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I know that one question atheists constantly ask...and conclude...that IF there's a God, then He would alleviate all of the pain and suffering in life.
Since He hasn't, you conclude that there is no God.
O.k. So be it.
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....
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And yet, there's STILL pain and suffering in this world.
If *WE* are so "great", so wonderful, so terrific...so stupendous...so awesome...and don't feel any need or want from any "God", and that what we do, is BEYOND what any kind of God could do...
...then WHY is there still pain and suffering?
If there's no God, then shouldn't *WE* have solved this after several THOUSAND years?
Shouldn't we have solved the problem of rape...theft...greed...hunger...lying...lust...cov eting?
Hey! We're "smart"! We should already know what's right and wrong and practice what's right...
...right?
Back up the horse there sister!
What you state above in bold is not so! Not by a VERY LONG shot. The reason I am an atheist has nothing to do with why there is pain and suffering in this world. I don't believe all the pain and suffering is because there is no god, and I certainly don't blame all the pain and suffering on a god.
WHY is there still pain and suffering? Should "we" have solved this after several THOUSAND years?
Good questions, and I would like to think we humans should have come to know better by now, but much of the pain and suffering is not really our doing (due to disease, natural catastrophes, the natural death or loss of loved ones, etc.). The pain and suffering we self-inflict, "man's inhumanity to man" simply demonstrates how flawed we are as a species. That's all. Having nothing to do with a god.
Not sure we are "smart," but many of us are not ignorant. Still those of us who are ignorant tend to retard our progress toward doing better and/or as well as we should. There is a reason I call it the "slow maturing of man." Slow, ever so slow, because we are more slow than smart if you get my meaning.
All that said, I think there has been some maturing over the THOUSANDs of years. Read human history, and how we have matured in a good many ways becomes quite evident. Still, we've a very long way to go, and whether we're capable of doing all that much better is also a very good question.
Good for you to be thinking about these things, but be careful about the premise you assume from the beginning, because if you don't get the premise correct, all the rest of your rationale falls apart.
Make up your mind, first you say imagination is part of imagination but now everyones reality is the same. So my imagiation is part of everyones reality, no way.
Reality is God is simply Mystics opinion of which you agree, does not mean it is or is a fact.
"TEN TRUTHS
ONE: There are essentially two realities for all human beings. One reality is as we perceive it to be, our personal reality. The second reality is all that truly exists in the universe, the same for all of us. Our universal truth."
Simple as that. Some of us can tell the difference better than others. Some of us can't.
Many non-theists have adopted "thoughts" in place of "prayers", as in "thinking about you in this terrible time" or "sending positive thoughts your way in this situation". I think "I'm rooting for you" is about as useless as prayer, but in my view, it's far more honest.
If someone posts on one of the fora here that they have, say, a fatal cancer diagnosis and it's someone I don't know IRL or live close to or never heard of before today, there's really nothing I can do except bear witness and show solidarity, and maybe offer advice if asked for it, so I'm not saying it's hypocritical to say "I'm thinking about you". It is just better qualitatively in my view that saying in effect, "I've asked god to handle this and if he doesn't, that's on him, not me". I feel strongly that Christians offering to pray don't have much skin in the game. In my own former sect, these things were said and done reflexively by the vast majority of people. We had a handful of "intercessors" or "prayer warriors" who would spend serious time beseeching god, on the order of hours per day, for anything you'd ask them to, which regardless of what I think of its efficacy, is at least an admirable impulse. But most people in my observation just used it as a "get out of empathy free" card, I'm afraid. A way of putting something uncomfortable behind you and getting on with your day.
It is also interesting that the Bible often mentions fasting in the same breath as praying when it comes to serious matters, and almost no one does that anymore.
Call it whatever we might, I think empathy and sympathy are important when it comes to our interactions with others, and to whatever extent it's sincere depends on the person. Whether they are religious or not. Obviously, prayer or hopes or thoughts or wishes means different things to different people and since hoping for better rather than worse for others is generally considered a good thing, what others think about any of the above is no matter to me from a practical standpoint.
"Whatever works" as some like to say. Including me.
Only matters to me if the question is about what is really going on when we pray or hope. What makes us feel better also matters, but regardless how we feel about such things, is there any supernatural being receiving any of those prayers or hopes let alone acting upon them? I know of no good reason to think so...
What you state above in bold is not so! Not by a VERY LONG shot. The reason I am an atheist has nothing to do with why there is pain and suffering in this world. I don't believe all the pain and suffering is because there is no god, and I certainly don't blame all the pain and suffering on a god.
WHY is there still pain and suffering? Should "we" have solved this after several THOUSAND years?
Good questions, and I would like to think we humans should have come to know better by now, but much of the pain and suffering is not really our doing (due to disease, natural catastrophes, the natural death or loss of loved ones, etc.). The pain and suffering we self-inflict, "man's inhumanity to man" simply demonstrates how flawed we are as a species. That's all. Having nothing to do with a god.
Not sure we are "smart," but many of us are not ignorant. Still those of us who are ignorant tend to retard our progress toward doing better and/or as well as we should. There is a reason I call it the "slow maturing of man." Slow, ever so slow, because we are more slow than smart if you get my meaning.
All that said, I think there has been some maturing over the THOUSANDs of years. Read human history, and how we have matured in a good many ways becomes quite evident. Still, we've a very long way to go, and whether we're capable of doing all that much better is also a very good question.
Good for you to be thinking about these things, but be careful about the premise you assume from the beginning, because if you don't get the premise correct, all the rest of your rationale falls apart.
Mink knows exactly how atheists think because she has never been an atheist. Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah poverty and its knock on effects like food insecurity exist not because the poor don't try hard enough, but because the rich are insatiable. We have the ability, but not the will, to end poverty and want -- we have for some time. We just don't want to, as a society. Prayer is one of the many ways we avoid facing that reality. We pretend it's an unsolvable problem that we have to give to god, who inscrutably does not do anything about it, so we just shrug. The Bible even says, "the poor you will always have with you", just in the same way it assumes slavery rather than taking a stand against it. "Slaves, obey your masters. Masters, don't beat your slaves so much that they die within x days of the beating". Always leading from behind!
Some suffering is self inflicted, and/or more a matter of how one frames or their thinking or prioritized attention to. Think of all the people suffering today because Will Smith slapped Chris Rock last night, for example. The outrage, the umbrage, the sympathy, the drama, the gossip, the smug judgment. We will have to put up with this for days, if not weeks! It's like the Suffering Olympics!
I don't think for purposes of this conversation that kind of suffering really applies.
As example of unchosen suffering, my stepson did not ask to be born with autism or to have to work 10x as hard in a lot of areas of life to achieve the same outcomes as "normies" would, no matter how good his attitude his. That's suffering. On the other hand, if nothing in the fridge tonight is to his liking for supper, that's NOT suffering -- or at best, it's chosen suffering.
How could a person get things soooooooo....................wrong?
There is evil in the world because the higher power--or God if you prefer--created our world and then shirked its duty to at least demonstrate a modicum of interest toward it. Man, being the selfish animal he is doesn't possess a modicum of ability to straighten up its ills. For example, is man responsible for the animal that has killed more people than all the others combined? Man has dried desperately without success to eradicate this animal to make the world a better place and has failed miserably. I speak of the lowly mosquito which kills an estimated million people a year and has killed countless billions since it evolved. We could have used a little help from God, I hope that is obvious, and yet God has chosen to blithely ignore our plight. But I have no doubt you'll find a way to whitewash God of this evil as you have all the others he bears responsibility for inflicting on us.
Funny...
How someone can ask how another person can get something so wrong, and then go on and be no less wrong!
I guess we've all got our "theories," but needless to say, we can't all be right. Sure seems to me that at a very minimum, we can do better at putting aside all these notions that are the least credible given the facts, reason and logic we SHOULD be better able to apply.
I said poverty is NOT caused by the poor's lack of effort. It IS caused by greed. There is more than enough wealth in the world for every civilized country to guarantee a basic standard of living for all. Failure to do so is a lack of will, nothing more. I do not mean to say it wouldn't require effort and some courage. I just mean to say that enough of the privileged don't want it that they make sure it doesn't happen. Because it would require people as rich as Croesus to be less rich (though certainly not in want).
We CAN of course do better than this; we simply WON'T. We could care; by and large we mostly don't. If we could simply own that and reflect on why that is, maybe we could make some progress. But I doubt very much that it will happen.
No, Mink, I certainly don't say that god should end all suffering, but I think -- if he is a loving god -- that he ought to end suffering that the individual can't control. When an individual causes his own suffering...that's for him to solve. Of course, if I loved someone, I'd help them. God doesn't. He's too busy finding car keys.
What mass suffering are we talking about. I already gave you the example of children starving to death. But we can in Ukraine.
Fercyrin out LOUD, I'll say it again. If the individual is not responsible for his own suffering, god ought to step in...if he's a loving god...as you folks mostly claim.
I have no interest in going back to the OT, which was written by Stephen King...oops, I mean the hand of god. The NT is better, and it contains some good advice in some things.
I had faith for many years, till I realized it was all a charade that the gullible suck up.
Why was it reasonable for god to take several hundred years to help 'his people', the Israelites? Didn't care? Didn't have the power claimed? To lazy? Busy finding car keys. While thousands suffered for their entire lives. Sorry, I just don't respect that.
Again, I have no desire to go back to the bible. There are better books.
Big IFs! That in my opinion draw attention from the facts or truth of these matters toward the make believe...
When we insist on blaming a god or speculating about what a god is doing that isn't there, we end up thinking all manner of crazy things that had us once offering human and animal sacrifices, devoting massive amounts of human labor to building temples as high as possible, and still today doing crazy things like sending planes into buildings.
Again and again I can hardly keep from blurting, "enough already!"
The title of this thread is correct when you think about it...
We may blame' Adam/Eve, or human beings in general, but ultimately it was indeed Gods fault, He is the ONE who created man the way he is, we have a sinful nature at heart, ( that is just how we were created).
Is the individual really to blame for acting like their true selves...the way they were created to be?
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