Greetings...
Actually, the paradigm, that you are referring to, is not, how I understand theism, or theistic ideas. I'm not sure what you were taught, but it sounds like something i would avoid as well.
The Book of Job is the most up front about it, if misguided--to be kind. And the, if you have faith enough, you'll get what you ask for, is always out there. And these are more concrete declarations. The implication and innuendo is there in the texts over and over. And it's there with every tragedy, Why? They aren't asking their neighbors and family why they did it, but why it was allowed to happen. It's understood.
And yet, despite the fact that people have been around for tens of thousands of years, deism is a few centuries old and theism not much older.
And a very small portion of the whole. Yes, what you say is true, but only because it's easier to feel than to reason, and the various religions have been exploiting that for tens of thousands of years.
To the extent this is true, it is true of everybody, and thus irrelevant.
It's true of deists, and the non-religious, if you can call deists religious after a fashion.
Ditto for "pro" arguments/positions/worldviews.
???
Or some alternative, such as that which humans have embraced for most of our existence, given that God (capital G) is younger even than Judaism. You portray a dichotomy that is not epistemically, historically, or philosophically justified.
But deism is the belief in a non-interactive God, and non-interactive for a reason--free will.
God, if It exists, could well have created the universe (as a theater for our free will) but been non-evident since, precisely to maintain that free will. None of the revealed religions have been able to integrate free will into their theology, e.g. Job.
The founders of deism did. So too did the founder of agnosticism. Asking "why?" is not something tied to conceptions of god or even beliefs in god.
Agnosticism isn't a philosophy, it's a statement of the degree of one certainty, or non-certainty. Note my agnostic-deist label.
The issue I have with god(s) is that if they are real they don't care enough to prove it.
And that is exactly what the OP is about. You revert automatically to the beliefs in an interactive God you were brought up with. The whole point I'm making is that a laissez-faire God designed things so It would not be in evidence, at all, ever, in the maintenance of our free will.
God is irrational to the faculty of reason.
It is only through the irrational faculty of intuition that we can know the truth.
Reason belongs to the material world, without it we would not be able to function here.
Intuition and imagination are for the purpose of understanding Spirit.
Intuition and imagination are vital to understanding, and creating, subjective Truth. If God is irrational to the faculty of reason, then how do we know It without being irrational ourselves--which is nothing more than ignoring reason in favor of feelings. Blind faith is nothing but feelings without reasoned oversight. Don't get me wrong though, faith is vital, but guided by reason. Faith, emotions, are our engines, our motivation, but without reason, we go off course onto the rocks. And without emotions, we are dead in the water.
I believe the true God has clearly answered the question "Why?" in the Bible. I think many people simply don't like the answer. And it doesn't help that many religious leaders who claim to represent God cannot or will not explain why God permits suffering.
What explanation is that, and why didn't you give it?
How so? Questions of why God permits suffering are about God's *capabilities*. Even if you think that God doesn't choose to intervene, he still either can't or can but doesn't, and both possibilities create problems.
What problems?
If you answer the question "why was God apathetic to suffering in *this* instance?" with "well, God's just always apathetic," you haven't actually answered the question.
I never said and don't claim that God is apathetic, just the opposite. God cares, but must not intervene, for our free will.
The question of "why" is really about God's will. There are plenty of deists who still believe that everything happens according to God's will; they just believe that their God is capable enough that he doesn't have to tweak and adjust his creation to keep it on track.
Deists don't believe that, it's against the core deist tenet that God doesn't interfere.
When people understand what free will really is, they will suddenly stop believing in an Omniscient God that can control everything.
Not in an omniscient God, but in an interventionist God. A God that could create the universe would be, for all practical purposes, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent etc.--except where God chooses to limit It's power by, for instance, giving us free will.
They will realize that life is not a gift, since it is the result of freedom humans have. Freedom implies choice, and choice implies the terrible burden of responsibility. Our actions are indelible, because they will have consequences, and God has nothing to do with them.
I don't see why we should love a God that gave us free will. I am not saying we should hate Him...but at least we should stop thinking of God, both in the good moments and in the bad ones.
As I said, free will is a gift, and without it we would not have full self-awareness. And without that, you wouldn't have the will to be able to blow your brains out if you hated your life so much. Free will is a *****, nobody's saying different, but without it, we're nothing.
God is real through the people. The problem is not with god but ourselves.
