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An "all-loving" God might not necessarily want to spare all creatures from suffering. A suffering world might be part of His plan. God is loving but He is also just, righteous, and holy. Did you ever stop to consider the possible use or purpose of suffering?
Did you ever read this thread?! I have addressed this countless times in this thread.
The bottom line is, if god is all-powerful, he could accomplish every worthy goal he had for our suffering, without us suffering. If he could not he is not all powerful. If he wanted us to learn through suffering, he could make a universe in which we can learn the exact same things without suffering. If not, he is not all powerful. If you believe in an all-powerful god, then you believe he created the concept of learning. He created the concept of suffering. He created us and gave us our ways to learn. So, he could have given us the ability to learn in any way he chose. But, he chose to make us so that we could only learn some things through suffering. That is sadistic.
Did you ever read this thread?! I have addressed this countless times in this thread.
The bottom line is, if god is all-powerful, he could accomplish every worthy goal he had for our suffering, without us suffering. If he could not he is not all powerful. If he wanted us to learn through suffering, he could make a universe in which we can learn the exact same things without suffering. If not, he is not all powerful. If you believe in an all-powerful god, then you believe he created the concept of learning. He created the concept of suffering. He created us and gave us our ways to learn. So, he could have given us the ability to learn in any way he chose. But, he chose to make us so that we could only learn some things through suffering. That is sadistic.
Freedom has consequences. Serious consequences. There's the rub, can't have freedom (from God) without suffering.
Freedom has consequences. Serious consequences. There's the rub, can't have freedom (from God) without suffering.
You seem to think the relationship between the concept freedom and the concept suffering is immutable.
If it is immutable as you claim, then god is not all powerful. Something else must have created the concepts of freedom and suffering that god can't change. They existed before god and god can only work with them in designing a universe.
If on the other hand, god is all-powerful, then nothing is beyond his power. He could uncouple the link between freedom and suffering and could create a universe that had freedom and no suffering. He would be responsible both for those concepts, which he could have not invented them and invented some other concepts that don't exist today, and be responsible for creating a link between suffering and freedom, when he did not have to. So, he choose to make it so that one cannot have freedom without suffering, when he could have done otherwise. That is sadistic.
There is no way to avoid this. If you believe there is a god, then either God is not all-powerful, or he is, which means he is a sadist for designing a universe with suffering when he did not have to because he could have created a universe in which all of his purposes were accomplished without suffering.
It's the classic Problem of Evil, which is not limited to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic system of faiths but to all religions that hold to the idea of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent deity. It concerned even the ancient Greek philoposhers long before Christianity appeared on the world state.
There's just no way around it-- an omnipotent deity who permits evil is not omnibenevolent (as you clearly understand, Hueffenhardt!).
An "all-loving" God might not necessarily want to spare all creatures from suffering. A suffering world might be part of His plan. God is loving but He is also just, righteous, and holy. Did you ever stop to consider the possible use or purpose of suffering?
It's stuff like this that makes my flesh crawl - that there are actually people around who defend all the suffering and misery. It's all acceptable if it's what their 'god' wants.
It seems to me that the only way to make an evil-free world would be to either not create anyone who will ever do evil (which is all of us), or to create us without the ability to choose evil (thus giving us no free will in any meaningful sense).
The problem with the former is pretty obvious - while it gets rid of the bad, it also gets rid of all of the good as well. Why would an all-good God want a world without any good in it? The planet Mars has no good or evil on it (since it has no life, presumably), so would an all-good God see it as a preferable world to Earth, which has a lot of good?
The problem with the latter is that without the ability to choose between good and evil, good becomes no choice at all. We can't choose to be good - we have to. We're like pre-programmed robots. Good isn't good unless it's chosen. So even with this option, God is getting rid of all of the good in the world.
Evil is a natural side-effect of free will, and I can't imagine any of us would prefer to live in this world without having any real free will, or without existence altogether. We might wish lack of free will (or lack of existence) on others, but there's no way we'd wish it upon ourselves.
It seems to me that the only way to make an evil-free world would be to either not create anyone who will ever do evil (which is all of us), or to create us without the ability to choose evil (thus giving us no free will in any meaningful sense).
The problem with the former is pretty obvious - while it gets rid of the bad, it also gets rid of all of the good as well. Why would an all-good God want a world without any good in it? The planet Mars has no good or evil on it (since it has no life, presumably), so would an all-good God see it as a preferable world to Earth, which has a lot of good?
The problem with the latter is that without the ability to choose between good and evil, good becomes no choice at all. We can't choose to be good - we have to. We're like pre-programmed robots. Good isn't good unless it's chosen. So even with this option, God is getting rid of all of the good in the world.
Evil is a natural side-effect of free will, and I can't imagine any of us would prefer to live in this world without having any real free will, or without existence altogether. We might wish lack of free will (or lack of existence) on others, but there's no way we'd wish it upon ourselves.
This thread has nothing to do with evil (aka poor choices). We are talking about pain and suffering. And if you think poor choices and suffering are immutably linked, take a look at what I said in post #243 to Theophane when he implied that freedom and suffering are immutably linked. Who linked them if it was not God? And if God is all-powerful, he could design the universe with one and not the other. He created the concepts; he could have created other concepts and define them anyway he wanted to. If you can't see how we could have one without the other, it is because you were born into this universe, as opposed to the other ones an all-powerful god could have created.
Last edited by Hueffenhardt; 11-06-2011 at 11:21 AM..
This thread has nothing to do with evil (aka poor choices). We are talking about pain and suffering. And if you think poor choices and suffering are immutably linked, take a look at what I said in post #243 to Theophane when he implied that freedom and suffering are immutably linked. Who linked them if it was not God? And if God is all-powerful, he could design the universe with one and not the other. He created the concepts; he could have created other concepts and define them anyway he wanted to. If you can't see how we could have one without the other, it is because you were born into this universe, as opposed to the other one's an all-powerful god could have created.
Precisely.
An omnipotent being could create a universe where suffering was as impossible as surpassing the speed of light is in our universe. The lightspeed barrier doesn't mean there can be no freedom, and a universe free of suffering by design could be chock full of possible exercises of liberty, also by design.
This thread has nothing to do with evil (aka poor choices).
I was responding to what Gibbous Moon said about evil a few posts ago. Yes, I probably should have quoted him to clarify.
Quote:
We are talking about pain and suffering. And if you think poor choices and suffering are immutably linked, take a look at what I said in post #243 to Theophane when he implied that freedom and suffering are immutably linked. Who linked them if it was not God?
And why wouldn't He link them? If God wants us to choose between good and evil, then we need to understand the consequences of both, and having both lead to the same consequences isn't going to help us differentiate between them. I believe that shooting someone in the arm is an evil act, and I believe this largely because I know it will cause this person to suffer. If shooting someone in the arm wouldn't cause them to suffer, then it would be difficult for me to determine that doing so is evil.
Quote:
And if God is all-powerful, he could design the universe with one and not the other. He created the concepts; he could have created other concepts and define them anyway he wanted to. If you can't see how we could have one without the other, it is because you were born into this universe, as opposed to the other ones an all-powerful god could have created.
I understand how we could. I just don't understand why we should. Linking evil to suffering seems pretty logical. Should evil be linked to nothing at all, having no consequences? Or what should it be linked to instead?
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God cannot be both all-powerful and all-loving
