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[MrWiggles]

Its a by product of humanity. He didn't create suffering, we did. I'm not sure why He let us stay that way but I'm sure someone else has an answer. LegoLord? Help?

I had no idea, that man made chaotic whether pattern that allow for farming difficulty and starvation, diseases and fungus that cause strife in humans. I didn't know didn't know that man created its own sexual proclivity. Pedophiles are man made. Neat.

I also didn't know that resource blanketing was made unequal by humans to allow for more strife.
Edit:
I also was unaware that human made radiation and heavy metal poisons, and allowing for natural despots to poisons water tables with no real signs of being harmful (outside of becoming ill, but without any means of testing or detecting equipment, this would be impossible for man to tell where the illness was coming from.).

I was unaware that human caused earth quakes, or volcanos eruptions.

I was unaware that human caused for disease spieces jumping disallowing for any natural immunity.

I was unaware that human caused cancer.

These events happen from how the universe is set up. These event play out because of the rules of the game.

The rules was set up by god. God doesn't have to have these rules. Suffering doesn't have to happen. If these events were gone, large portion of suffering would simply go away.

[Sordid]

No.  Would you respect a creation that simply followed a pre-programmed course of actions?  No.  You might be proud of it, but you know it's only doing it because you told it to.  You can't respect something unless it can make it's own decisions.

False dichotomy, there are more options than only a world where people have no free will and one where suffering exists. An omnipotent God could set things up so that any number of positive outcomes are possible, but no negative ones, so that you can still make choices but you can't hurt anyone by them.
Related to that is the point that you're ignoring the fact that God already does limit our free will, and I'm not talking about the whole "obey or burn" thing either. No, I mean the fundamental limitations that are the result of our very nature. I'd love to soar through the air, but I can't. God hasn't given me wings and so has limited my ability to excercise my free will. I'm sure you can think of plenty of such examples yourself, there are many more things a human being can't do than things he or she can. Surely God could've put in some similar limitation to make us inherently unable to harm each other, yes?
Not to mention that the free will thing still doesn't account for all the evil happening without any human input at all.

To sweep away suffering, a human creation, one would have to either wipe out the human race or free will.

Um, last I heard God tried that first thing already and as for the second see above. In short, he already DID wipe out most of free will. I find it nothing short of perverse that he'd invest so much into limiting us in all these inconsquential ways but neglect the ones where limitations could actually do some good. 

If you have a bunch of creatures that can choose what they do, and have desires as well as instincts, there is no way you can prevent one of them from doing something mean to another short of killing the offender or directly controlling its actions.

Or creating him so that he doesn't want to harm his fellows. Or putting a forcefield between them to make him unable to do so. Or making the other guy invincible... Really, is your imagination that impoverished that you only see those two options?
What you're forgetting here is that God is omnipotent. He can do anything, including making it so that individuals can't harm each other without interfering or controlling them. Yes it makes no sense to us mere humans, but to an infinitely wiser mind it must, by definition.

There is no other way; that's how it works.  So either God does not exist, he is malevolent, or the two options that involve removing suffering somehow seem unappealing to an infinitely wiser mind than yours or mine.

I agree with that absolutely.

[LegoLord]

But wouldn't preventing individuals from harming each other be, in effect, controlling them?

[Andir]

But wouldn't preventing individuals from harming each other be, in effect, controlling them?

So would granting a person eternal bliss after death.  You are not directly controlling them, but you are deciding one of two fates, controlling the outcome and thus the soul of the person... ie: the person itself.

And for Wiggles... I don't want to get into an argument on observational study again, but how can we be absolutely certain that light doesn't ever slow down and/or have a wavelength that is visible for the first 1 billion billion billion billion... kilometers?  I still feel as though we don't have the information needed to make a definitive rule on what the properties and rules of light and matter are... yet.  Speculate all you want.  So will I.

[Sowelu]

If I was God and wanted good company in heaven, I wouldn't tell humans that heaven existed, and I sure wouldn't tell them the rules of how to get in!

[Sordid]

But wouldn't preventing individuals from harming each other be, in effect, controlling them?

Isn't preventing people from floating in the air also in effect controlling them? I'd say it is, and I'd say it's bloody fucking idiotic of God to make us unable to do all kinds of harmless but insanely cool things like see in different wavelengths and whatever but still allow us to retain the ability to harm each other. Really, do you tell your child he can't watch cartoons and play with his toys but he can feel free to stab his playmates in the face? It's completely backwards.
No, wait, I did say that. And now I said it again.
Your turn, I guess.

[MrWiggles]

And tell me how not presuming something is different from not bothering to guess at it?

To propose a guess without evidence is an empty assertion. The assertion gets challenged. It lacks support. It fails. Awaiting for a new explanation.

I think B!

Because?

*shrugs*

Fuck off?

Alright.

There nothing wrong with stating 'We Don't Know.'. We don't need an answer, and we should never invent an answer.

The invented answers hampers coming to the actual answer.

[Jackrabbit]

Its a by product of humanity. He didn't create suffering, we did. I'm not sure why He let us stay that way but I'm sure someone else has an answer. LegoLord? Help?

I had no idea, that man made chaotic whether pattern that allow for farming difficulty and starvation, diseases and fungus that cause strife in humans. I didn't know didn't know that man created its own sexual proclivity. Pedophiles are man made. Neat.

I also didn't know that resource blanketing was made unequal by humans to allow for more strife.
Edit:
I also was unaware that human made radiation and heavy metal poisons, and allowing for natural despots to poisons water tables with no real signs of being harmful (outside of becoming ill, but without any means of testing or detecting equipment, this would be impossible for man to tell where the illness was coming from.).

I was unaware that human caused earth quakes, or volcanos eruptions.

I was unaware that human caused for disease spieces jumping disallowing for any natural immunity.

I was unaware that human caused cancer.

These events happen from how the universe is set up. These event play out because of the rules of the game.

The rules was set up by god. God doesn't have to have these rules. Suffering doesn't have to happen. If these events were gone, large portion of suffering would simply go away.

My belief is that god gave evolution a jump start kick up the butt and left it to go about it's buisness. I believe that god didn't create natural disasters, they did so themselves. I also believe god doesn't meddle with the exception of the new testament and apparations because things work best without him.

[MrWiggles]

And for Wiggles... I don't want to get into an argument on observational study again, but how can we be absolutely certain that light doesn't ever slow down and/or have a wavelength that is visible for the first 1 billion billion billion billion... kilometers?  I still feel as though we don't have the information needed to make a definitive rule on what the properties and rules of light and matter are... yet.  Speculate all you want.  So will I.

Ever listen to Richard Feyman lectures?

We also don't need absolute knowledge. One of the assumptions which science works under that that the rules are the same everywhere. The rules are same at ever time. Gravity pull is the same in New York in 1945 as it is at Pluto in 4356.

Since science seem to be working, these assumptions are holding.

There has yet reason to show these assumptions are false. We know from a variety of reason that time and space is relative and its relation to the speed of light. Plenty of nice videos on you tube. I can readily foster one up explaining red shift, though its in the context of rebuttal to creationist claims. There also this great series explaining general and special relativity.

We can do some cool stuff with knowing that c is constant. We can do some cool stuff like using gravitational lensing effect to use a group of stars to see further into space. They act like a focusing lenses.  Yes, the laws of the universe may not be the same everywhere. For now, it really really really seems like they do.

[MrWiggles]

Its a by product of humanity. He didn't create suffering, we did. I'm not sure why He let us stay that way but I'm sure someone else has an answer. LegoLord? Help?

I had no idea, that man made chaotic whether pattern that allow for farming difficulty and starvation, diseases and fungus that cause strife in humans. I didn't know didn't know that man created its own sexual proclivity. Pedophiles are man made. Neat.

I also didn't know that resource blanketing was made unequal by humans to allow for more strife.
Edit:
I also was unaware that human made radiation and heavy metal poisons, and allowing for natural despots to poisons water tables with no real signs of being harmful (outside of becoming ill, but without any means of testing or detecting equipment, this would be impossible for man to tell where the illness was coming from.).

I was unaware that human caused earth quakes, or volcanos eruptions.

I was unaware that human caused for disease spieces jumping disallowing for any natural immunity.

I was unaware that human caused cancer.

These events happen from how the universe is set up. These event play out because of the rules of the game.

The rules was set up by god. God doesn't have to have these rules. Suffering doesn't have to happen. If these events were gone, large portion of suffering would simply go away.

My belief is that god gave evolution a jump start kick up the butt and left it to go about it's buisness. I believe that god didn't create natural disasters, they did so themselves. I also believe god doesn't meddle with the exception of the new testament and apparations because things work best without him.

God didn't set up the rules in your belief system?

All he did was something for now he didn't need to do? Abiogeniese?

In either case, suffering isn't man made, yes?
Some can be, but the forces and reason which cause a great deal of it are in no way of being controlled or caused by humans.

[Sordid]

There also this great series explaining general and special relativity.

Well don't hog them all to yourself, you bloody bastard! Links!

[MrWiggles]

There also this great series explaining general and special relativity.

Well don't hog them all to yourself, you bloody bastard! Links!

http://www.cassiopeiaproject.com
I first saw them from ffree thinker, apparently they have their own website and cover a lot of subject matters.

[Sordid]

Looks cool. Thank you.

[MrWiggles]

Looks cool. Thank you.

They are. And no problem.

[LegoLord]

You know animals can tell when natural disasters are coming, and are often able to avert them?  Clearly, humans used to be able to do this, but it is presumed that this ability was lost during one of our previous sub-species' dominant stages.  Perhaps it was due to us settling down.  Regardless, we are the only creatures with a brain incapable of doing that, and we are also fairly unique in several other regards, such as settling down like we did, and so it is often hypothesized that it was something our ancestors did that caused that.

We will look death in the face just to stay where we are.  We didn't use to.