Why does god allow suffering?

by GBSJG 47 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  james_woods

  Brigid - you wrote:

  Now what I struggle with is: Do good and evil truly exist? And if so, what is the nature of each? What determines what is evil?

  We really don't have to work so hard at this concept, eh?

  Yes, of course they exist. Otherwise social mores and ethics would not exist. The do exist in all cultures, God concept whatever it may be.

  Nature of each? Our own normal human reaction to tough situations gives a pretty good temperature guage...

  AlQueda blowing up those planes into the twin towers? - [ ] good, [ ] evil, [ ] don't know

  Crazed GIs raping that girl and murdering the family? - [ ] good, [ ] evil, [ ] don't know

  The lady her on JWD who rescued a little cat, kept it healthy as long as possible at great cost, and gave it a compassionate end? - - [ ] good, [ ] evil, [ ] don't know

  WTSociety teachings on Malawi ID card which got literally hundreds tortured and murdered? (and not remotely in Bible) - - [ ] good, [ ] evil, [ ] don't know

  Death penalty for mass murderers Ted Bundy and Tim McVeigh? - [ ] good, [ ] evil, [ ] don't know

  What determines what is evil? Ultimately, we have to ourselves - individually and as a whole society. WTSociety cannot do it for us. One isolated political viewpoint cannot do it for us. The weight of our own moral code and that of society in general has to...and always has through man's history - admittedly with many deviations and ultimate corrections.

  Most sincerely, James
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  daystar

  Yes, of course they exist.

  I suspect that what Brigid is getting at is that they appear to be almost entirely subjective.

  I think it evil for a culture to kill a woman for "allowing" herself to be raped. In some parts of the world, this is a "good" to many people.

  Many Americans believe(d) Russia to be evil. Was it? Is it? Were the Russian people oppressed? Are the American people all that less oppressed? Or are we merely more blind to it?

  So, is there some objective, constant "evil" or "good"? Might what one considers "evil" in one context not be evil in another? How was it ever "evil" in the first place then?

  The nature of evil is much more of a difficult subject for many people than is the subject of good. We can accept the relative, subjective nature of good. Accepting the relative, subjective nature of evil is not so easy a thing to swallow. It's no easier for me than it is for anyone else.

  Of course, this is all in the purely philosophical sense. As far as I'm concerned, anything that harms me and/or any of my loved ones, my friends, or the society of which I choose to be a part of may be considered to be "evil" by me, though I recognize it to be relative.
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  Brigid

  James_Woods,

  I honor your position on this subject and do fully understand your point of departure...in fact, I share it in many ways. I am just faced with the nature of these things we view as good and evil. For example; I sat in a philosopher's circle a few months back and that was the first time I'd been faced with questioning my own black and white perceptions which I was hotly contesting. The moderator posed this: There is a region in India (I believe it is the Haran?) where it is not only customary but considered the religious duty of a father to take his daughters at the onset of menses and deflower them, teaching them the ways of men. Now, that feels evil to me. Do the girls have a choice? An educated choice? But everyone around them is doing it...do they even question? I mean, is the wrongness, the invasive feeling that I have around this due to what I have been taught (that to lie with one's daughter is wrong wrong wrong?) What are those things that we do without question that others may find absolutely repulsive and predatory (i.e., I am a meat eater, but in generations to come, will humans view the eating of the flesh of other living beings as grossly distasteful?).

  Then, I sat a long time with the question of Hitler....now mind you, I have a beloved son who has more than enough semitic blood to have had his head dashed against the rocks by Nazi's trying to rid the human race of "the Jewish problem".....we are taught that Hitler was wrong...he is proffered as the embodiment of evil in our time and many generations to come (YES! He feels evil to me)...but...what if the Nazi's had won? What if the version of history I learned had been colored by their philosophy?

  I just dunno....

  That is my struggle.

  ~Brigid
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  Brigid

  I suspect that what Brigid is getting at is that they appear to be almost entirely subjective.

  Pretty much. It's not so much that I do not believe in good and evil, I just cannot figure out why I believe what is evil is evil and vice versa. And then, if the why of what I believe is based on flimsy rationale, or false reality....then what? Then it spirals into is reality a subset of truth or is truth a subset of reality....then what is truth?

  Then someone catches me with that far off look on my face as I'm trying to figure out the nature of the Universe, nervously looks around and does the crazy sign around their ear....LOL!

  You feel me, though

  ~Brigid (the thinker)
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  james_woods

  Brigid - thanks for your update. I may not be quite as black and white as you suspect - did you not notice the trick question I slipped into those morality examples? LOL...

  My frame of reality is this - of course there is a wide grey scale on these issues, and many cultural biases. I am suggesting that we all have a brain, can feel pain and mental hurt of others, their hunger and thirst, can relate to animals' and children's needs, etc. Anyone who cannot do so to an acceptable degree is a moral deviant. Hitler is of course the last century's prime example. I will submit that his own generals would have eventually brought him down if the allies had not. This is the price of consistently deviating from time-honored human ethical morality - human in this case meaning all humans now, and the record of wisdom of all humans in the past for which we have a history.

  My problem is with those who use the "grey scale" as a straw-man argument. The example of abuse of young girls you give would be a good example. Can would-be pedophiles in this country use this as an excuse to practise what they want here - or maybe move to India to do so? I submit that, like the Hitler analogy, there are plenty of people in that area who know this is wrong and will eventually put an end to it. It is thought by many that female mutilations practiced in some N. Africa countries are being suppressed now because of easier access to world opinion.

  So, a philosophy quotation from the old TV comedy Taxi:

  Jim - "you know, somebody asked me the other day that if a tree fell in the forest and nobody was there to hear it - did it make a noise? I told him - well of course it made a noise. There just wasn't anybody there to hear it!!!"

  James
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  daystar

  Jim - "you know, somebody asked me the other day that if a tree fell in the forest and nobody was there to hear it - did it make a noise? I told him - well of course it made a noise. There just wasn't anybody there to hear it!!!"

  LOL! Unfortunately, Jim failed that little test. If no one was there to hear it, they were merely vibrations, not sounds. The perception of a sound requires someone to actually, you know, be there to hear it.

  Does ice cream have a particular taste if no one has ever tasted it? No, taste is subjective and does not exist independent of a person doing the tasting.
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  SixofNine

  Unfortunately, Jim failed that little test. If no one was there to hear it, they were merely vibrations, not sounds.

  
  

  
  I'd be willing to bet that Jim's perception of the word sound embraces the idea that vibrations make sound (and are in a specific sense synonymous with) as opposed to perception making sound. ie: "what's that vibration-in-my ear? Do you hear it Tonto?"

  I submit that, like the Hitler analogy, there are plenty of people in that area who know this is wrong and will eventually put an end to it

  I would imagine otherwise. It sounds as if they believe as a community that it is the right thing to do. I don't think there are any communities that reason that killing and torturing people is the right thing to do (even if communities do make sickening exceptions to their own realities, ie: Germans under Hitler). I think we can all see why that is.
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  daystar

  I'd be willing to bet that Jim's perception of the word sound embraces the idea that vibrations make sound as opposed to perception making sound.

  Very funny. So sound stands independent of someone there to perceive it? Vibrations from the tree are only vibrations until they cause the hairs within the cochlea to vibrate, stimulating the nerves, which send the signals to the brain, which interprets them as sounds. Without the brain's interpretation of these into sounds, they are simply vibrations in the air or through the ground.

  A deaf person knows sounds as sounds not by hearing them, but by identifying them in other ways, either as vibrations through some media or by observing the source of the sound (a mouth for example). Does a deaf person necessarily know whether sounds are actually coming out of my mouth?

  Heh, we've really digressed here.

  So... hey God!!! What's up? Why must you let us suffer so? You're the God of Love, right? Right?!
• 

  james_woods

  SixofNine! - I reply with this (to the India/Hitler thing) - you wrote:

  I would imagine otherwise. It sounds as if they believe as a community that it is the right thing to do. I don't think there are any communities that reason that killing and torturing people is the right thing to do (even if communities do make sickening exceptions to their own realities, ie: Germans under Hitler). I think we can all see why that is.

  I think I would turn to the Stalin purges as my point of counter argument. J. Stalin was arguably just as bad as Hitler in mass murder, except he killed his own countrymen without resorting to just one segment of the society. It took many years, but he was eventually denounced and it is pretty unthinkable that his kind of purge could happen there now without mass uprisings. It may take an equal amount of time for the Islamicists to realize what the Mullahs are doing to their own people, as well.

  I imagine that Indian community has some dissent already; probably with the mothers, boyfriends, and these girls themselves. A dirty old man is a dirty old man no matter what.

  Incidentally, that tree in the forest thing is supposed to have come from physics theory, not semantics or philosophy. The conjecture was that a photon does not "exist" until it is "recepted" at the end of its flight...hence the "sound" or "noise" analogy. My point was that we can think ourselves into a recursion loop and make no sense if we carry things beyond common sense...

  PS, Is your martini head either shaken or stirred by these subjects? I think I am crazy if I imagine mine is not, but also crazy if I let myself think that it is...

  James
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  JH

  Why does God allow suffering

  Maybe this is a big experiment.... that we are part of.