The “naturalist” Problem of Suffering

[Heyo]

In the same way the naturalist has to sacrifice evolution by natural selection and replace it with a mechanism that would select complex and useless mechanisms over simple and efficient ones

Nope.

Imagine a fish that already reacts and avoids dangerous situations// then imagine that his offspring has an extra layer of complexity and feels actual pain and suffering.......why would natural selection select this fish ?

Because that extra layer of complexity gives them an evolutionary advantage that is greater than the penalty of suffering. Humans have become one of the most evolutionary successful species despite the ability to suffer.

 

[Aupmanyav]

You take up space and use resources that can be more effectively used by your (better adapted) offspring. There is an optimal age span that is different for every niche and species.

You cannot just dismiss old people (like me). We have our usefulness. Who will stop you from committing blunders? Who will tell stories to your children, you hardly have time for them? Who will take care of your home when you are on vacation?

 

[Aupmanyav]

Imagine a fish that already reacts and avoids dangerous situations// then imagine that his offspring has an extra layer of complexity and feels actual pain and suffering .. why would natural selection select this fish ?

The fish has proved successful in its environment, the boar has proved successful in its environment. Cheetahs have not proved very successful and so there numbers are diminishing. Human also have, till now, proved successful in their environment. All species have to face their own environmental challenges.

In the same way the naturalist has to sacrifice evolution by natural selection and replace it with a mechanism that would select complex and useless mechanisms over simple and efficient ones

There is no simple mechanism. All mechanisms are very complex. Even the virus or the ameba. Remember that they have their RNA or DNA helices in their nucleus.

"The genomes of Mimiviruses and Pandoraviruses, which are some of the largest known viruses, range from 1 to 2.5 Mb (1 Mb = 1,000,000 base pairs of DNA)."
virus - Size and shape

Ameba Mayorella

Sars-Cov-2 virus, Chickenpox virus

DNA Double Helix

 

[leroy]

Suffering is a spandrel based on the requirement to have pain.

Pain is good because it allows us to avoid injury, either by alerting us to damage or to prevent us from doing something that could damage further. it is there to communicate that something is wrong.

So there very much is an evolutionary advantage to having pain.

Suffering is simply pain that is not shut off. And, since there is no evolutionary advantage to shutting off pain in every situation, suffering results.

Plants fungi microbes and invertebrates perhaps fish don't feel conscious pain and have no suffering(we are talking about 99.9999+% of life forms..).... these organisms react and avoid danger but don't really suffer from conscious pain......... so the evolutionary advantage of communicating that something is wrong is already there, .... actual conscious pain is a useless and complex addition that can't be explained with evolution by Natural selection..........why would natural selection select a fish that feels conscious pain vs an other that simply reacts and tries to avoid danger?....... both would run away and hide if a larger fish bites them none would have an advantage.

 

[Heyo]

You cannot just dismiss old people (like me). We have our usefulness. Who will stop you from committing blunders? Who will tell stories to your children, you hardly have time for them? Who will take care of your home when you are on vacation?

I haven't dismissed old people. In social species it is useful to have three or four generations living together. As I said, there's an optimum for every species and every environment. But there is no environment where endless life is evolutionary advantageous for the species.

 

[leroy]

Most organisms wouldn't have felt any pain? How do you know that? Ever stepped on your cat's tail?

Except for some vertebrates , which includes you and your cat , most organisms don't feel conscious pain.....

 

[rational experiences]

If we were life first without pain it would be a termed Inheritance.

Stating a conscious choice by the being changed itself and what's closest in nature to body change.

Proving that a higher type of human invented science to try to convert created creation into a time shift for just their own purpose.

And instead inherited the opposite of what was expected....release from life.

By a study.

 

[Audie]

The argument that all sensations are neurological based and generated within the brain upon receiving the signals and is just a mental phenomenon with substance.

Gotcha

 

[leroy]

Nope.


Because that extra layer of complexity gives them an evolutionary advantage that is greater than the penalty of suffering. Humans have become one of the most evolutionary successful species despite the ability to suffer.

And what advantage was that ?

 

[leroy]

You cannot just dismiss old people (like me). We have our usefulness. Who will stop you from committing blunders? Who will tell stories to your children, you hardly have time for them? Who will take care of your home when you are on vacation?

From the point of view of darwinism telling stories is not an advantage.... darwinism has no foresight, natural selection would only select stuff with an inmediatamente advantage.....

 

[Nimos]

So as evolution, evolution could have also made the process unpainful

I don't think that is true, because, pain in my understanding is not an isolated thing, but is part of our sensory system.

I can take a hammer and very lightly place it on my finger and I can feel it because the nerve system will react to it. I could however also slam it down at full force which again would make the nerve system react as well. One could argue that there is no difference between these two things, it is simply the amount of force applied to the hammer that causes us to categorize one response from the nerve system as pain and not the other.

But it does also teach us something, that there is a huge difference between whether something hits you at great force or if it's with very little force. Combining that knowledge with weight also playing a role, you will eventually learn that avoiding heavy things which come towards you at high speed is probably a good idea. If you didn't learn this or saw it as an issue, there would be no reason to step out of the way of an elephant running toward you.

Likewise, if you couldn't feel pain, you could potentially end up walking on broken glass, sharp rocks, etc. In fact, I think it would be near impossible to walk effectively if you did not feel pain.

The pain threshold is different from human to human and even from different parts of the body.

if fact it did in in 99.99% of the organisms, only a small minority (some vertebrates) feel pain and suffer.

Imagine a fish that already reacts and avoids dangerous situations// then imagine that his offspring has an extra layer of complexity and feels actual pain and suffering.......why would natural selection select this fish ?

Again, I think you are incorrect here. Some of them might not feel pain, and some might not feel it like we (mammals) do.

For instance:
It's likely different from what humans feel, but it is still a kind of pain.” At the anatomical level, fish have neurons known as nociceptors, which detect potential harm, such as high temperatures, intense pressure, and caustic chemicals. Fish produce the same opioids—the body's innate painkillers—that mammals do.

Introduction:
Nociceptors can be defined as sensory receptors that are activated by noxious stimuli that damage or threaten the body's integrity. Nociceptors belong to the slowly conducting afferent A delta and C fibres. They are classified according to their responses to mechanical, thermal, and chemical stimuli.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Is there any evolutionary advantage/benefit of aging? Doesn't longer life span mean you can have more children or better support them?

A biologist could tell you for sure. But the answer is almost certainly yes and would involve the deterioration of DNA as we age, if I remember correctly.

 

[Subduction Zone]

You cannot just dismiss old people (like me). We have our usefulness. Who will stop you from committing blunders? Who will tell stories to your children, you hardly have time for them? Who will take care of your home when you are on vacation?

No one is dismissing you. But as we age we do have less to contribute. That is not saying that one is worthless.

 

[Aupmanyav]

But there is no environment where endless life is evolutionary advantageous for the species.

For the religious, in heaven.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Yes but having conscious pain is not an advantage vs simply reacting and avoiding danger (like most organisms do) ....... an ancient fish will already run away if its bitten by a larger fish......what is the advantage of adding conscious pain to that mechanism?

If it is a conscious pain one can learn to avoid it in the future. Once burnt, twice shy.

 

[Aupmanyav]

From the point of view of darwinism telling stories is not an advantage.... darwinism has no foresight, natural selection would only select stuff with an inmediatamente advantage.....

Yeah, Grandpas have their immediate advantage. When both my son and daughter-in-law go for their jobs, we take care of the house, we bring our grandson from the place where the school bus leaves him and feed him. They cannot do without us.

 

[blü 2]

The “atheist” Problem of Suffering

The problem of suffering is perhaps the most sound and difficult argument against the existence of God, after all why would God allow for suffering? Theist have proposed many answers, but such answers usually have a high price to pay, and quite honestly I(as a theist) haven’t seen a “good solution” for this problem

However Atheists / naturalists have the same problem, they can’t explain suffering ether, so I guess suffering is simply a strange thing that nobody cant explain.

Why Atheists cant explain Suffering

Well suffering is a complex and useless mechanism so why would it evolve by natural selection? It is true that NS is not the only naturalistic option but none of the alternatives that I am aware of seems to solve the problem.

Reacting Vs Suffering ​

For the purpose of this argument, do not confuse “reacting” and “suffering”Almost all organism react to avoid harmful situations, for example sometimes plants produce a poisonous substance when someone is trying to pull down a tree, clams would hide underground, spiders would bite you, etc, this is a very useful mechanism because it helps organisms to survive and reproduce.

However there is a big difference between “reacting” (like most organisms do ) and real and actual suffering (where only complex organisms do) a plant doesn’t really suffer, it doesn’t really feel pain it simply reacts………….too suffer is a complex mental state that doesn’t offer any selective advantage.

So the argument is

1 Complex + Useless mechanism are not expected to evolve

2 suffering (as oppose to reacting) is a complex and useless mechanism

3 therefore suffering is not expected to evolve./ therefore atheist have the same problem than theists


Sure as a naturalist you can appeal to many excuses, perhaps there is “something” that we don’t know yet about, that would explain suffering, but theist can use the same excuse, “maybe” there is a good explanation for why we have suffering.

The problem of suffering is perhaps the most sound and difficult argument against the existence of God, after all why would God allow for suffering? Theist have proposed many answers, but such answers usually have a high price to pay, and quite honestly I(as a theist) haven’t seen a “good solution” for this problem

However Atheists / naturalists have the same problem, they can’t explain suffering ether, so I guess suffering is simply a strange thing that nobody cant explain.

Why Atheists cant explain Suffering

Well suffering is a complex and useless mechanism so why would it evolve by natural selection? It is true that NS is not the only naturalistic option but none of the alternatives that I am aware of seems to solve the problem.

Reacting Vs Suffering ​

For the purpose of this argument, do not confuse “reacting” and “suffering”Almost all organism react to avoid harmful situations, for example sometimes plants produce a poisonous substance when someone is trying to pull down a tree, clams would hide underground, spiders would bite you, etc, this is a very useful mechanism because it helps organisms to survive and reproduce.

However there is a big difference between “reacting” (like most organisms do ) and real and actual suffering (where only complex organisms do) a plant doesn’t really suffer, it doesn’t really feel pain it simply reacts………….too suffer is a complex mental state that doesn’t offer any selective advantage.

So the argument is

1 Complex + Useless mechanism are not expected to evolve

2 suffering (as oppose to reacting) is a complex and useless mechanism

3 therefore suffering is not expected to evolve./ therefore atheist have the same problem than theists


Sure as a naturalist you can appeal to many excuses, perhaps there is “something” that we don’t know yet about, that would explain suffering, but theist can use the same excuse, “maybe” there is a good explanation for why we have suffering.

I'd say suffering was an attitude to pain, physical or mental. Some people react positively, some negatively, and it's said that those who react positively suffer less, consistently with suffering being an attitude.

I'm reminded of the Larsen cartoon with the man in hell whistling cheerfully as he pushes his wheelbarrow through the flames, and one demon saying to the other, "You know, we're just not reaching that guy."

So why do some humans fall into a suffering frame of mind more quickly than other humans? I don't know. It may be that putting up with what you can't change is more important than whether you do it with a positive or negative outlook.

Or it may simply be that putting up with physical or mental pain exhausts one's resources after a while, so that sometimes it will get harder and harder to remain positive.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Except for some vertebrates , which includes you and your cat , most organisms don't feel conscious pain.....

"According to the U.S. National Research Council Committee on Recognition and Alleviation of Pain in Laboratory Animals, pain is experienced by many animal species, including mammals and possibly all vertebrates.(1) Overview of anatomy of the nervous system across animal kingdom indicates that, not only vertebrates, but also most of invertebrates have the capacity to feel pain.(2)"

1. National Research Council (US) Committee on Recognition and Alleviation of Pain in Laboratory Animals (2009). "Recognition and Alleviation of Pain in Laboratory Animals". National Center for Biotechnology Information. Archived from the original on 24 June 2017. Retrieved 14 February 2015.
2. Ermak, Gennady (2022). Plant-Based, Meat-Based and Between: Ways of Eating for Your Health and Our World. KDP. pp. 55–65. ISBN 979-8785908680.

 

[Heyo]

From the point of view of darwinism telling stories is not an advantage.... darwinism has no foresight, natural selection would only select stuff with an inmediatamente advantage.....

I think you have to read up on evolutionary biology and especially natural selection.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

From the point of view of darwinism telling stories is not an advantage.... darwinism has no foresight, natural selection would only select stuff with an inmediatamente advantage.....

How short-sighted of you. The stories told by elders can be of tremendous value in helping children reach sufficient maturity to have offspring themselves. That doesn't require "foresight."