“15. Suffering will be unimportant compared to eternal rewards.
Response - Like other theodices it is dehumanising by reducing humans to pawns in god's game.
Imagine that scientists developed a pill that would eradicate all unwelcome memories and create a feeling of bliss. How would you judge a scientist who imposed the most horrific suffering on millions of people, as unwilling subjects of his experiment, but who gave all of them one of the magic pills when it was over?”
I would feel that the scientist better have some damn good reasons for doing so! Although after taking the pill I probably would no longer give a f***
If a man came up to me and said that he’d give me $1,000 if I let him punch me in the face I would take it! If he offered me $50,000 to break my femur and pay my medical bills I would take it! If he offered me $10billion and the entire islands of Hawaii and continent of Australlia completely under my ownership if I were to let him torture me for a week until I died but guaranteed I would be revived and restored to perfect health and demonstrated proof of this and I knew it to be true and worthy then I would take it as well! To what end, to what magnitude, and to what degree or ratio do the suffering and the reward need to be in order to become acceptable to all? I’m tempted to say f*** determining the morality of it or judging the guy, give us the reward! Why waste time judging the scientist or God when we could just try to make the best of what we have now and hopefully of what we get after? But perhaps to view it as only this would be dehumanizing, so there must be more to it.
You asked how I would judge a scientist who imposed that suffering, that’s to assume that God is causing the suffering and you already state this is more about why it’s allowed and that God isn’t causing it right? Usually there are other factors to come into play and I believe that PB mentioned it best when saying,
“Aren't there times when men or women in authority must make hard choices? Choosing between saving a mother caught in a burning car or her child? Or the Fire Chief who must call his men out of a burning building knowing full well there are still people trapped in there. Hard choices happen every day in war as well. For the most part, these choices are recognized as necessary though much heartache has resulted. It is my belief that God is being placed in the same position. Choosing to allow a terrible circumstance in order to bring about a better world is very hard to understand but in the end we will know and understand. That is my firm belief.”
We aren’t simply manipulated and man-handled pawns in God’s game, perhaps we are chess pieces with free will to move about on our own but with the influences of bigger “spirit” game over-lookers. If God really did enable angels and people with free will then it is inevitable that in order to keep order in his court (the universe and heavens) he would eventually after inevitable chaos, allow the defense and prosecution (satan & jesus?) to make their cases before he makes a ruling. A judge can only do so much “ruling” to keep things fair, and it’s usually only done once all parties have exhausted all possible attacks and defenses and evidences. Perhaps we are living in the time of “evidence exhibit v,” and have a few more before a ruling is made? Perhaps there is no intervening of God any more, perhaps he intervened only enough in the start to guarantee the survival of so called “good” people because many lacked our inherent sense of love and compassion and the desire for fairness as mentioned before. Now-a-days we put people with no love and empathy in psych wards to die heavily medicated. There are plenty of good loving compassionate people today and perhaps why God doesn’t need to intervene anymore until that changes and/or a “ruling” has become necessary due to the ending of divine court hearings?
If there is God and he created all things. He creates angels, the galaxies, and the first humans on earth. He enables all “thinking” beings such as angels and humans with the power of FREE WILL. What are the odds or chances that over a long enough timeline (eternity) that “shit hits the fan” and all chaos breaks lose if he were to NEVER intervene? (100% in case you were wondering)How much intervention is allowed before infringing upon the parameters of free-will? Could we for a minute “play God” and come up with a way to create an everlasting earth and heavens with all angels and humans living peacefully and no “evil,” natural or otherwise, ever occurring whilst still allowing free will? If we can’t come up with a perfect scenario to meet these terms (and we can’t), then that points us to either:
1)The non-existence of a creator
2)The existence of a careless non-intervening creator
3) The existence of a creator who cares but has good reason not to intervene in natural disasters for reasons that we could never understand without asking him personally.
This discussion however isn’t to debate the existence of a creator but to try and provide reasons as to why a supposed “loving creator” would sit idly watching people die from tsunamis.
I don’t know, I’m just speculating, to believe in a God is to assume He is doing the right thing under the circumstances of ruling over beings with free will and yet being unable to explain why he is still continuing to allow natural and unnatural evil to occur. In my eyes I believe the reward of eternal life without suffering or natural evil IS adequate compensation for the current situation even though we might not agree it is and YES if I was the father and husband to victims of the tsunami I wouldn’t agree with that logic until I died and rejoined my family, then I would agree ONLY IF God gave me good reason as to why he had to allow all that shit to take place for so long. We can only speculate.
