God created a world in which there is the potential for suffering, so only in that sense is God responsible for suffering...
However, God also created a world in which there is the potential for joy, so in that sense is God responsible for joy.
Allowing suffering is not the same as causing suffering. God allows people to have sex and do other things they enjoy, is God causing joy? Why do some people only complain about what they don't like in this world and never give God any credit for what they do like? That is illogical.
I don't get why you would find that illogical unless suffering was a requirement. Also, suffering comes in different shapes and forms, we could call them direct suffering and indirect suffering.
Where direct suffering would be someone accidentally burning themselves on a hot stove. Whereas indirect suffering could be someone getting hit by lightning.
We as humans try to reduce both types of suffering, obviously being the most successful in regards to the direct one, but working hard on the other as well.
From an overall perspective that seems to be the most responsible way of dealing with suffering. Yet God does not seem to agree with that.
I don't see how it is relevant whether one should or shouldn't give God credit for any of this, as we have no say in how he created it and when the assumption is that God could have made it work any way he wanted it to.
Using the example of the child in a room filled with nails, it kind of seems to follow the logic that it should be grateful for all the times it didn't step on a nail, rather than simply complaining about whenever they do. Taking away the focus from the actual question of why the mother threw the nails in there, to begin with.
In this case, I guess the answer would be, so the child can experience happiness whenever it doesn't step on them. But that logic only works, if the assumption is that the child couldn't experience happiness without the nails being there.
But God does not deliberately cause suffering to teach us lessons, like a mother throwing nails in a child's room to teach the child a lesson.
You are anthropomiorphizing God. God is not a being who does things to people. God created a material world so good things and bad things things happen to people in that world and people thereby learn lessons.
But God must interact with the world one way or another, otherwise, what is the point of him?
If God does not do that, there is no argument to be made for the promise of heaven either, or any reason for why any religious person should ever do anything their religious teachings tell them, because it wouldn't make any difference as there is no interaction between God and us.
And I know this is not what you believe as a Bahai, because you believe the messengers have interacted with him. But it still doesn't change the fact that God's goal is to try to teach us a lesson and that this for some reason requires that suffering or the nails exist. There is no one else that decided that this was needed, other than God.
I cannot argue with you on that one. Animal suffering serves no purpose so God is on the hook for that. I wish I still had the video of an atheist arguing with a Christian who was trying to defend God for animal suffering. It was rather pathetic.
Would have liked to have seen it, I agree, that there doesn't seem to be any good explanation for this.
If humans suffered for no reason I would agree with you, but I think there are reasons for human suffering even if they are not apparent to us.
We cannot say there is no reason just because we don't know the reason because we cannot see the outcome in the future. Only God knows the future.
And as an atheist, I would obviously call this making up excuses for God
But it would also imply that God couldn't do things differently, there needs to be suffering and God is not above that. The only way he can "achieve" his goal is by including it, but this also reduces the capabilities of God, meaning that he can not be said to be omnipotent, but rather that he is restricted.
I do not interpret those Bible verses literally, I believe they are figurative, so I do not believe there will ever be no suffering on Earth. I believe there will be a lot less suffering in the future when everyone believes in God and follows the teachings and laws of the Messenger of God, but there will always be physical suffering since this is physical world. There will be no more suffering in Heaven since it is a spiritual world.
The Bible is talking about a new Earth, one that comes after this, where there is no suffering and where the lion will play with the lamb etc. And that this is where the "good" Christians will live. It is not our Earth version 2, but a completely new one. But even if one throws that in the garbage, and goes with simply Heaven and a spiritual world, one would assume that God could simply have made our Universe spiritual instead or skipped it altogether, as there doesn't seem to be a connection between the physical or the spiritual that would require both to exist, unless God for whatever reason see a need or is required to teach us a lesson, before entering the spiritual realm. A lesson that couldn't simply be imprinted in us so we could skip the physical world altogether.
Suffering is a requirement for spiritual growth, so that is why God allows it.
So this would be the lesson, right? Suffering is required for spiritual growth. I do not see any logical connection between these, given the complete lack of definition of what spirituality even means. It also implies that spirituality can only be achieved through suffering, which is obviously going to raise a whole lot of questions. First of all, why would the amount of suffering be different between people?
How would one explain newborns that die during birth and that do not experience suffering, do they have any spiritual growth? or should we look at them as being the pinnacle of spiritual blessing, that they are so pure that they go to heaven straight away?
It would also imply that it is irrelevant whether one believes in God or not because an atheist like me will experience suffering just as any religious person will. But if that is what is required to gain spiritual growth then ones religious view is completely irrelevant.
One could also make the argument that if suffering is the sole requirement, then causing suffering might be a good thing as it helps others to come "closer" to God or to become more spiritual.
There seem to be a lot of problems or at least some explanations required here for it to make any sense.
