God and Suffering (General)

by dhw, Sunday, November 23, 2008, 08:56 (5842 days ago) @ Mark

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.