luvluv

Hobbs:

He could also have created a planet with nothing but trees, or nothing but dirt. Then there would have been no possibility of suffering at all.

To those who offer that the existence of suffering is evidence against God's goodness or existence, I ask you would you consider God to be good if he had not created anything at all? Do you see how using suffering as a criteria leads us to such an assumption? The ultimate solution to the problem of suffering would be for God not to have created at all.

This is getting into my objections about the "less evil" argument. At what degree of suffering does God become good? Perhaps even now, things are a little bit better than they could be (for instance, humans don't have an abundance of natural predators, like in the Time Machine for instance). If God has intervened at the outset to keep some logically possible pain from being experienced by us, how would we even know it? How do you know that this very planet you live on is not better than some other planet that is perfectly possible but from which we have been spared? I don't see how, once we admit that without a certain amount of suffering freedom would be impossible, we can accurately assign a degree of suffering beyond which God is immoral or non-existant, and before which God is good or logically possible. Someone could always say things could be better, no matter how good they were. And given a certain state of affairs, no one is ever really able to see how bad things could easily have been. If there had been no cancer or siamese twins in this world, we would still be complaining about AIDS and heart disease and cerebral palsy. The fact that there was no cancer or siamese twins would do nothing to cause us to believe in God's goodness because, not having experienced it, we would not know we were being spared from it. Similarly, we could presently be being spared from all manners of possible evil, but that doesn't count for anything in God's favor because we don't know anything about what we are being spared from.

So, to turn this around for a second, can anyone define for me the precise amount of suffering that can occur and it not be logically inconsistent to posit God's existence? Even in a world of vegetarians, your random animal or group of animals could fall off a cliff, break it's leg, catch a disease, have a tree fall on it, get hit by a meteor, etc. And in such a world, where predation is absent and killing and suffering so foreign, would not even a single incident of suffering such as this cause us just as much of a dilema, because we were not used to it? Wouldn't death and suffering be more shocking and perplexing to us in such a world?

If you let suffering be the defining criteria of creation, it begins to eat away at all other possible criteria because it functionally does away with so much of what is possible.

There are other reasons for pain in humans, but I was under the impression that this thread was about the pain of animals. Are we discussing both?

I don't know that there is necessarily any reason to assume that animals, or some animals at least, do not have an afterlife. I believe the reason why humans do not have long life-spans and little death is so that there can be as many people brought into the world as possible. The number of souls that have a chance at heaven is balanced off with the quality of their life here. (No one lives forever or without pain, but there are more people who have a chance at living due to the demise of their ancestors). The same argument could perhaps be attributed to animals. It is possible, as my main man C.S. Lewis has surmised, that life is important only because it offers us the possibility, through death, of emerging into a better kind of life.

So I don't know that it would have been better to have few animals who live a long time versus a variety of animals who prey on each other and who balance off each other's numbers.

I also would argue that real moral freedom cannot exist in Romper Room or on Sesame St. I think our decisions have dignity because we make our moral choices in the teeth of danger and opposition, often to our own detriment. The Christian faith believes that adversity, in all it's forms, even in the form of unanswered questions, builds character and consistency. A "padded room" universe, where God designed the floors to be soft so no one would stub their toe, would not be one in which we could develop the moral character to inherit the kind of life to which we are destined. You do not learn real character via free will in a world in which there is no pain.

Folks, we had a thread going a few months ago called "Has anyone read C.S. Lewis's The Problem of Pain?". It answers a lot of the questions being raised here. I've tried finding this in the archives several times and have been unable to do it. Could I trouble a moderator to provide a link to it on this thread? It would help me to be able to cut and paste some answers.

luvluv

Because such a world would not be free. What is the mechanism by which God could thwart someone not raping or killing a child, without his direct intervention negating their freedom?

If there is no freedom to do certain evil things, our decision to do certain good things means less. If I were unable to be violent, my decision to be nonviolent in the face of violence would be impossible, as well as meaningless. To destroy the possibility of evil would also mean a directly proportionate negation of the ability to do any meaningful good. Nonviolence in face of the threat of violence is a greater good and develops a greater character in the actor than if he had lived in a world in which violence is simply impossible.

Again, I would argue for God's purposes of real moral responsibility and the development of real moral character, a world with the possibility of suffering is the best possible world. A world without suffering, or in which the laws of physics broke down whenever I wanted to do an evil act, would not be a world in which I would have moral dignity or free choice.

Further, as I argued in the other C.S. Lewis Problem of Pain thread, if God were to stop evil He would stop everything HE considered evil, not everything we would want him to stop. It might be that, in addition to preventing you from raping children, he would stop you from masterbating or calling in sick. Why should he stop at violence? Your lying has as much potential to cause pain as your ability to do violence. Would you really like to live in a world in which God actively prevented everything HE thought to be evil, because I see no reason why God should just stop at the things you consider to be evil and not go on to other things that he considers to be evil (some of which you may be quite fond of).

[ August 21, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

Vorkosigan

WJ, please refrain from personal insults, especially when they are misspelled.

Vorkosigan

Hobbs

What do you think heaven is like? Is heaven better than here? Is there pain and suffering in heaven? Is there free will in heaven? Is there room for growth in heaven? Can we have dignity in heaven?

Family Man

Or to put it more bluntly, why are Christians so anxious to get to a heaven where, as commonly described, is a padded cell universe? Why the contradiction?

luvluv

I don't know everything about heaven and I am not inclined to speculate. Suffice it to say that heaven is a place for those who have already achieved a level of morality, so some of the objections wouldn't apply. A person could not gain the character to enter heaven if one did not go through life, just as one could not get the knowledge to attend a university without having gone through high school. I know this would seem to contradict the doctrine of salvation through grace alone, but I think that becoming saved is not necessarily synonymous with going to heaven. There are some Biblical passages that suggest that everyone will not have equal access to heaven, and that, apart from a commitment to God through Christ, a certain level of maturity must be reached before one will be allowed into heaven.

The short answer is that I don't know. The slightly longer answer is that this world is preparation for the next world, so it has constraints that the next world may not have.

luvluv

What I'm trying to say is that free will is the means by which one is able to make a free decision to commit to God, and is the means by which real moral character can be obtained.

Once real moral character is obtained, an environment that allows pain and suffering is no longer necessary (and in a world populated with beings of perfect character, a lot of suffering would not exist anyway). So, after one has achieved this moral character through the exercise of their free will, it is perfectly legitimate for them to discard those conditions. A person who has learned how to ride a bike no longer needs his training wheels.

But if this was the initial stage of human preparation it would be impossible for God to achieve His goal. I guess you could view heaven as the reward for attaining a certain level of closeness to or likeness of God. Our current existence is the means by which that process is achieved, or at least, begun. (I don't claim that moral perfection is achieved by anyone in this life, it may be further developed in the next).

Hobbs

So in other words, a young child who dies instantly and painlessly in a car accident, not having lived long enough or suffered enough to gain the character needed to enter heaven, goes ... to hell? Or does he get another chance at another life to live long enough here to try to gain the necessary character to enter heaven? Or does he go to purgatory to suffer some before he can get into heaven? Does he have proof of God's existence in purgatory? If so, then wouldn't that limit his free will?

No wonder you aren't inclined to speculate about heaven. It could be dangerous to your present beliefs.

HRG

And how does "God's purpose in creating life" justify suffering, or make a world with less suffering a worse world than the actually existing one ?

HRG.

phlebas

So, you don't believe in angels? God apparently populated heaven with angels who did not have to put time in on Earth first, and were denied the suffering we enjoy today.

Logically, that says one of two things:

1) God is capable of creating creatures with the proper "moral character" from scratch.

2) Angels do not have the proper moral character, so it's not a requirement to get a room in heaven.

It appears that free will doesn't exist in heaven, either.

Sounds like the awesome-ness of the place has been overstated. I hope for your sake it at least has a nice view.