The Problem of Evil

Hi griggsy

I enjoyed your post, but I feel you have a rather one-dimensional approach to the issues. It's no good interpreting the scriptures your way and then complaining that your interpretation doesn't work. The trick is to find the correct interpretation. How could you ever know it is correct? One sign is that all the myriad sayings of the prophets and sages become consistent with each other.


No. The problem is that people sometimes think that Heaven is a place on a map, or a place where good and evil exist. If the scriptures are to be believed then if you give up any idea of what you think Heaven is then you'll probably have a better idea of it than you do now.


Why do you suppose these are two different places?


What if the laws of the world follow ineluctably and naturally from the laws of Heaven, and ensure that our actions have consequences which do not come to end with our death? That is, what if the doctrine of karma is true?


Don't believe in Him myself.


Because we must reach Heaven of our own freewill, it's not a prison, and some people choose not to go.


The punishment was metaphorical, so it wasn't so bad.


I agree wholheartedly that whatever our pet 'theory of everything' is it should at least be consistent. Or, at least, it should be as consistent as we canmakeit. Natural philosophers have been looking for such a theory since Democtritus but have had no luck so far. One has to wonder why. I think it's because Buddhist doctrine is true.


So they might be right after all. But actually I'm with you on this one. I think it is possible to know of God's existential status. For the Buddhist view omniscience is possible.

No, your response does not answer the query why the inconsistency on His part to have the same kind of beings in both places if in one beings have free will and have a guarantee not to do wrong, why not in both as the one shows that the free will argument is absurd!
The myth teaches that we all inherit this punishment and that is part of why there is evil here on Earth. We do not inherit such! For us not to enjoyo that garden is an unmerited punishment.
So, we should not have to reach Heaven on our own free will!
I doubt that there is karma.On reincarnation, I refer to Paul Edwards's " Reincarnation: a Critical Examination."

If only Edwards understood karma well enough to criticize the notion. Take, for example, the argument against karma of climbing world population. The whole thing relies on a straw man: that humans are the only sentient beings. According to Buddhism, this is not the case.

Quite. If someone can show that the doctrine of karma is philosophically unnacceptable then they haven't informed anyone else yet.

When we are talking about 'suffering', we consider that non-suffering exist(i dont know which word would refer to the opposite of suffering).
to say that something is good, we accept that bad exist. so maybe god has created this world to make some suffer, some having good life, some poor, some rich, some believers, some non-believers. so maybe-maybe- the main reason why god makes some sufferers is to show other non-sufferers how important it is not to suffer.:brickwall:

That's a thought. Or, perhaps suffering is the necessary price we pay for our few moments of existence in this virtual space-time landscape, and when we look around we are continually reminded by the suffering we see of how important it is not to believe that this is all that there is. And perhaps this is just the way it has to be, whether God likes it or not.

i do feel bad when i see people around suffering, while i am in good conditions. i do see people who don't deserve all that they have to 'pay'. the price that you say we are paying for this 'existence' is nonesense.
and plus without me existing, god wouldn't exist at all.

Is not suffering rather obviously the price we pay? Mind you, in Buddhism suffering is dissatisfaction, not necessarily anything too terrible. My views on God would depend on how He is defined.

Isn't dissadisfaction, in long term, terrible?

Or perhaps there is no kharma or intrinsic suffering, but instead life is a series of many pronged forks in the road, each fork having probabilities as to which would happen. I never did quite believe in the idea of kharma, mainly because of stillborns/miscarriages and the ideas they raise, and the idea of fate in itself is, like most things people believe in, both unable to be proven and unable to be disproven.

Well, yes. But you know what I mean. It wouldn't necessarily be anything dramatic. It just comes with the territory.

I remember an interview quite a few years ago. I believe I was watching sixty minutes. Anyway, they were interviewing a man by the name of William Sloan Coffin. The question was asked, why would God allow so much suffering in the world? His reply was, maybe God would ask, why do you Allow it. Maybe sometimes it is mans first instinct to pass the buck and point the finger when things go wrong. But, in all honesty, the circumstances of our lives are shaped by the consequences of our actions. I believe that the suffering in the world is primarily caused by mankinds ambitions and negligence. Maybe it is not fair to blame anyone else but ourselves. I agree with Justin on this one.