Atheism, A Grim Position?

[The Grand Nudger]

Example, a person has their hand caught in a bear trap. No help coming. They can cut off their own hand to live without the hand or die. Crappy choice but it is an option.

Nothing to do with mitigating circumstances though.

It's easy to get sentimental about these things. Another example, if you could save the lives of 100 million people by killing a hundred innocent children, would you do it?

Me? No. This, in my estimation, is closer to a mitigating circumstance....but not a realistic scenario, and it's still missing the push that would land it squarely in the camp.

However, I understand your indignation about a God who would let some poor guy suffer so that life could exist. The other mitigating thing, at least in my theological ontology is that, that guy's suffering is literally God's suffering as well. This comes from an ontology that I call an aspect monism or in Vishishtadvaita a qualified monism. The poor soul is an aspect of God.

You present this as a dichotomy, I asked you to demonstrate that such a dichotomy was present and a factor with regards to life. Unless you can do so..........eh?

The suffering of the antogonist is not necessarily a mitigating factor in what the antogonist does to another. If this were so, a person who got his jollies off by slicing up girls -while he sliced himself up- would have a defense. He doesn't. Neither does this concept of god on these grounds.

I know it still sounds cruel. People are tempted to make God out as some sort of Big Daddy or Big Mommy where shit should never happen. Just ain't so, in my view.

Right, shooting straight for the drain. But why, then, invoke mitigating factors that are neither mitigating factors, demonstrable, or even relevant? If you're content to believe in an incompetent god just let that god be incompetent. Right?