Suffering- More Discussions With a Theist

[StealthySkeptic]

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Leibniz wasn't engaging atheists:

"It would be anachronistic, however, to claim that Leibniz was engaged with the atheistic problem, for in his time the existence of evil was taken to be an argument for an unorthodox form of theism rather than an argument for atheism. Thus, for example, a group of thinkers collectively known as the “Socinians” held, among other things, that the existence of evil was not incompatible with God's existence, but that it was incompatible with the existence of an omniscient God."

I am saying I think it is similar to arguments presented by atheists. Example: "How could an intelligent Creator exist when ____________ happens?" Atheists who phrase an objection like this are simply saying this isn't the best of all possible worlds, and Leibniz, though he doesn't respond directly to atheists, does address the atheist's objection (even though it's not the main one) when responding to the Socinians.

Turning back to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, I read he was debating with Socinians:

"We might then characterize the problem raised by atheists in our own century and by the Socinians, to cite just one example from the seventeenth century, more broadly as the “underachiever problem.” According to the underachiever problem, if the sort of being that traditional monotheism identifies as God were to exist, the existence of this world would represent a vast underachievement on his part: therefore there is no such being. Atheists take this conclusion to prove that there is no God; the Socinians take it to show that God is not the sort of being that the traditional theist supposes him to be.

Although Leibniz is concerned about the underachiever problem, it is the Socinian, and not the atheistic, version of the problem that he engages. The winds of atheism had not reached the gale force proportions that they would in succeeding centuries. Consequently, this stronger conclusion was not yet taken as a serious, or at least the main, threat presented by the existence of evil."

Again, I don't think you're phrasing the actual arguments of atheist critics who use the problem of evil correctly. As I've said before, it's not so much that this argument in particular disproves that a creator exists (there are others for that) but that a Creator that is omnibenevolent exists, which goes against a specific model of god and thereby pokes a logical hole in said model.

It seems that because Leibniz was addressing a different breed of argument altogether, then his arguments don't really apply here. I also don't think you have addressed my objections against natural disasters- and if it's because of "mysterious reasons" then there might as well not be a reason as that is a rhetorical escape hatch.

As for the idea of suffering having meaning, how is the suffering and (usually) physical pain accompanying it actually directed? Did Hurricane Katrina target New Orleans for a specific reason? I know that's not usually what's meant, but I'm straining out the idea of the actual suffering inflicted on someone at the moment pain is visited upon them (suffering fact I'll call it) from what people usually mean, which is how people create meaning out of the suffering they experience IF they survive (suffering experience).

Now, of course, people try to derive lessons from the mistakes they've made or the experiences that have happened to them. It's part of our brain's process of determining how we should move forward and how we evolved as a species. But just because people may use suffering experience to figure out the meaning of their lives going forward, does that mean there's a larger meaning to suffering fact?

Aside from the already mentioned point about why this specific place needed to be hit by a hurricane, this specific plane was predestined to hit the Twin Towers, killing 3,000 people including a relative of mine, etc., I argue no because suffering experience is different for everybody. Therefore it is impossible to derive a meaning for suffering fact from every individual's suffering experience?

Consider the Oklahoma tornado of 2013, the devastating tragedy in which 24 people including several kids at an elementary school died. Let's leave the obvious question of why Oklahoma for the moment and move to the (in)famous interview Wolf Blitzer had with a survivor.

Pretty typical stuff until he basically asks this woman, "Do you thank the Lord for your survival?" This is also pretty typical for the Midwest considering the evangelical Christian faith in the area, and appeals to the typical soul-making theodicy brought up repeatedly here- the idea that perhaps this woman will thank the Lord for her survival and change something for the better as a result.

Instead, she says, "I'm actually an atheist," to which Wolf was taken aback because he, like many, assumed that Oklahoma was uniformly Christian and more to the point theistic, such that the typical Christian suffering experience narrative applied to everyone's lives. I don't know what she's done with the rest of her life after that, or how she interpreted what her suffering experience meant to her, but what I think she wanted to do by going out there and outing herself as an atheist is to help say, "Hey, atheists are ordinary people with feelings too, and not all Oklahomans can be put in the same basket!"

What I think she did after that, at great risk to her social reputation, was to do what most people would do: help rebuild from the wreckage. Not because she felt that God guided a natural disaster to obliterate and killed 24 people JUST SO she and others he arbitrarily selected to live could become changed people. But because she felt that this was the one life everybody in this town got, and she was going to make sure that those who got robbed of their one precious life would be honored by improving the lives of those still left in her own small way.

So you see, the suffering fact in my opinion has no external meaning because:

1.) no meaning can be discerned from the act itself (such as why the Oklahoma tornado planted itself in Oklahoma or why this particular kid got brain cancer)

2.) people's suffering experiences vastly differ from person to person

3.) some people attempt to make their suffering experiences mean more by trying to apply it universally through their religion when it is not the case, and some do it in a way which belittles the experiences of non-religious survivors.

[bennyboy]

Who the fuck are you talking to?

[Jacob(smooth)]

[StealthySkeptic]

Who the fuck are you talking to?

Somebody who is clearly entrenched in a mystical reality of his own creation.