Does God cause suffering??
- Thread starter icysniper
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Ok, I'll paraphrase a couple of larger arguments (as I've got to go eat in a minute). I should also point out that I said theistic God, not God. By that I mean, I can make the concept of a theistic God seem very unlikely, but that does not mean that a creator could not exist, merely that the idea that we're part of some sort of divine plan is ridiculous.
To start with, if we take a tiny estimation of how long homosapiens have been in existence, we're lumped with a figure around 100,000 years. Richard Dawkins believes it could be as much as 250,000 years, but I'll take 100,000. If you believe that we're part of a divine plan, then this is what you have to believe. For 95,000 years we survived, just. Average life expectancy was about 25 years old, most people died of their teeth or a very common illness. Your chance of survival probably wouldn't have been above 2%, plus the fact that nearly all women died in child birth. There was even a point when it's believed that the entire human population reached as low as 2,000, worldwide. So for 95,000 this God watches, with absolute indifference. Then they decide, it's time for an intervention, and the best means of doing so is in the form of a human sacrifice in illiterate parts of the Middle East where the message would take longest to spread (and still hasn't penetrated large parts of Asia, I might add). Obviously I can't tell you that that didn't happen, but I could say, with a fair amount of confidence, that if you do believe that it did happen, you've shown that you're willing to believe pretty much anything. I could also draw your attention to the four or five other humanoid species that didn't make it, even past the first millennium.
Another argument put forward by the religious is that of chance. What are the chances of us being in the 'Goldilocks zone' around our sun, not too hot, not too cold. What are the chances of us having the huge cosmic magnet, Jupiter, pulling bits of rubble, debris and such, away from our planet. What are the chances of life emanating without some sort of intervention? Well, all I'd like to say is look at how many planets, solar systems, galaxies there are in the universe (or what we know of it, anyway), and look at how many of them have failed. There could be as many as a billion billion planets in our universe, and some think it's likely that the fact we're finding ourselves sat here typing on one measly planet, in a tiny solar system in a shady corner of a monumentally enormous universe full of failed stars and systems, due to a divine plan. Such belief is beyond stupid, in my humble opinion.
I'd also like to point out, that even if one does question this complexity, believing that it must have been created, by a creator, such a creator would be so infinitely complex that they would require an even greater explanation themselves. The hypothesis of God doesn't answer the question at all, as you merely move the answer back another stage, and you get into the problem of infinite regression.
And so on...
Quite right you are sir, but as ever, I may have been 0.00001% trigger happy with the term 'disprove'.
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But that's starting from the premise that there is, or can be, a testable hypothesis for a god. That doesn't have to be the case, in fact trying to create a falsifiable hypothesis has foiled everyone who has tried so far.
Basic problem of using science for something that it was not designed for, if the results of scientific study are predictively accurate then the question of whether a god causes them to occur is all but irrelevant for the science itself. It might matter to the scientist but that's a personal issue.
Ignoring all the usual simplistic anti-Christian hate that happens in threads like this, what I say to you is that most of the suffering that God gets blamed for is actually man made e.g. wars - even holy wars are engineered by man and not God. But, one might argue, since man was created by God is He not responsible for results of His creation? Well I'm afraid it's all back to the free-will argument, which while it's a bit of a cop out it's also valid to which there isn't really a counter-argument. Wars and other man-made suffering wouldn't exist if man did not have free will, and what sort of world would we live in if we didn't have free will?
So therefore we are left with the suffering caused by natural disasters like disease, earthquakes. As a Christian who believes in God how can I possibly justify the suffering caused by these? The answer is I can't - some Christians might say that sin causes suffering like this but I personally that's a huge cop out and one I can't agree with.
My personal belief (which is probably no good to the OP) is that in addition to creating the universe, God also created the rules of the universe which govern why harmful diseases and natural disasters like earthquakes happen. It should also be remembered that if the Earth were not volcanically active (i.e. there were no earthquakes) then the Earth would eventually become inhospitable to human life, causing a greater amount of suffering.
So therefore we are left with the suffering caused by natural disasters like disease, earthquakes. As a Christian who believes in God how can I possibly justify the suffering caused by these? The answer is I can't - some Christians might say that sin causes suffering like this but I personally that's a huge cop out and one I can't agree with.
My personal belief (which is probably no good to the OP) is that in addition to creating the universe, God also created the rules of the universe which govern why harmful diseases and natural disasters like earthquakes happen. It should also be remembered that if the Earth were not volcanically active (i.e. there were no earthquakes) then the Earth would eventually become inhospitable to human life, causing a greater amount of suffering.
At least PSHE is fun. We had an incredibly sexy teacher. The quickest erection of my life was probably when she demonstrated how to put a condom on a banana. Thank god the desk was in front of me.
Don't you know about one of the key points of Christianity? That there will be a resurrection?
The Bible says that death is no obstacle to God. He can resurrect any person who ever lived because they are all stored in his perfect memory. This even applies to unborn children AFAIK.
This means that should any truly innocent person be killed at any time, they will not be forgotten.
I don't know about the other desks in your school but when I was in school all desks were always in front of us, they didn't magically shy away whenever sex ed came to
Not in the slighest. I am not anti-christian (I am married to one and am sending my daughter to a Christian school) but I am quite happy to look at the evidence presented (The Bible) and conclude that God does indeed cause suffering.
He killed all the first born in Egypt. Ergo, he caused suffering. He flooded the world to wipe out humanity. Ergo, he caused suffering. He destroyed Soddom and Gommorah. Ergo, he caused suffering.
It is a really easy question to answer.
Haha. Our class is like the only class what actually has to work in PSHE.
We got a rather sexy teacher shes only like 25... French though lol.
What a demonstration lol, we don't get any of that sort of stuff. No sex ed at all.... well a hour or two worth in RE.... watching these stupid videos
if we could respawn like in MW2, then there would be no suffering
We can't actually say for sure we don't "respawn"
God can give and God can take away... which is something we as humans can't do... which changes the entire morality of it.
But humans can have babys and humans can killWe can't actually say for sure we don't "respawn"
God can give and God can take away... which is something we as humans can't do... which changes the entire morality of it.
?He didn't do it for the lulz, however. Look at the places and the people he wiped out. They were described in the Bible as being "all bad, all the time" (paraphrasing). The world before the flood was apparently almost in chaos.
Similarly, Soddom and Gommorah were apparently lost causes. I'd have to look it up to find out exactly what they were doing there, but again the Bible is pretty damning. Bear in mind there are relatively few examples of places being totally wiped out. It suggest these places had fallen into a state of extreme depravity.
Also in Egypt's case the killing of the first born was the last plague, was it not. They had plenty of demonstrations of God's power before that, but each time they basically chose to ignore the warnings and act in opposition to him.
It's interesting to note that even the death of all their firstborn didn't make them see sense, they still carried on in defiance and this lead to further loss of life on their part (when a lot of their military was drowned).
The recurring theme in all cases is that God sends a clear warning first... and that these warnings are seldom heeded.
Why does it have to be the case? Also references on those attempts would be awesome
. As my understanding of hypotheses goes, one presents a theory, which is either substantiated to some pre-determined degree of certainty or implied to be false given that same degree of certainty. Now obviously I'm not going to go and say,
Hypothesis: "There exists god".
No, one has to be more specific. For example, as seems to be the pathological example, the christian trinity.
One possible flaw is that the hypothesis is so inconsistent. The bible, again for example, being a book of different perspectives of what were supposedly the 'same events' is itself contradictory. How can we form a logical hypothesis based on that?
Really? the storey of Job looked to be for the lulz.
We can't actually say for sure we don't "respawn"
God can give and God can take away... which is something we as humans can't do... which changes the entire morality of it.
hope we can respawn as our selfs and remember, that would truely be awesome
But humans can have babys and humans can kill
hmm yeh, freewill could be in play there, but then we could argue God gave us freewill
really cba for RS atm Sounds like you don't know the account of Job. It's a tad more interesting than "one day God caused Job a great deal of pain, because that seemed fun".
What is meant by the word suffering is quite important to focus on. Lets assume that god is all powerful + all knowing etc. If god knows by nuking 10000 people now he save 10 trillion in 50000 years then yes he has caused suffering but for a greater saving later. But if he has the all knowing capacity to be able to work out this then he can not have given "man" free-will. How can there be free-will if god knows the outcome and everything is preordained. Therefore if the holy books are correct and free-will was given the we can not attribute the balancing of evils excuse to suffering in cases where man has directly contributed. However, we can the place some causes of suffering onto man. Of course there is the bigger point that suffering my well be just a human concept that god does not really give a flying **** about.
I personally would be going along these lines in answering the question - as including components of the question does god exist - at this level I think you can place a heavy caveat at the start and say straight away that you are presuming a god does exist as otherwise your answer would be kind of short but also maybe peoples belief in god even if he does not exist can cause suffering etc the god concept itself as the causation balancing the word vs the individual. Don't get hung up in peoples bias on here just answer the question - the examiners don't give a **** how clever you are you just get marks for ticking off the boxes on what the mark-sheet thinks the answer is. You could get very easily sidetracked on this but hey if you have done your homework and read around the subject at hand you shouldn't need our advice too much on this one.
I personally would be going along these lines in answering the question - as including components of the question does god exist - at this level I think you can place a heavy caveat at the start and say straight away that you are presuming a god does exist as otherwise your answer would be kind of short but also maybe peoples belief in god even if he does not exist can cause suffering etc the god concept itself as the causation balancing the word vs the individual. Don't get hung up in peoples bias on here just answer the question - the examiners don't give a **** how clever you are you just get marks for ticking off the boxes on what the mark-sheet thinks the answer is. You could get very easily sidetracked on this but hey if you have done your homework and read around the subject at hand you shouldn't need our advice too much on this one.
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