How can a good God allow suffering

@fresco,

I agree with you, but it's one of those human phenomenon that seems to be a need to provide some sort of comfort of a higher power. I see religion as an accident of birth; most follow the religion of their country, culture, and/or parents. Our mother became a christian while we were interred in a concentration camp during WWII in Northern California. A lady across from our barracks was a christian, and she converted our mother. I have seen too many contradictions in the teachings even as a teen to believe god would prefer the Israelis over everybody else, and teach hate for people with different sexual attractions and needs. As my sister always says, she disapproves of the acts, but love the people. Why must she judge other people in what they do? What people do in the privacy of their bedroom should be of no concern to others. So, here I am, an atheist. All my siblings are christians married to christians. I'm married to a buddhist.

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@fresco,

Our mind just cannot avoid assuming 'a mind-independent external world'. Anyone seriously trying to envisage the total absence of a mind-independent external world -- as opposed to just talking about it, i.e. tossing word salad in that general direction -- will soon end up crazy, because such an idea is utterly illogical and hence literally unthinkable.

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@Olivier5,

You are entitled to that opinion, but bear in mind that 'logic' is a by product of 'thinking', and well known to be limited to the axioms on which it is applied.
Nor do I know of any constructivists or their followers who went crazy, except perhaps Nietzsche whoo was a possible fringe candidate.

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@fresco,

Yes. Our "normal" is continually being revised.

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@fresco,

Logic is part of our mind's operating system. We can of course tamper with it and think outside it, but generally with very poor results.

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Nor do I know of any constructivists or their followers who went crazy,

That may be because they never seriously doubted the existence of a mind-independent world. They may have played with the idea now and then, but I bet you that they all looked for their keys when they misplaced them, instead of assuming that their keys had vanished into thin air as soon as they had a chance to escape human observation...

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@Olivier5,

You may be correct as far as everyday experience is concerned, but I think 'frontier science' is the arena in which such thinking out of the box has come to the fore. You only need to consider a few celebrated quotations to get the essence of that.
"We never observe nature itself -only the results of questions we put to it."HEISENBERG
"No, no....you are not thinking....you are just being logical !" BOHR.
"In the quantum world, everything that can happen, does happen." COX

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@cicerone imposter,

Thinking primates invented religion both as a psychological comfort to counter their fears about their 'destiny', and also a social regulator of their primate sexual behavior which now had the added cognitive problem of 'consequences' attached. Hence the obsession of religion with sexual matters/chauvinism/ dresss codes / sin.

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Thinking primates invented religion both as a psychological comfort to counter their fears about their 'destiny', and also a social regulator of their primate sexual behavior which now had the added cognitive problem of 'consequences' attached. Hence the obsession of religion with sexual matters/chauvinism/ dresss codes / sin.

That's so absolutely - logical. And at least I heard what you said about logic..

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@Leadfoot,

It's based on evolutionary axioms. Of course theists might attempt to add their own ad hoc axiom of 'evolution as the tool of a creator', which merely demonstrates that problem of logic as a limited processing 'machine' , namely 'garbage in gives garbage out'.

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@fresco,

But everyday experience is what philosophy is all about. Even philosophy of science is about the everyday experience of scientists...

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@fresco,

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I understand your point, but for me 'eventhood' like 'thinghood' is in the mind of the beholder. i.e There are no 'non mental events'

Now you sound like an IDer. Everything was a thought in the Creator's mind then it became 'understood' when he shared the idea with someone by turning into a word and a words are what physical reality are made up of.

[quote}Obviously 'a mind independent external world' is a useful concept for many purposes, but other than serving human specific striving for prediction and control it may not be sufficient (any more) for what we call 'understanding'.[/quote]

Why can't there be a mind that is capable of thinking the universe into existence to share that idea as a mutual understanding in a similar way that we as humans think of new ideas and share them?

If, there is a Creator and everything we sense is was created in His mind, wouldn't that agree with your proposition that there are no 'non mental events' while allowing the universe to exist without human intelligence to verify its existence?

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@fresco,

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You are quite correct that the shifting proliferation of deities mitigates against the case for any one of them. But the main issue here is that bj is attempting to justify his 'god' on the basis of his dubious understanding of modern science, despite the fact that religious scientists (like Polkinghorne)

I would suggest Polkinghorne is basing his opinion on a dubious understanding of God.

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No doubt relgious belief, conditioned or otherwise, is a useful psychological phenomenon for many, but fanciful attempts to justify it on 'pseudo scientific grounds' seem to me, as an atheist, to display a weakness of what I understand to be meant by 'faith'.

If you want to talk about pseudo science explain:

1. why we have gravity
2. what is a gluon and how does it obtain its ability to hold an atom together
3. why can't we replicate abiogenisis
4. where are the missing links of evolution
5. irreducible complexity

Mainstream sciences explanation of all those things start with the phrase, "Scientist think that possibly". . . and finish with," . . . but we don't know for sure and cannot replicate it."

Wouldn't a phrase like that be considered pseudoscience?

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@cicerone imposter,

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I agree with you, but it's one of those human phenomenon that seems to be a need to provide some sort of comfort of a higher power. I see religion as an accident of birth;

That may be true for some but not most of the bloggers here. I have provided logical reason for my beliefs and like fresco

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There are no 'non mental events'.

And I even agree with him here

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there is no point discussing noumena at all...a position taken by the post Husserlian phenomenologists. But this is not the same as Berkeley's solipsism because 'mind' is a social phenomenon involving a common language and not synonymous with 'brain'.

except that I believe nounema is worth discussing because mind is a social phenomenon before man existed it involved a social interaction between the Father, son and Holy Spirit and then eventually all of mankind.

Why isn't this logical?

My parents more than likely believe in God and the Trinity for the same reason I do but, I doubt they are capable of explaining it that way because they are 'naive realists' and they think it is so obvious that only a moron wouldn't be able to see it.

I consider they are somewhat bigotted though.

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@Olivier5,

No. As Socrates said, "A life unexamined....etc". Or as the popular (British) adage goes, 'What do they know of England, who only of England know".
And part of that 'examination' must surely be to analyse the process of 'experience' itself...how 'perceptual set' is fuelled by functional human concepts...which are negotiated through social consensus (paradigms).

Our differences are perhaps reflected in the celebrated Einstein Bohr argument about the ontic status of 'the electron'. Einstein (the realist) considered 'electrons' to be 'existent particles', whereas Bohr (the functionalist) disagreed, saying that 'electron' was the name we gave to a certain group of events concerning our 'interactions with materials' which gave useful predictions about further interactions. Rovelli (author of 'Reality is not What it Seems) goes even further saying that 'things' are merely 'monotonous events'.

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@fresco,

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part of that 'examination' must surely be to analyse the process of 'experience' itself.

That's exactly what I am saying though: philosophy examines our everyday experience, and tries to make sense of it. If we hold certain philosophical beliefs but never act upon them in everyday life, we are lying to ourselves, like those 'Christians' who go to church every sunday but hate the poor.

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@brianjakub,

You are asking why your celestial menage a trois being a 'social group' is not 'logical'. Well irrespective of Isaac Newton's problems of rejecting The Trinity (a precarious belief for the Master of Trinity College), its religious origins in the magic number 3, of which the Hindu gunas is an earlier example, tends to put it beyond the pale as far as Aristotelean 'logic' is concerned. You could of course try a bit of Hegelian 'dialectic' instead (thesis/antithesis/synthesis) as an alternative 'logic' (there are many), but I doubt whether that would serve your facile view of 'mind'.

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@Olivier5,

If I were a theoretical physicist, or a cognitive psychologist, I would be 'acting on them'. As an atheistic observer of the 'word magic' employed by relgious believers, in their views of social reality, I tend to 'vote with my feet'.

Rorty makes a good point about the utility philosophical debate..something like...it is the epitome of an arena the freedom of ideas. I am quite happy to think myself as at least participatijg in that!

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@fresco,

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If I were a theoretical physicist, or a cognitive psychologist, I would be 'acting on them'.

That strucks me as a very narrow field of application. It also follows that your own life remains unexamined, and thus as per your socratic quote "not worth living". Or do you examine it through a different theoretical apparatus altogether?

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@Olivier5,

Careful! That's a bit presumptuous! The 'observation of observation' is advocated in several meditational syetems with which I am familiar. If followed, it can lead to a manipulative 'alooofness', like the conscious insertion of 'praise' within exchanges in order to change the receptive state of 'the other'. I'll let you decide whether that has been operating here ! Wink

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@fresco,

Huh?

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How can a good God allow suffering

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