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[MetalSlimeHunt]

What if the suffering was a test to see who is a Good Person, helping others in there suffering, and who is a Bad Person, taking advantage of others pain.

Yeah, something like Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is a brilliant way to tell if people are good or bad.

Or Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva. Sorry little Timmy, you get to slowly die over your twenty-five year lifespan as your muscles turn to bone and you lose all ability to do anything. Sorry again for preforming medical tests that actually accelerated the disease before we knew what it was, but I'm sure this is all just a test from god for you.

[Leafsnail]

I think it's widely believed that all babies go to heaven, as they have not even begun to sin.

You can try.

Although that's not an interpretation supported by the bible or the catholic church... sure, whatever.

And why should God get a pass for it when I don't?  I mean, killing children is apparently vital to "testing" people!

[Realmfighter]

He's less killing children and more not stopping them from dieing.

I'm sure that when we finally catch this guy his sentencing will be very harsh.

[Leafsnail]

He's less killing children and more not stopping them from dieing.

Ah, right.  So if I see my child start to drown in the bath, it'd be perfectly acceptable to walk away and leave them to die?

[Sowelu]

Pretty hard to assign morals to someone who knows way more about the universe than you.  Should the rosebush hate the gardener who trims it?  And how the hell do you know what happens after death?  Heaven and especially hell are unlikely, but "God is horrible because he lets people die" seems disingenuous to me, especially when God is usually inextricably linked to something existing after or beyond death.  If God stepped in and started curing random things, we wouldn't learn to cure them ourselves...  Me, I kinda like a small part of the Mormon belief, the one where God wants us to become fellow creators ourselves.  Hey, maybe this is boot camp.

[Bauglir]

Hey, we're getting a little heated here. Try to calm down; I know people are saying distasteful things, but if we want to be able to talk about this at all it's important not to rise to the bait.

It is possible to test somebody to determine if they are a good person or not, and still have that test be cruel and unnecessary (without necessarily being sadistic). As much as you might believe it is a test of a person's strength of character to doom their child to a slow and painful death, the (possible) fact that it accomplishes that doesn't negate the horrible, pointless pain and death inflicted on the victim.

[Realmfighter]

Ah, right.  So if I see my child start to drown in the bath, it'd be perfectly acceptable to walk away and leave them to die?

I had this whole sarcastic Pessimistic Nihilistic rant thing thought up when I just remembered this is the internet, and every debate by definition is vapid, infantile and pointless.

I truly have nothing more to say.

Carry on.

[Sowelu]

Remember, pain is corporeal, while religion teaches that we are more than corporeal.  Ergo, pain is not -real- to God, and once we reach whatever afterlife or transcendence there is, it will not be real to us, either.

[Argembarger]

I'ma have to agree with Sowelu on this one.

If you're gonna go ahead and assume God is real for the purposes of your thought exercise, you must also assume an afterlife, because I've never heard of any explanation where you have one but not the other.

[Leafsnail]

Sorry, it's just that this issue does strike a personal nerve.  Three, in fact.

Pretty hard to assign morals to someone who knows way more about the universe than you.  Should the rosebush hate the gardener who trims it?  And how the hell do you know what happens after death?  Heaven and especially hell are unlikely, but "God is horrible because he lets people die" seems disingenuous to me, especially when God is usually inextricably linked to something existing after or beyond death.  If God stepped in and started curing random things, we wouldn't learn to cure them ourselves...  Me, I kinda like a small part of the Mormon belief, the one where God wants us to become fellow creators ourselves.  Hey, maybe this is boot camp.

It doesn't really matter.  Inflicting huge amounts of pain, suffering and anguish on innocent people is simply wrong, especially if your omnipotence means it's completely unnecessary.  If God does regard doing horrible things to good people as a "test", I want nothing to do with him.

In addition, if he "needs" to test people by putting them through this stuff, why is he ok with sending babies straight to the afterlife without any kind of test at all?

[Bauglir]

Remember, pain is corporeal, while religion teaches that we are more than corporeal.  Ergo, pain is not -real- to God, and once we reach whatever afterlife or transcendence there is, it will not be real to us, either.

But it's real now. And as an omnipotent deity, God could prevent that in any number of ways. He could have defined Goodness in such a way as to make unnecessary pain, created humanity with the pain-caused Goodness already inherent, or (better still) have made corporeal pain a consequence of evil, rather than arbitrary and random chance or (as can be the case) corporeal good.

[Sowelu]

That's the place where omnipotence stops, for me.  Saying "He could create a world where goodness is inherant without the need for pain" might require changing something about the universe that is beyond his control.  Like I said, it's the "can God create a rock heavier than He can lift"--it might even turn out to be a logical impossibility.  (IE, if goodness must be found through free will, then it is not logically possible to create a creature with free will and inherant goodness).

This, by the way, is my major beef with Christianity.  God just stepped in and changed the rules with Jesus, and that doesn't make any sense at all to me.  There's...a lot of issues I have surrounding that part, in fact.  I'm not advocating for the Christian god or for Jesus, there's too much wrong there.

I continue to assert that for God's purposes, pain doesn't exist in the way we think it does.  Oh yeah it's terrible, but that's to our bodies and not our souls.  Blindly asserting it again doesn't really make it any more true or compelling, but that's my viewpoint for why the existence of pain isn't evil on the part of the creator.

(Also:  This whole thing has to do with a God who actually cares about life, humanity, the afterlife, etc.  I think that it's a very distinct concept from the Prime Mover, who is completely apathetic towards the human condition, doesn't get involved whatsoever after throwing the switch, and does not require an afterlife.)

[Leafsnail]

It clearly isn't a logical impossibility, though.  There are good people in the world who have never suffered at all.

(Also:  This whole thing has to do with a God who actually cares about life, humanity, the afterlife, etc.  I think that it's a very distinct concept from the Prime Mover, who is completely apathetic towards the human condition, doesn't get involved whatsoever after throwing the switch, and does not require an afterlife.)

And who is on about the same existence level as the Invisible Pink Unicorn, as far as I can tell :/.

[Siquo]

Insomniac Rants ahead (but awesome!) Time for bed.

God totally can fulfill every human desire without ruining our ability to interact with the world happily;

Ah, He could, but you wouldn't be you, you'd be someone else than you are now. And perhaps he has, and has just implanted you with memories of bad stuff to make you your unique self. Omnipotence is tricky like that.

Crucially, she carries on living afterwards, so she at least has an opportuiny to make benefit from it.

Yeah, and God's got an afterlife for us, that lasts an eternity. By his standards of age, we are only two-year olds (so no, that wasn't an insult, it's a relativity thing that goes for all of us).

If you have the power to prevent suffering, lose nothing by doing so, and choose not to act, then you are evil.

My daughter likes icecream, and even if it were good for you, she still wouldn't get it every day, because she'd become a spoiled brat.

That's Genesis for you: he gave us everything, and we turned out to be disobedient spoiled brats. And God was all like "Ok, then you can go find out for yourself, and if you fall, I'll pick you up." or whatever, and humans went all like WTF, if you don't catch us you're goddamned evil, you SOB, and God said "well first of all I don't have a ma so that's a bit cruel" and humans were all "oh ok that was a bit low but you're still evil" and God was like yeah, but if I gave you everything you wanted, you would all be me so what's the use and humans went all damn, he's right, but we still want it, and God said to them "Lo and behold and such, you're all me for eternity, but you get all also get memories from a miserable and great time on earth, and humans were like oh, memories, great, and God said yeah I just made em right HERE. And somewhere in the middle of those memories was this guy who slept too little and went on this awesome rant. Blink with your eyes and ten years have passed. You're just a memory.

It doesn't really matter.  Inflicting huge amounts of pain, suffering and anguish on innocent people is simply wrong

Oh and suddenly the atheist comes with Absolute Morals. This thread is going the wrong way around...

[Andir]

Wait... if pain is corporeal, then I have nothing to fear from hell (if such a place exists) because I won't feel pain.  Heck, it may even tickle.