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Comment by Gupie | Hacker News Reader

OK, here's my amateur take. Most misery is man-made. On the personal scale: envy, unrequited love etc. Also on the macro scale: wars, global warming etc. Perhaps if you create entities with free will they will unavoidably though ignorance or malice do some evil to a lesser to greater extent and therefore cause misery.

Bereavement is unavoidable but many religions promise an afterlife.

Child bone cancer and like are difficult to explain away. Perhaps we would have a cure for cancer if we didn't spend so much effort developing weapons and better advertising algorithms, but that is besides the point. I have heard Muslims believe that Allah will not inflict suffering on someone beyond what they can handle.

God, if they exists, could have created world we everyone were in a state of continually bliss, but what would be a point of that?

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> I have heard Muslims believe that Allah will not inflict suffering on someone beyond what they can handle.

I find this a particularly inhumane way of thinking. Try saying that to someone suffering "oh, you can handle it", it's beyond cruel, yikes. Makes it sound like it's some type of blessing, like the little 3-yr old is meant to die of bone cancer because of some greater God's plan. I don't know, it's just sounds so wrong to me to think like that. Even life on earth is some sort of school for the afterlife, I don't think there is a lesson to be learned by dying of cancer as a young child.

> God, if they exists, could have created world we everyone were in a state of continually bliss, but what would be a point of that?

Yes please, isn't that what heaven is supposed to be?

>> God if they exists, could have created world we everyone were in a state of continually bliss, but what would be a point of that?

> please, isn't that what heaven is supposed to be?

No, I doubt it would be like that, not like what a junkie experiences when they inject heroin in a vein. There would be some sort of meaning to it.

> God, if they exists, could have created world we everyone were in a state of continually bliss, but what would be a point of that?

What would be the point of not doing that?

It's not really about individual suffering -- god could have created a universe in which suffering did not exist as a possibility or a concept. But it does so exist. Therefore God either intended it to be so, and condones or accepts or requires suffering, or God has limits that mean it had no choice but to create the universe this way, or there is no God.

Yes, if God exists, is the creator, is all powerful, is good, is sane, then suffering must be of ultimate benefit, or an unavoidable consequence of for example free will. That said lot of suffering is man made.

> Perhaps if you create entities with free will they will unavoidably though ignorance or malice do some evil to a lesser to greater extent and therefore cause misery.

Well, to be sure, you have to nudge a bit and create such circumstances to make sure there will be misery and wars. For starters start several opposing religious factions, all willing to do god's bidding and do horrible things in his name. Don't discourage it, leave your words in ancient manuscripts open to interpretation.

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