God and Suffering (General)

by dhw, Wednesday, December 10, 2008, 11:16 (5623 days ago) @ Mark

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.