "Many people are able to choose whether or not to bring more humans into the world. Collectively we can choose whether or not to keep the whole show going. We did not begin the project, but we have a choice about whether it continues." - GPJ: As it happens I've never married or had children. Though my brothers have. This has just happened because of the circumstances of my life. However I do consider that the world is overpopulated and that there should be some conscious effort internationally to bring the world population down. But the instincts for procreation are strong and not easily controlled. - Mark: "So,I ask this question of anyone who accepts that our freedom must limit God's ability to protect us from evil, yet still believes that God cannot be a loving creator: ///" - GPJ: The theological part of this question I can just ignore; the simple solution is that there is no God, so questions of his abilities or intentions are beside the point. - Mark: "How can you also believe that it is loving to have children, when you cannot guarantee their protection from horrific suffering?" - GPJ: This is what we have evolved to do. That's what Life is. Suffering may be unavoidable, but it doesn't have to be horrific. On balance the joy outdoes the horror, even if only because that is the way we tend to look at things.

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Mark writes: "I ask this question of anyone who accepts that our freedom must limit God's ability to protect us from evil, yet still believes that God cannot be a loving creator: How can you also believe that it is loving to have children, when you cannot guarantee their protection from horrific suffering?" - I share David Turell's gratitude for the gift of life, and feel that so far I have been very lucky in avoiding the traumas of horrific suffering. If God exists, you are of course right that our freedom must limit his ability to protect us, but that is only part of the story. There is a huge gap between the two parts of your question. I love my children and have done everything in my power to protect them from horrific suffering, and I certainly have not deliberately created the dangers to which they are exposed. If I question your concept of a loving God, it is not only because he does not protect innocent victims, but also and most emphatically because he has created many (or, indirectly, all) of the forces that cause their suffering. - There was no need for him to make animals into carnivores (the precursor of so much that we call sin), to create the viruses that cause disease, to organize the climate in such a way that it can destroy whole cities and their inhabitants with a single blast or flood. Man is not solely responsible for the "horrific suffering" you talk of. There was in fact no need for God to create evil in the first place. I know you dispute this, but if he is the omnipotent, omniscient prime cause, there is no way round his responsibility for creating the serpent, or Lucifer, or whatever symbol you care to name. You would perhaps prefer to select instances of man-made pain, or situations in which people have a choice, or from which they may benefit in the long run through experience, but those are not the situations to which I am referring. - The God of the Jews and Christians ... as I understand both religions ... deliberately chose to create a project of multiple tests. True believers will pass. The rest of us will fail. And I have to ask why? If I saw my children suffering because of situations that I had created, I would not expect them to call me a loving father. Even Jesus cried out "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani", and I can't help wondering why it was necessary for him to die such an agonizing death, since Christians can save themselves by following his teachings, and they could have done this even if he had died of old age. Muhammad's followers are just as devoted to him as Christians are to Jesus, and he lived a relatively normal life and died a relatively normal death.
 
To return to your question, I am grateful to my parents for giving me the opportunity to experience life, and the love and stability to maximise my chances of enjoying it. I hope I have done the same for my own children. I see this as a manifestation of my parents' love and mine. At no time did they or I deliberately create any form of evil with which to test, maim, destroy, or cause needless suffering, such as the Judeo-Christian God has done. You don't believe we can explain suffering. There are three very simple explanations: 1) There is no God (see George's post). 2) The creative force has abandoned us. 3) The creative force doesn't care. Once you jettison the concept of a loving God, suffering loses all its mystery. - You also ask, "Is it worth it?" That depends on what sort of life you lead. In my case, yes. In the case of the tortured child, I guess no. You ask if the project would be justified in the latter case. Who is the judge? "Something better", "perfect peace". These are interesting concepts. Perfect peace sounds like death. "Something better" raises the whole question of an afterlife, which we have touched on but never really examined in any depth. Should we keep the project going? Yes, of course. Better to have the chance of happiness than nothing at all. But I can't answer for those who have experienced the horrific side of a world which may or may not have been deliberately created to allow for such injustice.

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Thanks to all for your replies. - George & David - you don't accept the premises so the question doesn't touch you. Fair enough. - dhw - neither do you - though I would take issue with your objection:
There was no need for him to make animals into carnivores (the precursor of so much that we call sin), to create the viruses that cause disease, to organize the climate in such a way that it can destroy whole cities and their inhabitants with a single blast or flood. - How can you know that it is possible to create a world anything like this, in which creatures having the personal qualities of humans can evolve, but without carnivores, viruses or floods?

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How can you know that it is possible to create a world anything like this, in which creatures having the personal qualities of humans can evolve, but without carnivores, viruses or floods? - Excellent point. Humans are omnivores. Evolution is the method God used. We are at the current end of evolution. Carnivores had to precede us.

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Mark asks: "How can you know that it is possible to create a world anything like this, in which creatures having the personal qualities of humans can evolve, but without carnivores, viruses or floods?" - This tempts me to point out that if God is the omnipotent being that most Christians think he is, he can do anything, which would include creating a world in which creatures having...etc. etc. But perhaps you don't believe in God's omnipotence (you'd once have been burned at the stake for that), in which case I have to admit that I don't think it is logically possible to create a world like this that is not like this. ("Anything like this" raises too many questions.) It was you, however, who raised the problem of horrific suffering, and I can only conclude from your new question that if the Judeo-Christian God did indeed make the world, this must be the way he wanted it to be, i.e. he wanted to subject his creations to indiscriminately inflicted suffering of his own making. As a loving father - and this was the point of the original post - I would never do such a thing to my children.

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Omnipotence never meant belief that God could make truth equal falsehood. - If I am with you so far, dhw, then: - 1. You accept that a world like this may not be possible without suffering, i.e. it may be logically impossible to create humans without allowing suffering. - 2. You still blame God for creating this world. - Then my original question still holds. If God is wrong to create this world, why is it right for us to keep it going? - There is a lot more to say from a Christian viewpoint, of course. Not least that creation has direction (hence we have hope), and that God has created what is not himself, and by his Spirit is calling forth a response by which it can become what it is meant to be. But that calling cannot be a coercion if creation is to have its own freedom and integrity. Creation is not an extension of God. It is different from him. He is not the direct answer to everything that happens. He has made the world so free that it is possible to believe that he doesn't exist.

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Mark: Omnipotence never meant belief that God could make truth equal falsehood.
My reference to God's omnipotence was only to the fact that had he wished to, he could have created a world without inflicting indiscriminate suffering. - Before we go any further, I need to stress that I don't even know whether the Christian God you believe in did create this world. I'm an agnostic. But I can only discuss this with you on the terms of your basic premise. - Mark: You accept that a world like this may not be possible without suffering, i.e. it may be logically impossible to create humans without suffering.
That is a misunderstanding. I accept only that this world is full of suffering, and so a world without suffering would not be "like this". It would be a different world. It would be a Garden of Eden, a Paradise, where all creatures live at peace with one another. Christians and Muslims believe in such a world, which some humans will inhabit for ever. If he'd wanted to, God could have done it here on Earth. Instead, according to those religions, he chose to make life on Earth a test, which he spiced up with various forms of random "horrific suffering" devised by himself. - Mark: You still blame God for creating this world.
No. I blame him for creating the indiscriminate suffering. In other words, even if I accept the possibility that God created life, that does not mean that I accept your vision of him as loving. If one of my (now grown-up) children was killed by one of God's special viruses, by a bolt of lightning, by an earthquake, a tsunami etc., I would certainly have difficulty interpreting it as a sign of God's love. This is what is happening every second of every day in every part of the world. You see it as necessary. I see it as cruel. Nevertheless, let me repeat that I am glad to have been given the opportunity to live, whether it came from God, Allah, Brahma, the Incredible Hulk, or an amoeba that swallowed a bacterium. - Mark: If God is wrong to create this world, why is it right for us to keep it going?
I've never said God was wrong to create this world. I've challenged the notion that this world reflects his love. By having children I've chosen to keep things going irrespective of whether there is or isn't a God, loving or indifferent, because I've been happy (and lucky) in my life, and I think it's worth the gamble that my children will experience the same. Better the chance of something than the certainty of nothing. - I think the difference between us is our starting point. You start out from a fixed base: the belief that a loving God created the world, and suffering is essential if we are to have free will and turn into what God wants us to be (I hope that's accurate). I start out from the fact that, much as I love life, I see a world full of pain indiscriminately inflicted. This was the pattern long before man came on the scene, and it had nothing to do with free will. So I look for an explanation. The simplest (Ockham's razor) is that there is no guiding principle behind the suffering. This could be because life arose by chance, or because the creative force doesn't care ... we are perhaps a long-drawn-out soap opera it created for its entertainment ... or it's disappeared altogether. Of course your belief in God's love may be justified, just as George's belief in a purely material universe may be justified. But your rational excuses for irrational suffering strain my credulity (not to mention my sense of justice), as does George's attribution of life's complexities to luck and Nature's laws. The exchange of ideas, however, is what this forum is about, and I'm immensely grateful to you, George, David and others who keep coming up with new insights into these old problems. I find it all stimulating and helpful, especially since one of you must be right!

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OK, dhw. I misunderstood you. Let me try again. You think that if there is a God, then it would be logically possible for him to create a perfect world, bypassing all the pain of this one. You cannot accept that there is a loving God, because you know that all the present suffering is unnecessary. You know that it would have been possible to go directly to all the good without allowing the evil. So I go back to my earlier question: How can you possibly know this? Should you not at least be agnostic on the question?

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Mark says: "You cannot accept that there is a loving God, because you know that all the present suffering is unnecessary. You know that it would have been possible to go directly to all the good without allowing the evil. So I go back to my earlier question: How can you possibly know this? Should you not at least be agnostic on the question?" - Mark, this smacks of setting up a target in order to knock it down. Of course I don't "know" any of this. I don't even know whether God exists. I am trying to make sense of your argument within your Christian context. You have expressed the belief (I trust you wouldn't call it knowledge) that God is loving, and that suffering is necessary if humans are to have free will and become what God wants them to be. I have made the following comments: - 1) The indiscriminate suffering caused by Nature began long before man came on the scene. I cannot see any link between diseases, floods, hurricanes etc. and free will. Nor can I see how these God-made agonies are compatible with love. - 2) If, as Christians believe, God is omnipotent, and if, as Christians believe, he has made a world without suffering (heaven), it seems logical to me that it must have been his choice to make a world with suffering, which takes us back to 1). - This has nothing to do with any beliefs of mine, let alone knowledge, but is solely an explanation as to why I cannot follow the logic of your argument. If, however, I have misunderstood the nature of your Christian belief, of course I apologize and hope that you will put me right by dealing with these points.

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1) The indiscriminate suffering caused by Nature began long before man came on the scene. I cannot see any link between diseases, floods, hurricanes etc. and free will. Nor can I see how these God-made agonies are compatible with love. > - dhw: I am forced to jump in at this point. Our Earth is a very special planet. It cannot rain without the weather pattern, and I cannot imagine a God that so perfectly arranges those patterns that it always rains on Tuesdays and Fridays so as not to spoil the weekends! Some of the storms get out of hand, granted, but that is the way atmospheres work. There are storms that are followed on Jupiter. Earthquakes are due to crustal techtonics which have also been very crucial to the evolution of the Earth. - Where the free will comes in is God gave us a portion of His intellect, so we can handle these dangers in the way the Earth must be constructed. That intellect has free will and can create evil as we all know. Evolution requires that animal organisms eat animal and plant organisms. Some of the organisms created cause diseases in man. We have the intellect to rise to the challenge to cure those diseases, but to test us, why should we be given all the answers in advance? We must use our intellecct, create its muscles in training in research. If life were the Garden of Eden, it would be boring. Those humans who have not philosophized, starting with the Greeks to the Enlightenment; those humans who have not been willing to be inventive from the wheel to jet planes have terrible lives: just look at Africa, even today after the colonizing European countries left. Were they taught nothing, or were they unwilling to learn and change? Their fault, not God's.

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David has given us a very concise account of how the weather, earthquakes and evolution work. - Thank you for "jumping in". The more angles we see, the better the chance of a clearer picture. I have no problem with the above. Nor do I have a problem with your statement that: "If life were the Garden of Eden, it would be boring." I also agree totally that humans must fend for themselves, that with our freedom of will we create evil, and humans who are not capable of learning will suffer more than those who are. In my view, you have described with great accuracy the way the world functions. The difficulty that I have is with the pattern imposed on this system by, in particular, the Christian interpretation of the force that brought it into being. Most of the points I have raised in my discussion with Mark will therefore not be relevant to your panentheism (with which I am much more in sympathy), but there is one passage in your own account that causes me a problem. - In relation to natural disasters, you say: "Where the free will comes in is God gave us a portion of His intellect, so we can handle these dangers in the way the Earth must be constructed." You are taking an overall view of humanity, whereas I think of the individual men, women and children (who could easily be me and my loved ones) swept away by tsunamis, crushed by earthquakes, ravaged by diseases. I cannot see how their individual free will could have saved them. Nor can I equate such deaths and such suffering with a loving God. Nor, indeed, can I envisage any purpose behind their suffering. Of course we are stuck with the world as it is. But the Christian view, if I have understood it correctly, is that this is how it has to be if we are to fulfil God's purpose by becoming what he wants us to become. I just cannot swallow the argument that millions of generations of animals tearing each other to pieces, followed by thousands of generations of human beings ravaged by natural disasters which are not of their own making, all constitute part of a master plan to make some humans behave themselves. Nor am I convinced that such a plan could be devised by a being that is all good and all loving. There are other interpretations of this scenario that seem to me more coherent: e.g. that there is no master plan; that God (if he exists) is indifferent or absent or dead; that life is a free-for-all governed partly by individual talents, and partly by the laws of Nature and chance. This thread was opened with a view to putting the case for a loving God and for the necessity of suffering in pursuit of a divine purpose. For me the three elements of this theory still don't hang together.

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dhw, this is a good post as it helps me to understand your thinking, and how you have difficulty in understanding my thinking. So I shall try to explain how I see things: - You say:
1) The indiscriminate suffering caused by Nature began long before man came on the scene. I cannot see any link between diseases, floods, hurricanes etc. and free will. Nor can I see how these God-made agonies are compatible with love. - The only world we know of in which free will is possible is the one we are in. Therefore it may well be the case that creatures with free will can only be made by evolution in a world which allows disease, floods etc. That is how there may be a link. - Again, you say: 
2) If, as Christians believe, God is omnipotent, and if, as Christians believe, he has made a world without suffering (heaven), it seems logical to me that it must have been his choice to make a world with suffering, which takes us back to 1). - I can well understand how you may have the impression that in Christianity heaven is a parallel independent creation into which some people are transferred at death. That is the simple way many Christians think. But a proper Christian understanding of "the life of the world to come" (as the creed puts it) is that it is the end towards which creation is directed. "Heaven", "the kingdom of God", "the new creation" - whatever it is called - is only reached through this world, by God bringing it to its fulfilment. So again, the point is that there is no short cut.

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Mark, I'm pleased that you're beginning to understand my thinking, and I shall continue to try and understand yours! - You say it may well be that "creatures with free will can only be made by evolution in a world which allows disease, floods etc." This to me conjures up a rather endearing picture of God the scientist able to work only within the parameters of the materials that have been made available to him, which leads me to the following alternatives: 1) God planned from the start to create humans, but it took him a while to figure out how to do it. 2) He had no plan, but just kept experimenting till he got us. 3) He invented DNA, then sat back to see what would happen. Which of these scenarios (they all seem to me to have important repercussions on one's image of God) do you favour ... or can you think of another? - I still find it surprising that you can accept with equanimity the thousands of generations of innocent people suffering (not to mention animals), but perhaps this is linked to the second part of your post, which is intriguing. You write: '"Heaven", "the kingdom of God", "the new creation" ... whatever it is called ... is only reached through this world, by God bringing it to its fulfilment.' Heaven is not "a parallel independent creation into which some people are transferred at death." This must be a mighty disappointment to some of your congregation, and I'm sure they will have asked you the same questions that I am now about to ask: What do you think is the "end towards which creation is directed" if it does not entail some sort of afterlife? Whatever it is, will it involve resurrecting everyone who ever lived? And finally, if there is no parallel creation, where did the resurrected Jesus ascend to?

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Very sorry to have taken so long to respond. Other priorities, I'm afraid. - The first point is on the question of how there may be a link between free will and the general suffering in nature. I said: - The only world we know of in which free will is possible is the one we are in. Therefore it may well be the case that creatures with free will can only be made by evolution in a world which allows disease, floods etc. That is how there may be a link. - In response you suggest various pictures of God, all of which miss the point of what I am saying. I am not suggesting that God's knowledge is in any way limited. I am saying that it may not be logically possible to create persons except by a process of evolution in a world such as this. None of us have any experience of creating real universes. We are unable to demonstrate that any other means is possible. - You find it surprising that I can accept "with equanimity" all the past suffering in the world. Are you wondering why I am not raging against God? Is it my emotional state which concerns you? It helps to be dispassionate in rational argument, but that doesn't mean that I regard any past or present suffering as acceptable in itself. I entirely agree that much of this suffering demands "Why?" or "How can this be worth it?". I don't agree that it makes impossible belief in a loving God. And the maintenance of such belief does not imply any lack of concern for the suffering. - Finally, the matter of heaven. You think my congregation must be disappointed because you interpret me as denying an afterlife. I never said that. I spoke of a fulfillment of this creation, and I see resurrection to be a part of that. My point was that such a state is not independent of this world. If that were the case then your argument would be valid ... why not put us all there in the first place? We must understand this world as necessary for "heaven" to be reached. - I can understand your confusion about where Jesus is ascended to. You may ask the same question about people who have died. Where are they now if heaven is the end goal of this creation and it has a long way to go? The key point here is that a person who has died is not present in this universe. Since time is a property of this universe, and not even absolute here, it makes no sense literally to speak of "now" in relation to anything beyond this universe. It makes no more sense to speak of a literal temporal relationship with something beyond this universe than it does to speak of a literal spatial relationship. So if I say of someone who has died ... as I may well do ... "I trust he is now above in heaven", the "now" is as metaphorical as the "above". But the "is" is not metaphorical! - Such issues persuade some people to speak of an "intermediate state". But I am happy to be agnostic, you will be pleased to hear!

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I had put a number of possible scenarios and questions to Mark, and am once again grateful for an interesting response. - You say that my various pictures of God miss your point, which is: "It may not be logically possible to create persons except by a process of evolution in a world such as this." I can't argue with your statement that none of us has had any experience of creating universes but, if I may turn the tables on you, it actually misses the point of what I'm trying to find out from you, which is the image you have of God and of his purpose. My alternative scenarios with regard to creation were: 1) He planned from the start to create humans, but it took him a while to figure out how to do it; 2) He had no plan, but just kept experimenting till he got us; 3) He invented DNA, then sat back to see what would happen. I'll add 4) : He planned from the start to create humans, and knew He could only do it by means of evolution. All four versions could be made to fit in with what you have said, and perhaps you prefer to leave the details open, but I am someone on the outside looking in, and it would be illuminating for me to know how an "insider" interprets the thinking that caused the suffering. - I found it surprising that you could "accept with equanimity the thousands of generations of innocent people suffering (not to mention animals)", but I would like to make it clear that this was not meant to cast aspersions on your compassion for the living, or on your emotional state, or on your unwillingness to rage against God! You have summed up the gist of my problem in trying to understand your arguments, when you say: "I don't agree that it makes impossible belief in a loving God." The indescribable enormity of the suffering over thousands of generations ... too much for us even to begin to conceive ... is somehow meant to be justified by a vague "end towards which creation is directed". What is the nature of this "end"? If you believe in an afterlife, what sort of afterlife do you believe in? What concept do you have of heaven? Do you believe in hell, a day of judgement, individual souls, family reunions, eternal compensation for the suffering, a great oneness etc.? Do you believe that everyone who ever lived will be resurrected? Perhaps you don't have concrete answers ... I don't know how far your "agnosticism" extends. Nor, of course, do I know how typical your beliefs are of Christians in general. But while I find it very easy to understand the conclusions about the world that atheists construct out of their initial belief in the power of chance, I struggle to understand those extrapolated by theists from their belief in a designer. David Turell consistently advises us not to attribute any qualities to such a designer, but I can't let it rest there. And so I'm grateful for the chance to ask you about the patterns that you draw, or that you think your designer has drawn for you.

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David Turell consistently advises us not to attribute any qualities to such a designer, but I can't let it rest there. And so I'm grateful for the chance to ask you about the patterns that you draw, or that you think your designer has drawn for you. - I must step in and defend my position. Unless you are willing to accept the descriptions of God in the Bible and those theologic interpretations about God's nature and 'personhood' based on the statements in the Bible, you cannot know God, know His intentions, His possible limitations, etc. as you clearly outlined in your full thoughtful message. Nor can Mark. He accepts his concept of God on faith, based on his personal interpretation of his readings in the Bible and other commentaries. No human has absolutely true knowledge of God. We do not know what that truth is! Pascal's "leap of faith" covers a chasm of unknown territory.

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I wrote that David "consistently advises us not to attribute any qualities to such a designer." - David has stepped in to defend his position: "No human has absolutely true knowledge of God. We do not know what that truth is! Pascal's 'leap of faith' covers a chasm of unknown territory." - You don't need to defend your position against me! For an agnostic, not having knowledge comes quite naturally! But I want to know how other people can take the leap, and how they cope with the chasm. Mark has given us the chance to question him about his faith, and just as I can learn from you and George about the latest scientific discoveries, I can also learn from Mark's understanding of a world beyond science. - Let me go one step further, though. If there is/was a designer or designers, his existence will be meaningless for me unless there is an afterlife, and I would not want an afterlife unless he was beneficent. I know I have no choice in the matter, but that does not prevent me from inquiring and speculating. If this life is all we have, then so be it, though I feel sad for those who have not been as lucky as I have (up to now). But if there is a designer and an afterlife, I would like to know how a dedicated believer visualizes him and it. I think I've understood the reasoning behind George's faith in chance and the laws of nature (though he wouldn't call it faith) and also behind your own panentheist faith, but I have not understood Mark's reasoning. Yet!

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