God and Suffering (General)

by George Jelliss , Crewe, Monday, November 17, 2008, 20:19 (5646 days ago) @ Mark

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.