(March 5, 2015 at 1:37 pm)robvalue Wrote: Suffering is evil because it makes us feel bad, and God could make us ultimately just as happy without putting us through it. As humans we experience relief and pride when we work through suffering, but we didn't have to be that way. God could just make us happy all the time. You're still thinking in terms of God having all these boundaries and parameters to work round, like he turned up in the middle of a crisis with half the resources he needed. He created everything to be this way.
I'm glad you say you'd stop suffering. Right now, I hope. The fact that he will stop it is a ridiculous promise you have been fed, because it can never be proved wrong like every religious claim. It will be a bit late for all those who are already dead and offed themselves from suffering and went to hell. What's holding him back, with his unlimited power?
You'd stop suffering right now, especially if you were omnisciently aware of every last ounce of pain and misery felt by every human and animal. I'd stop it right now. Your omnipotent God is dragging out the suffering because... Either because he is sick and twisted, he doesn't care or actually enjoys it... Or in fact he's not there at all and you've been fed unfalsifiable promises to keep you doing what people want you to do.
If I was to make a world, there would be no suffering in the first place. You can make up excuses for God all day long, but he did what I would never do and that makes me more caring and moral than him. He's an abusive tyrant. Except of course, that he's entirely fictional. What would the world look like without God? If he hadn't made it? If he wasn't interfering? It would look exactly the same. You don't experience God at all except in your interpretation of events due to your continued exposure to religious myth and other people acting that way.
Just stop and take a really good look at the suffering in the world. Go watch some videos of what it's like for children in the third world. Then tell me God loves those children. Oh, they're going to heaven? Well put them right there, why make them and their family suffer first? Why not put us all in heaven in the first place?
I can't stop that suffering. I would if I could. Your God could, he won't.
We could alleviate most of the poverty and hunger in the third world if every single person followed the instructions of Jesus and fed the hungry, clothed the naked and cared for the sick. That is what we have been called to do, but first we need to change the minds of those who would rather live for themselves. That is the way God has made it. In the very first book of the bible God gave dominion over the creatures of the earth to mankind with the commission to care for the world. Instead, too many of us ignore him and live only for ourselves. God intends for us to be the keepers of the world that he gave us - even though there is suffering involved.
