How can a good God allow suffering

@Leadfoot,

Built by Acme, no doubt.

@edgarblythe,

Don’t fall off! Or has that ship sailed?

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God doesn't allow suffering. There is no god. What happens to any individuals is caused by the environment, their DNA, and their ability to defend against disease.

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@cicerone imposter,

1. Theism & Atheism are unfalsifiable BELIEFS
2. You can attempt proving one or the other false, maybe even succeed but it's unlikely
3. The thread was asking "can" so we are speaking hypothetically
4. Yet you poo poo the thread. You need to offload, we get that. Why you need to offload l suspect is a lot to unpack, but it'd be best done irl not here, friend. Bye.

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@Love2Love,

You have to prove there is a deity before reasonable folks can accept your words of 'wisdom.'

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@edgarblythe,

That would be the case if Love2Love were arguing that there definitely is a deity.

But I believe the bit of wisdom was to point out that the existence of God can not be either proved or disproved.

I'm reasonable and I accept that wisdom.

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@Krumple,

Krumple wrote:

The isrealites didn't develop Yahweh until five hundred years after the tribes were involved in lots of battles over land and power. Around 900 bce.

Egyptian records note the existence of the Hebrew deity in 1400 BC.

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@rosborne979,

rosborne979 wrote:

There are countless billions of possible magical beings which could be thrown at the creation of the Universe, yet you don't challenge me on any of them. You don't ask me why Zeus doesn't exist, or Fairies or Elves or any of the other countless possibilities. You dismiss them all out of hand, automatically. You don't lose any sleep at night worrying about the possibility that Allah or Krishna might be the true Creator. Why? What's so special about your particular God that sets it apart from all the other possibilities?

Is there some evidence which shows that your concept of God is the right magical being out of the other billion? Please show me.

Is it more logical that your concept of God is the right one out of the billions? Please explain how.

Of all the possibilities that you could have chosen, does your God happen to be the one you were exposed to as a child? What is the probability that the one "right" one out of all the possibilities available, is the one you happened to be exposed to?

So when you ask me, "Why is it so obvious that God doesn't exist?", I say you already know that answer, and you've used that answer to eliminate all the other possibilities as though they were trivial, barely worth your consideration. You already know there's no God. Everybody should realize it. It's obvious.

While it is true that any one conception of God is unlikely to be true at the expense of all others, that is not evidence that there is no God. It just establishes that mankind's conceptions of God are unlikely to be the truth. God can still exist even if no religion accurately captures the truth of what God is.

I can think of a plausible scenario where differing religions are all valid. What if the differences between the various religions are just separate cultures reaching out to God in their own culturally unique way, with God accepting all of the worship despite the vast differences between some of the religions?

I don't claim that this is the case. Just that it is one possibility.

The truth is, we don't know that God exists, and what his nature is if he does exist. And we also don't know that God doesn't exist. We just don't know anything at all when it comes to the question of God.

And actually, the existence of God and the existence of a spiritual afterlife are two separate questions as well.

For example, perhaps God exists, but does not care at all about humans, and our minds wink out of existence when we die.

Or perhaps God doesn't exist, but there is still an afterlife waiting for us anyway. Maybe when we pray, the prayers are heard by the spirits of our ancestors.

The possibilities are endless. The scenario where there is no God and no afterlife (standard Atheism) is only one of many equally-plausible scenarios.

So that's my argument for hard Agnosticism. I don't know what the truth is, but neither does anyone else.

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@rosborne979,

rosborne979 wrote:

And honestly, why wouldn't we? Isn't it reasonable to question basic assumptions when a question like this gets posted? And even more broadly, is it not incumbent on every intelligent person to challenge the basic veracity of the assumptions implied by a question like this? How could any reasonable person possibly let an assumption like that simply skate on through? Especially in an open forum like this?

For example, if someone popped in and asked "Why do Unicorns like to put their heads in virgin's laps?", would you expect that to just go through without challenge, and people to start an enthusiastic analysis of the motivations of the Unicorn? Does the word "God" (which I put in quotes because there are about a billion of them) earn some type of special pass that other magical entities don't? Is any particular "God" more magical than a Unicorn? Can there be such a thing as "more magical"? Is there more evidence for God than a Unicorn? Or is God simply a more "reasonable" form of magic in people's minds? The mere fact that I can equate God and Unicorns probably feels wrong to some people, but their feeling only demonstrates the point.

Now, to be fair, you might say to the person asking the question, "are you using the question to form a purely academic discussion on morality, or do you actually believe in Unicorns?" If the person says that the question is purely hypothetical then you might want to explore the concept on that basis alone. But if the person says they actually believe in Unicorns, would you really want to continue on with a careful analysis of the moral question knowing that they were already delusional? Might you become suspicious that this person's reasoning process was already impaired and think that you might not get a very rational discussion out of them?

On the other hand, if A2K were a church or something, then I could see a question about God going unchallenged. After all, if you're sitting in a room full of people who already believe in Unicorns, then you would expect a discussion of Unicorns to follow without challenge. But in an open forum like A2K it would be unrealistic not to expect to be challenged on the basic premise of the question, wouldn't it?

And likewise, in public and in daily life, the assumption of God should not go unchallenged, any more than the assumption of Unicorns should.

I concur that you have the right to weigh in on a public messageboard.

But the unprovable assumption that "there is no God" also should not go unchallenged.

Obviously anyone who claims to know "not only that God exists, but what his nature is" is wrong. They may or may not be right about the existence of God, but they certainly don't have any knowledge regarding the nature of God.

But the fact that these people are wrong doesn't mean that the Atheists are necessarily correct.

The truth is that nobody has any idea at all.

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

I don't know what your religion is, and really don't care. All my siblings are christians, and I'm an atheist married to a buddhist.
The christian religion has too many errors, omissions and contradictions for me to logically believe in it.
#1: According to the bible, the earth is 7,000 years old. According to science, the earth is 4.5 billion years old.
#2: Thou shalt not kill, but you must kill if you meet unbelievers of me.

Your second alleged contradiction is due to a misunderstanding of what the Bible says. That isn't a prohibition against all killing. It is a prohibition against murder and manslaughter. Lawful killing is just fine.

cicerone imposter wrote:

#3: If god is so loving, why did he create hell?

I see no contradiction here either. A loving deity would want anyone who causes horrible suffering to be brought to justice for what they have done.

I consider myself a pretty kindly person, and if there is an afterlife I'll be pretty disappointed if any evil monstrous scumbags get to enjoy heaven.

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Atheism is most often a lack of belief. It's not a case of people saying that they believe something, but that they don't believe something. Your magic sky daddy is an extraordinary claim, requiring extraordinary proof. To be unwilling to believe something without proof does not constitute a belief system. What you are attempting to peddle here is the religionists false claim of equivalence.

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It is utter bullsh*t that there are any records in Egypt of the Hebrew deity any time before the mid-Roman Empire, let alone 1400 BCE. The amount of horsie poop being peddled in this thread is astounding.

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@Love2Love,

You don't need to answer any "pertinent" questions about your post. It is written in standard English, and you are not entitled to judge what is pertinent in other people's remarks. Your post displays some truly bizarre delusions, and false analogies. You could benefit from professional counseling--or at least a basic course in logic.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Atheism is most often a lack of belief. It's not a case of people saying that they believe something, but that they don't believe something. Your magic sky daddy is an extraordinary claim, requiring extraordinary proof. To be unwilling to believe something without proof does not constitute a belief system. What you are attempting to peddle here is the religionists false claim of equivalence.

If an Atheist merely chooses to disbelieve anything that can't be proven, then there is indeed no reason to ask them for proof.

But since it cannot be proven that there isn't a God, it would be logically consistent for such an Atheist to not make any claims that there is definitely no God.

Some Atheists choose to state outright that there is no God. If someone is making a concrete claim like that, it is reasonable to ask them for proof.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

It is utter bullsh*t that there are any records in Egypt of the Hebrew deity any time before the mid-Roman Empire, let alone 1400 BCE. The amount of horsie poop being peddled in this thread is astounding.

"Two Egyptian texts, one dated to the period of Amenhotep III (14th century BCE), the other to the age of Ramesses II (13th century BCE), refer to 'Yahu in the land of the Šosū-nomads' (t3 š3św yhw[6]), in which yhw[3]/Yahu is a toponym."
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shasu

"The oldest plausible recorded occurrence of Yahweh is as a place-name, 'land of Shasu of YHW', in an Egyptian inscription from the time of Amenhotep III (1402–1363 BCE),[19][20] the Shasu being nomads from Midian and Edom in northern Arabia.[21]"
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh

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@oralloy,

Quote:

The truth is that nobody has any idea at all.

Isn’t that as equally unprovable?

If there is a God that matters, certainly he would take the effort to let us know. Otherwise, why would we bother giving it another thought?
There are some things we know without knowing we know it.
And sometimes we deny that we know it.

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To say there is a god because I feel there has to be a god is the nearest thing to proof I have yet come across. Is there more?

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@edgarblythe,

Before moving on to more, refine what you’ve got.
To put it as 'I believe there is a God because I feel there has to or needs to be a God' says you are appealing to your own emotion of need.

It is a subtle difference but an important one, to feel that you know something without knowing why, something that I don’t necessarily want to know. It is not something I necessarily need. But there it is.

But there is more

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@Love2Love,

Quote:

1. Theism & Atheism are unfalsifiable BELIEFS

Beliefs by its very nature are not always factual. Evidence must be provided for anything to be unfalsifiable.

How can a good God allow suffering

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