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Comment by olavk | Hacker News Reader

Bone cancer in children - if there exist an almighty sentient God, then he is erratic and malicious. The polytheistic concept of gods is actually more realistic (better explains reality) in that there are multiple gods with different agendas and morals acting.

In polytheism the universe is not chaotic and meaningless - things to not happen at random, but because the gods willed it. But the gods does not always act for the benefit of humans, so the universe is not "fair".

If something bad happens to you, is it really a consolation that it is because an allknowing and just God wants you to suffer?

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Your first statement is a pretty classic and naive position. For me at 8 years or so I rendered the objection of "pain" in terms of volcanoes.

The standard, and again naive, rejoinder in mainstream Christian theology is that God had a pattern for the World that didn't include such types of pain and destruction but that man chose not to follow God's plan (as allegorised in "The Fall" in Genesis). Thus we chose to go it alone, and you can read the various theories on how that has a Universal effect too.

To raise the basic Argument from Suffering you really should look past the first-tier argument and present it anticipating The Fall.

In my limited understanding suffering appears out of the axioms of free will. To make us human, with the ability to choose to love, choose to care, choose to follow God or not, we require free-will. Otherwise it's just "echo 'i love you'" rather than a genuine emotion.

Your question should be "is it better not to create our Universe, with the possibility for love, if there is also a possibility of suffering". You may come to the same conclusion, that a benevolent being shouldn't turn Creator when faced with those possibilities ... but then if they hadn't you wouldn't be here to make the objection.

tl;dr "The Fall" and "free will" are the standard, Biblical, Christian counter-arguments that stand against Suffering and allow for a loving, benevolent God to be creator of a Universe such as ours.

So God inflicted leprocy on humanity because otherwise we wouldn't be able to feel genuine love? And not buying this makes you "naive"?

I perhaps haven't expressed the position well however, "naive" isn't a slur, read "simplistic" if it helps, it's philosophy on the level of someone who has not demonstrated cognisance of the basic sources and hasn't addressed the obvious counter-arguments.

The mainstream Christian theology is that leprosy, and such diseases came in to the world after, and as a consequence of, The Fall. That if we'd chosen God's way we wouldn't have such things.

>So God inflicted leprocy on humanity //

God created a Universe with free will for man rather than creating a fancy automaton. Mankind chose not to follow God's precepts, the consequences being that disease, pain and suffering entered the world.

It's like if I serve you a hot drink. You can choose to cause pain and suffering with it - throw it at someone, say - or you can follow my instructions to sip it slowly, let it cool and enjoy it, share it. I can't serve you a hot drink without the possibility that you will abuse it, unless I make you into a "hot drink robot" with no free will.

You could couch that as God inflicting the possibility of suffering in order to allow the possibility of beauty, love, passion, humanity.

Then I sure you are also well aware of the counterarguments against this form of theodicy.

The idea that we are "privileged" is what breaks this. Assume that we are not special matter, and all matter shares the property of free will. Then the leprousy is just matter (in this case, a bacterium) exerting its free will for in its own interests, ignorant of the ramifications that it has on other matter (us). Given that this happens all the time with people, I don't think it is far fetched.

Of course, I don't think the universe exists to love god, so much as the universe is "god" playing with itself for entertainment.

Thinking that framing God as a contradiction will convince people not to believe in it is naive.

People have been saying the same things for 2,000 years. The only development is that we can say it's been longer now.

Just as there is lots of suffering and injustice in the world, there is also copious beauty and happiness and love. So framing God as "evil" is just as problematic as painting him as "good". Both positions forces you to ignore or rationalize away large parts of reality.

Edit: Oh, you edited your comment to say something different. I guess this comment doesn't make a lot of sense as an answer now.

Yeah sorry I can't edit it again now. I editted because the reason I used "evil / unreal" was because those are typically the traits given to a God to illustrate contradiction. And as religion is intrinsically overflowing with contradictions they aren't a particularly compelling way to argue against it.

Oh I totally agree about that.

My beliefs here, take with grain of salt...

If something bad happens to you it is not because God wants you to suffer but because God has given evil dominion over this place in order to facilitate free will and choice.

God wants to be reconciled with every person but also wants that reconciliation to be chosen and not coerced.

The suffering of innocents is just an extension of this idea.

Yes and that line of reasoning works as long as you don't think to deeply about the logic of it. But you cant really escape the fundamental paradox of a God which is both almighty and benevolent. All monotheistic religions have to struggle with this.

The Book of Job in the Bible for example posits that God is almighty but not at all fair. He basically causes Job to suffer on a whim. Not out of some kind of theological necessity, but simply as a cruel experiment. There is no paradox here, because there is no claim that God is always just and benevolent.

Yeah, and if you have an eternal perspective whereby you believe your time on earth is a brief moment of exile from the almighty then acceptance of the conditions found in Job is made easier.

> He basically causes Job to suffer on a whim. Not out of some kind of theological necessity, but simply as a cruel experiment.

This isn't technically true. What God does is choose to not prevent Satan from testing Job. I'm not making a judgement about whether this would be considered cruel or not, I just want the facts stated clearly.

And, Job himself said, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in him" (Job 13:15).

The Book of Job is understood by most Christians to be a literary and theological work, rather than being literally true. I highly recommend reading it to anyone who is curious about how Judaism or Christianity views the problem of evil, but you have to be reading it from the right mindset; it's not supposed to be something God actually did, even in the minds of believers.

You actually can construct reasonings in which bone cancer in children might serve some greater good, though such reasonings are very painful to hear for people remotely affected, so I won't try that.

I know that I'm stepping on thin ice here, but: My son does not want his teeth brushed. He absolutely hates it, because he does not yet understand that this pain is way lesser than the pain and treatment of tooth decay. So, I still have to do this to him, at least twice every day, because it is necessary.

I DONT mean to say that bone cancer might be good for something eventually, but; if it were, then we might not understand it, because we don't have neither control nor insight over the future.

Yeah you can device such a reasoning - theologians from monotheistic religions do that. I guess for some this is comforting. It is certainly a bleak world where anybody can be hit by such a tragedy without any higher reason or justice. I just happen to find your viewpoint ("really, its for their own good") much more bleak and horrible.

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