Where is God when awful things happen?

[Jayhawker Soule]

Human value judgement on judging good and evil, fortune and misfortune, are terribly inaccurate. Forgive me if I do not place blind faith in the existence of your made-up, imaginary, delusional gods.

Forgive me if I do not show much respect for you haughty disregard of human suffering.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

He's waiting off in the wings to make it all better, of course. Should be "soon" or "any minute".

 

[Deidre]

Natural disasters were not suppose to happen either. But it isn't something you can blame on another human....unless of course these "natural disasters" are not natural at all? Perhaps they are the work of God's adversary too?

Jesus demonstrated his power over nature, so as king over this earth, he will see to it that no "natural" disasters ever take place. Only Christians believe that I know.

I'm curious if you believe that Satan seeks to destroy everyone, even innocent people, or does he seek to only punish those who deserve it? Why would Satan reign over a place called 'hell' if he were to destroy those who were innocent? I've been reading the Bible again, and there are a lot of different ideas about Satan out there, I'm curious as to yours.

 

[Sanzbir]

You are both too caught up on the words. It is of no concern to me if the words 'suffering' and 'happiness' were not to exist. Let me use the first example provided here: warm and cold. In a world where there is only one temperature there would be no cold, and no warm, and yet this temperature would be still be experienced nonetheless.

@Guy Threepwood I am still waiting for the proof. That one is no proof.

No, the same thing is not experienced even if it is the same temperature experienced. One man walks in from a blizzard into a room-temperature room. Another man walks into the exact same room from a sauna. To the first man, the room feels hot. To the second man, the room feels cold.

Heat and the objective measure of heat is not the same of warm and cold. Warm and cold are experiences of a temperature, not a temperature itself, and we could not have an experience of one without the other to compare it to.

Our emotional responses to physical stimuli are the same. We call one thing "happy" and another thing "not happy" only because we have the inverse or lack of that state to compare it to.

 

[Kemosloby]

"A little bit of leaven leavens the whole lump". Since the everything got screwed up by sin entering the world, the only way to fix it is to wipe the whole thing clean. But God is patient first, wanting everyone to come to repentance. God allows the screwed up world to go on hoping that some will repent and be saved on the day of judgement.

 

[Sanzbir]

Forgive me if I do not show much respect for you haughty disregard of human suffering.

Suffering itself is caused by the belief in good and bad.

If you don't see the world in the imaginary terms of good and bad then from your prospective there is no fault in the world. The world becomes perfect. If you don't find fault in the world you can never suffer. If you find fault in the world you experience suffering.

You are the one defending the whole mentality that causes suffering in the first place. I am the one suggesting that maybe we as human beings abandon the mindset that causes us to suffer.

You cling to a belief that there is bad and evil in the world, this belief causes your suffering, I question and simply demand proof that there is bad in the world, and you accuse me of not caring about suffering?? Which of us wants to perpetuate suffering??

You want me to believe in good and bad. That belief causes suffering. You seem to be offended by me because I do not suffer. You, as silly as it is, insist that I must suffer or else I don't care about suffering. You insist my lack of suffering is somehow evil and "haughty disregard". In other words, it would appear that I would only be moral in your eyes if I suffer. And which of us is haughty in regards to suffering?? Because it seems like you want the few people who don't suffer to suffer to please your own sense of propriety.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

"A little bit of leaven leavens the whole lump". Since the everything got screwed up by sin entering the world, the only way to fix it is to wipe the whole thing clean. But God is patient first, wanting everyone to come to repentance. God allows the screwed up world to go on hoping that some will repent and be saved on the day of judgement.

He sure is taking his sweet time about it! Why not make everyone alive infertile so we don't have to wait much longer?

 

[Koldo]

No, the same thing is not experienced even if it is the same temperature experienced. One man walks in from a blizzard into a room-temperature room. Another man walks into the exact same room from a sauna. To the first man, the room feels hot. To the second man, the room feels cold.

Heat and the objective measure of heat is not the same of warm and cold. Warm and cold are experiences of a temperature, not a temperature itself, and we could not have an experience of one without the other to compare it to.

Our emotional responses to physical stimuli are the same. We call one thing "happy" and another thing "not happy" only because we have the inverse or lack of that state to compare it to.

If 'happiness' was the only thing that existed then we wouldn't call it 'happiness'. That's for granted. But that says more about the word 'happiness' than it does about 'happiness' itself.

Warm is a vague term that exists relative to cold. I agree. However, let's consider 45º C. That's quite hot to us. We would still experience 45º C if it was the only temperature that existed. This experience doesn't require other temperatures to exist. We might have no words to describe it in that case ( such as 'warm' ), nor nothing to compare it, but we would still experience it. The same applies to 'happiness'.

 

[ChristineM]

Is the fact that awful things happen to people who don't deserve them good grounds for denying that god exists?

Its a good start

 

[Kemosloby]

He sure is taking his sweet time about it! Why not make everyone alive infertile so we don't have to wait much longer?

He has a quota to fill..

 

[Koldo]

Suffering itself is caused by the belief in good and bad.

If you don't see the world in the imaginary terms of good and bad then from your prospective there is no fault in the world. The world becomes perfect. If you don't find fault in the world you can never suffer. If you find fault in the world you experience suffering.

You are the one defending the whole mentality that causes suffering in the first place. I am the one suggesting that maybe we as human beings abandon the mindset that causes us to suffer.

You cling to a belief that there is bad and evil in the world, this belief causes your suffering, I question and simply demand proof that there is bad in the world, and you accuse me of not caring about suffering?? Which of us wants to perpetuate suffering??

You want me to believe in good and bad. That belief causes suffering. You seem to be offended by me because I do not suffer. You, as silly as it is, insist that I must suffer or else I don't care about suffering. You insist my lack of suffering is somehow evil and "haughty disregard". In other words, it would appear that I would only be moral in your eyes if I suffer. And which of us is haughty in regards to suffering?? Because it seems like you want the few people who don't suffer to suffer to please your own sense of propriety.

I must disagree. Unwanted pain exists regardless of whether people believe in good and bad.

 

[Sanzbir]

This experience doesn't require other temperatures to exist.

Yes it does. The measure implies a degree of something. Implying variance of that thing.

If everything was the same temperature, (and for the sake of argument let's imagine that the world would somehow function in that state) then there would be no conception of that feeling of temperature. We'd have nothing to compare it to in order to express what it is. There'd be no experiences we could use to compare it to. No word for temperature, heat, hot, or cold would exist. There'd be nothing of the sort. We would not be able to comprehend what temperature even was.

It's like... "the feeling you get when you are composed of atoms". We don't have a word or even a conception of such a thing because it is always the case for us. We have never experienced not being composed of atoms, so we have no feeling or word or concept of "the feeling of being composed of atoms".

 

[Sanzbir]

I must disagree. Unwanted pain exists regardless of whether people believe in good and bad.

Pain is not suffering. Suffering is typically defined as an emotional attachment to distress. You can suffer and not be in pain (obviously enough), and you can be in pain without suffering. I myself get headaches frequently enough where I no longer ever realize a headache is happening. My brain registers the pain but my emotions just ignore it because it has gotten so used to a dull pain in the sinuses. I am, typing this right now, experiencing pain, but no suffering, because there is no emotional attachment or sense of distress to the pain I have become used to.

If you wish to discuss why pain exists, that's a wholly different discussion, mostly involves biology and evolution, and isn't really a thing I'm interested in discussing.

Suffering, however, is what the topic of the current discussion is. And if you do not think there is anything bad about the world... why would one experience distress??

 

[Koldo]

Yes it does. The measure implies a degree of something. Implying variance of that thing.

If everything was the same temperature, (and for the sake of argument let's imagine that the world would somehow function in that state) then there would be no conception of that feeling of temperature. We'd have nothing to compare it to in order to express what it is. There'd be no experiences we could use to compare it to. No word for temperature, heat, hot, or cold would exist. There'd be nothing of the sort. We would not be able to comprehend what temperature even was.

It's like... "the feeling you get when you are composed of atoms". We don't have a word or even a conception of such a thing because it is always the case for us. We have never experienced not being composed of atoms, so we have no feeling or word or concept of "the feeling of being composed of atoms".

We have no words, but we do have the "feeling" of what is like being composed of atoms. It's constant all the time, being experienced all the time. Similarly, happiness would be a feeling ingrained into you in such a manner so that you wouldn't have a word for it. We would feel it all the time and have no idea what it is like to feel differently.

 

[Sanzbir]

We have no words, but we do have the "feeling" of what is like being composed of atoms. It's constant all the time, being experienced all the time. Similarly, happiness would be a feeling ingrained into you in such a manner so that you wouldn't have a word for it. We would feel it all the time and have no idea what it is like to feel differently.

What would be the point, exactly?? No human would understand it as a "good" feeling because they have no conception of feeling without it.

So if everyone is constantly on an endorphin high of happiness, then people would view a state of being "less happy" than normal as being just as bad as our happiness/sadness species view sadness.

The constant-endorphin-high humans would find just as much fault in their world, from their perspectives, as we human beings find in our own world, because they have a different baseline to compare their experiences too. In which case they would still suffer. They'd be "happy" always, but only from our perspective, but they'd know a different form of suffering.

 

[Koldo]

Pain is not suffering. Suffering is typically defined as an emotional attachment to distress. You can suffer and not be in pain (obviously enough), and you can be in pain without suffering. I myself get headaches frequently enough where I no longer ever realize a headache is happening. My brain registers the pain but my emotions just ignore it because it has gotten so used to a dull pain in the sinuses. I am, typing this right now, experiencing pain, but no suffering, because there is no emotional attachment or sense of distress to the pain I have become used to.

If you wish to discuss why pain exists, that's a wholly different discussion, mostly involves biology and evolution, and isn't really a thing I'm interested in discussing.

Suffering, however, is what the topic of the current discussion is. And if you do not think there is anything bad about the world... why would one experience distress??

This is semantics. A subject I am not really interested.
There is a certain threshold for pain that you can get used to. But beyond that...

 

[Koldo]

What would be the point, exactly?? No human would understand it as a "good" feeling because they have no conception of feeling without it.

So if everyone is constantly on an endorphin high of happiness, then people would view a state of being "less happy" than normal as being just as bad as our happiness/sadness species view sadness.

The constant-endorphin-high humans would find just as much fault in their world, from their perspectives, as we human beings find in our own world, because they have a different baseline to compare their experiences too. In which case they would still suffer. They'd be "happy" always, but only from our perspective, but they'd know a different form of suffering.

I would argue that they can't always be 'happy' and yet experience any form of 'suffering'. You can't have one and the other.

 

[Sanzbir]

This is semantics. A subject I am not really interested.
There is certain threshold for pain that you can get used to. But beyond that...

Well if you mean "experiencing signals of pain" when you mean "suffering" then I frankly see no problem with your conception of suffering. Suffering, if that is how you define it, is no problem whatsoever.

Now suffering as an emotional attachment to things, mayhaps that is a problem. But the signals in your body that let you know when something is wrong and need to be addressed?? Without negative emotional attachment to that signal I don't see a problem, do you?? If so, what problem do you see with the signal itself (and not your personal emotions about that signal)??

 

[Sanzbir]

I would argue that they can't always be 'happy' and yet experience any form of 'suffering'. You can't have one and the other.

Happiness is an endorphin high. Unless you're playing another semantics game.

If you are defining happiness as a signal, as endorphins, then you can be happy all the time but still suffer, you can still emotionally interpret things around you as being bad and suffer distress despite the endorphin high.

On the other hand, if you are defining happiness as an emotional interpretation to that feeling of an endorphin high, then you need something else to compare it to, you need a state of "not happy" to compare it to, or else you can't possibly form an emotional interpretation of the feeling, as there is nothing to compare it to.

Just as we have no emotional interpretation on the "feeling of being comprised of atoms".

So are you talking about just physical signals in the body, in which case devoid of emotion interpretation they really have no inherent value, or are you talking about emotional interpretation of those signals, in which case you can only form a concept of an emotion by comparing it to a state in which you do not feel that way??

 

[Koldo]

Well if you mean "experiencing signals of pain" when you mean "suffering" then I frankly see no problem with your conception of suffering. Suffering, if that is how you define it, is no problem whatsoever.

Now suffering as an emotional attachment to things, mayhaps that is a problem. But the signals in your body that let you know when something is wrong and need to be addressed?? Without negative emotional attachment to that signal I don't see a problem, do you?? If so, what problem do you see with the signal itself (and not your personal emotions about that signal)??

The experience itself is negative. If that wasn't the case, we wouldn't call it pain. We are not merely aware that something is wrong. It's not the same as being aware that I have arms or legs. It has a negative feeling attached to it, which is what I call 'suffering'. If there is no negative feeling to attached to it, it is not pain.