God is the great spirit friend

[Joel]

What if God uses suffering to teach people things, the same way that a father teaches his children.

Wait, what? The same way a father teaches his children? Through suffering? I think someone had better get Social Services on standby.

Why? I was under the impression that if my son has doubts that I'm his real father, it's perfectly fine to torture him in my basement...

[Ryantology]

All cultures have a moral tradition that involves crime and punishment, as far as I am aware there absolutely no exceptions to this.

Only one of them has a moral tradition that was invented by those who worshiped your God, thus demonstrating the untruth of the claim that morality comes from God.

[jstrodel]

How does that demonstrate the claim? Could you put that in formal logic?

[Ryantology]

Can you ever just respond to a statement?

[jstrodel]

When you can argue your beliefs from self evident propositions with no atheism on them.

[Foxaèr]

When you can argue your beliefs from self evident propositions with no atheism on them.

Ironic, considering that your arguments are saturated with Christianity.

[Mystical]

What if God uses suffering to teach people things, the same way that a father teaches his children. God loves his children, but he uses suffering to teach them things. What if the scale is different from your fearful and politically colorized view of the nature of suffering? What if there was something that was even higher than you, even able to see a thing or two that you could not.

Please enlighten me how being grounded from your xbox relates in any way to the suffering that man endures?
Please.

Also, if there was something that was even higher than me, I would hope that it would prevent what was going to happen to me if it was benevolent in any way. I don't care if the ladybug on the ground below me needs to learn that walking around where humans walk is a bad idea--knowing it can be squished at any moment, I would run over, and scoop it up. Not let it get horribly maimed by a shoe.

Let's say that "he" could see ahead of me a few steps. I was still born with a disease, I suffered that disease my entire life. Why does disease even exist if he's benevolent? Population control? hm. No, that's not it: he supposedly made everyone live for hundreds of years and set up the system originally for never dying right? So as 'punishment' from this benevolent god, he introduced disease, thorns, pain, etc.

Your answer is going to be that my disease exists because it makes me who I am, am I right? By going through it, I am who I am and that's totally worth it? Because now I'm a worthwhile spirit friend for your god? Even if I'd kept my faith, I'm still going to get to the heaven and call WTF because WTF. I had to go through all of this so that I can be a useful companion to God for all time? And he thinks that I'll get over knowing for all eternity that those I love are in hell?
Please.

If he doesn't mean to keep people in hell forever and ever, he wouldn't make his official stance that they're going to hell for eternity.
Otherwise, again, what an asshole. Cuz we totally thought he was serious. And it's this seriousness that keeps me from believing in him. So there's a paradox right there.

You know, today my dad called out of the blue to teach me a revelation he'd come up with the day before which is quite relevant to this conversation.

Self entitled: When Miracles arent enough
Jesus performed miracles, including raising Lazarus from the dead, exorcising demons, healing peoples' bodies; yet still when they didn't understand Jesus and his motivations, they would fall away.

With regards to Peter, he was told by jesus that jesus was going to be crucified on the night they camped in Githsemene. Peter said he'd fight and go to jail with him, as he thought Jesus was going to be their Messiah on earth. Jesus said, "you'll deny me three times before the night is over". Then Peter cut off someone's ear when they tried to arrest jesus. Something something, Peter denied Jesus 3 times that night. Then somehow became useful for Christ in being broken, having your dreams dashed and replaced with the true spirit that god wills. Peter thought Jesus was going to take over the kingdom by force with violence, but Jesus died on the cross. Peter became a broken man, but then became strong in his resolve and became useful to god in his ability to witness to others.

You have to have that second aspect of faith in order to be a complete citizen of the kingdom of heaven
Christ performed all those spiritual tribulations too
to the point where he was tested, and sweated blood which is hard to do i understand
so the lord isnt asking you to do anything he wouldn't do

so in summary
when miracles arent enough: the point is you become strongest when you are broken and put through tests and trials

even if you saw all the miracles, heaven was clear as crystals it wouldn't be enough god has designed you to bring forth the best characteristics in you through testing and trials
so what do you think about that?

What I think is, that God's original design did not have disease or pain or death. Unless he did design us to have that after all, knowing Adam and Eve would choose that apple. So what I think is this: He's an asshole.

[I opted out of answering my dad, since he posed the question as assuming that I believe in god]

[Ryantology]

When you can argue your beliefs from self evident propositions with no atheism on them.

A theist of any other stripe could have made the statement I made. There is nothing intrinsically atheistic about it.

[Mystic]

This is our first debate Summerqueen.

Ok let me clarify what I mean by system first. I basically mean life, but life can be ambiguous, in that it refers to an individual life, but what I mean is the collective life we all live in, and the environment that surrounds us, the limitations and factors that influence us, and a long with that libertarian free-will.

I am agnostic but have high belief (even can say feel close to certain) there is a higher power, I don't claim to know for certain. It just seems that way for a variety of factors.

Let me also clarify that how we react to human suffering and evil, doesn't mean we have to suffer evil. It can be we act on empathy, it can be that we honor those who face suffering and become resilient to it. This is why I said it is not simply how we deal with it individually, but how we face it all together. Do we help one another or simply care about ourselves? These type of choices make us who we are.

If you take out evil and suffering, I'm arguing higher degrees of praise, become impossible. If society reaches a point were it gets rid of most suffering, in the very least, they are collectively doing whatever is necessary to get rid of it, which is a high praise in itself. But that praise would not be there, if evil and suffering was not there.

Also, regarding "failing", perhaps the purpose of us being allowed to fail, is so we learn to rise up again. Like in Batman "Why do we fall, to get back up again", that's what his parents taught him, and it meant a lot to him to have that perspective ( I know it's fiction but I hope you get the gist).

What does peace have to do with it? Will if in the long run, suffering becomes insignificant to everlasting peace, then I would say that helps justify the goal of earning praise.

What I mean by praise, is not being praised by others or even the Creator, but earning praiseworthiness.

It seems like we didn't chose to suffer, but it also seems like we didn't chose to be brought into this world, yet most humans appreciate life (and hence are not suicidal).

Also, it maybe that we did chose to suffer. For all we know, we were souls with a decision if we wanted to go through the human experience that included possibly suffering. Perhaps we all had a consensus to life as it is (the system) before we came here. This is not known.

Perhaps there is another world where suffering doesn't exist, and we chose this one, and others, who didn't want to go through suffering, chose that one.

This may seem like an Ad Hoc, but it's not. It's because the argument of evil asserts there is no explanation possible to justify a benevolent reason for a designer to the world to include suffering and evil. Therefore, we have to exhaust all possible explanations.

If us not having a choice is a problem, then we can say, it's possible we did have a choice.

Another point to make, which is important, is that we been given an opportunity. Just because people fail to earn honor/praise in that opportunity, doesn't take away that the opportunity was a great gift.

If the higher power had foreknowledge they would fail, I would agree that it would be evil for them to go through that, when he could have created only potential souls that he knew would succeed.

One last point is we are all in this together. You can't just say some people are suffering for the sake of others and are sacrificial lambs for them, we should love one another, and be happy for when others succeed and sad when others don't, but it's not a competition. It's an opportunity for humanity as a whole, and it's not all about the individual succeeding, but what we do together as humans. At least this is my perspective.

[jstrodel]

missluckie I have been through lots of stuff. You wouldn't believe me if I told you. Lots of times it has been so hard I thought I was going to die. But I see through it all that suffering is not really that much of a deal.