NonContradiction

As you know, I am sure, human beings know how they feel through introspection. What may seem painful to one person might not seem painful to somebody else. I have witnessed some people waiting in line in a department store become verbally abusive to the person behind the counter, while other people, waiting in the same line, showed empathy towards the same person.

People react to situations in different ways. Let's suppose that there is a traffic jam, which reduces the speed of traffic to a snails pace. Now, let's say that there is an executive of a major corporation stuck in this traffic jam, on his way to the most important business meeting of his life. Or let's suppose that somebody is on his way to catch a plane. Anyway, you get the picture. Now, let's suppose that there is a retired person, not going anywhere important, that is also stuck in this traffic jam. It certainly would not suprise anyone if they found out that this retired person wasn't annoyed by the traffic jam, whereas the person who was trying to catch a flight, or the executive, rushing to the meeting of his life, were annoyed.

In a perfect world nothing would annoy you at all, nor would anyone else around you find anything annoying. There simply would be no reason for patience in a perfect world that contained no hardship, difficulty, inconvenience, pain or suffering.

Many people have made the assertion that, since God is omnipotent, He could teach us what pain and suffering are without creating pain and suffering. I don't see how we can have knowledge of something that doesn't exist, yet that is what people are asserting. Does that indicate some form of impotence in God's being? I don't think so. If anything, it indicates our own impotence as human beings. We are simply incapable of having knowledge of something that doesn't exist, and I have no reason to believe that human beings will ever have that ability.

rainbow walking

rw: It's simply that he knows better and thus won't allow himself to.


wiploc: Why don't you just say that he doesn't want to. Admit it. It will feel good.

rw: Chuckle...how does "won't allow himself to" become equated with "doesn't want to"?

For example. You and I are best friends and I care a great deal for you. Only you've become addicted to alchohol.

Now you're standing in my face, trembling from your addiction, broke with no one else to turn to, begging me to buy you a drink.

I've got the money to do this.

My choice is to either enable your drinking and relieve your immediate discomfort by buying you a drink or forcing you into a possible situation where you seek help for your addiction.

Seeking help for your addiction must be your choice.

It isn't the case that I don't want to help you...I do because you're my best friend.

It is the case that I won't allow myself to help you in the way you want me to help you, so I do nothing, and you continue to suffer from your addiction.

Now if I am an omnipotent being I have the power to deliver you from the addiction or from the momentary discomfort of the addiction.

But it must be your choice to want to be delivered from the addiction.

Since you're begging for money for a drink, obviously you do not yet want to break the addiction...but if I deliver you from the immediate discomfort of the addiction, you are still addicted and will drink again as soon as you get the money to buy a drink.

Again, it isn't the case that I don't want to help you, but that I want you to help yourself.

So I withhold my help from your immediate situation and probably lose you as a friend but maybe save your life in the long run.

Lobstrosity

If you're the omnipotent being who created the world and mankind, why did you make addictions in the first place? If you want people to have free will, you sure have a funny way of showing it considering the fact that addictions specifically act to inhibit your ability to make free choices. It's like you set humans up for failure by creating them with weaknesses that they would then specifically have to ask you to help them overcome. That is evil, and that's a problem for a diety who claims to be benevolent.

I think this is a pretty poor example. The better example would be that you're the guy who knowingly got your friend addicted to drugs by giving him heroin. Had you been a "good" friend, your pal wouldn't be addicted in the first place and you wouldn't have to deal with the moral choice to either cut him off or continue giving him the drugs.

Dr. Retard

But this presumes that the value of patience is so high that it trumps the disvalue of the attendant pain and suffering. That presumption can be cheerfully denied.

wizwoz

I contend that there would be reason. In this perfect world in which I am looking forward to an event, I have to apply my Patience whilst waiting to stem my excitement. At the same time I am enjoying the delayed anticipation as I get closer to its coming about. There is no hardship, difficulty, inconvenience, pain or suffering, only pleasure and enjoyment in both circumstances. There we are, a good reason for Patience in a world without pain or suffering. If someone else were to react differently and find that same experience painful and caused them to suffer, then that's as bad as the pain and suffering gets in these conditions. But this doesn't require them to suffer to know of Patience. I didn't. In my example I have knowledge of something (Patience) without any kind of (gratuitous or otherwise) suffering and pain.
All I think your approach is attempting to do is make up a God of the sky who is supposed to have made pain and suffering in order to "teach" what pain and suffering is. Then for some reason I am unable to fathom (my deficiency) you add an unconnected ingredient of Patience in order to suggest that it (patience) couldn't exist without pain and suffering. So God's reason for patience is so that you can know what the pain and suffering he created is? This doesn't sound to me what a omnipotent God may arrange, its sounds more like a man made contradiction, NonContradiction.

NonContradiction

It makes as much sense to have patience for the pleasurable experiences in life as it does to be grateful for the painful ones. However, I am not going to convince you otherwise.

wizwoz

I thank you for your kind response.
I'm sure it does, but surely your main premise was that patience exists ONLY because of the painful ones. As it appears patience can now apply also to pleasurable experience, then I suggest it need only do that to obtain and therfore, evil pain and suffering is needless under your example.
Thanks.

NonContradiction

If you go back through the discussion, you will find that the problem was to find something that God wanted to do more than prevent pain and suffering, and that something could not be obtained, except by precluding the prevention of pain and suffering. If God prevents pain and suffering, then he precludes the possibility of people obtaining the virtue of patience, since people must endure some hardship, difficulty, or inconvenience to obtain patience.

If you want to change the definition of words, then yes, you could have patience without enduring any hardship, but that isn't how the word is defined.

Patience, long-suffering, resignation, forbearance:
These nouns denote the capacity to endure hardship, difficulty, or inconvenience without complaint.

In your example of someone waiting with anticipatory excitement for a future event, is the person enduring hardship, difficulty, or inconvenience without complaining? If not, then it can't be called patience. Call it anticipatory excitement, but don't call it patience because no one is enduring hardship without complaining in your example.

Dr Rick

Too bad that your argument precludes an omnipotent god; an all powerful one wouldn't need to use hardship, difficulty, or inconvenience to endow us with patience.

NonContradiction

The problem you raise is a common objection by many people, which revolves around the definition of omnipotence. Omnipotence means to have power over all created things. If it's something created, then God has knowledge of it and power over it. If it's something not created, God has knowledge of it, but what does it mean to say that God has power over it? For example, certainly God has knowledge of Himself, but what does it mean to say that He has power over Himself?

Having defined what I mean by Omnipotence, I come to the problem that you pose. The assumption that many people make is that if God is Omnipotent, then He should be able to simply bestow upon us immediate knowledge. Now, knowledge can be immediate, as is the case with God, or it can mediated by the five senses, as is the case with human beings. God doesn't need eyes to see with, nor does He need ears to hear with, since He has immediate knowledge. It's our own limitations, and not the limitations of God, that prevent us from knowing what pain and suffering is without experiencing it.

Now, perhaps it could be argued that God could have created us without the limitations of sense experience, without the limitations of time and space. To do so, I believe, would require us to believe that God could create us as Gods, which would be a logical impossibility. In short, if God wants us to know what pain is, then we must experience it. This limitation isn't a limitation of God, but rather of ourselves.