RE: The Problem of Evil (XXVII)
June 8, 2016 at 8:34 am
(This post was last modified: June 8, 2016 at 8:36 am by bennyboy.)
If God is really a personal God, and by that I mean one which people should care about, then there should be some symmetry between the knowledge of God gained and the evil one must endure. However, this is not the case: a young infant can suffer greatly, with no real understanding of anything, and then cease to exist. Its contract with a personal God has been broken.
God, therefore, is at best a force of nature-- something hidden in the variables and functions BEHIND life. But we already have something like this-- the universe. Defining an impersonal struggle among humans to either suffer or not to suffer makes very little sense of the implied contract: "Suffer that you may learn," is not universal when some of the evils involve things or beings which do not have the capacity to learn about God. The only case in which it is logically true that suffering = gaining knowledge of God is that God is a God of suffering.. But if that's the case, God must be avoided at all costs, because, you know, suffering sucks.
God, therefore, is at best a force of nature-- something hidden in the variables and functions BEHIND life. But we already have something like this-- the universe. Defining an impersonal struggle among humans to either suffer or not to suffer makes very little sense of the implied contract: "Suffer that you may learn," is not universal when some of the evils involve things or beings which do not have the capacity to learn about God. The only case in which it is logically true that suffering = gaining knowledge of God is that God is a God of suffering.. But if that's the case, God must be avoided at all costs, because, you know, suffering sucks.
