(April 2, 2015 at 12:12 pm)Lek Wrote: You all seem to have no problem of accepting the reality of suffering until you inject God into the situation. You know that there are disasters, sickness, wars, crime and so on in the world and you just go on dealing with it. Most of the claims that I have heard in this forum state that the person's life is going pretty well despite all the horrors in the world. I don't understand why God must remove all these things from the world in order to be loving, and I do see good coming from suffering. If you give your children everything and shield them from all adversity, all you will end up with is spoiled brats who are unable to fend for themselves. If we approach suffering rightly, it will make us stronger and better people. And I never try to make excuses for God. If he does something a certain way, that's his business. I just try to live with what I have to face, with his help, knowing my goal.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/out...s-stronger
1. There's a difference between adversity and suffering. A kid getting in trouble in school or getting a failing grade is far, far different than, say, getting cancer, or being abused by an authority figure. I fail to see why suffering is a necessary component. I fail to see why a god, that's often presented as a loving father figure, would not only allow his children to suffer, but create that which causes them to suffer in the first place. Because god is the omnipotent, omniscient creator, according to you. He knows who will suffer. How they'll suffer. He has ample opportunity, and I dare say a moral obligation to prevent that suffering, but he apparently chooses not to. Ask any father who sees their children truly suffering, and most will say that they'd do anything to remove that suffering, to the point of trading places with their child. And, shit, isn't that the hook of the Jesus story? Seems like god forgot that lesson rather quickly.
2. What is the end game? Tests are given to prepare someone for something, yet your purported afterlife is a thing where what's learned in the tests - the character that's supposedly built from enduring them - are useless. What use is good character, or humility, or anything else in an eternal paradise, where there are no wants or needs? And for those that didn't come out of the adversity or suffering they endured up to your god's standards, the end result is... more suffering. That's laughably cruel.
Your god is an incredibly petty character. Cruel and capricious. It boggles the mind that anyone would worship such a creature. Thankfully, he's fictional.
"I was thirsty for everything, but blood wasn't my style" - Live, "Voodoo Lady"
