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Should God have created a world without suffering?

Trailblazer

Veteran Member
I have several questions:

1. Should God have created a world without suffering? If so, why? If not, why not?

2. How could God have created humans with physical bodies without engendering suffering?

3. How could God have created a material world without engendering suffering?

4. If God prevented suffering should God prevent all suffering or just some suffering?

5. If God prevented some suffering should God allow some people to suffer more than other people?

Thanks, Trailblazer. :)
 

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
1. Should God have created a world without suffering? If so, why? If not, why not?

I know someone who is very physically challenged and now confined to a walker. She produces the most amazing knit creations. And I believe her suffering is what fuels her creativity. So my answer is "no".

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2. How could God have created humans with physical bodies without engendering suffering?

I could superficially says 'yes' but that is inconceivable to me.

3. How could God have created a material world without engendering suffering?

I have no idea. There would have to be no death, no aging, no overcoming failure and so forth.

Further, suffering is one of the bipolar dimensions of life; the opposite being pleasure. So either you are asking about a purely mechanical life with no pleasure and no pain or a world without poles of existence.

5. If God prevented some suffering should God allow some people to suffer more than other people?

From my belief, we all suffer equally but not in any one lifetime.
 

Nakosis

Non-Binary Physicalist
Premium Member
I have several questions:

1. Should God have created a world without suffering? If so, why? If not, why not?

2. How could God have created humans with physical bodies without engendering suffering?

3. How could God have created a material world without engendering suffering?

4. If God prevented suffering should God prevent all suffering or just some suffering?

5. If God prevented some suffering should God allow some people to suffer more than other people?

Thanks, Trailblazer. :)

IMO, if there is a God, they did create a world without suffering.
Humans choose to suffer.
They don't have to.
It could all be beautiful.
But humans choose to see it otherwise.
 

AlexanderG

Active Member
From an outsider perspective, it always seemed like gods were invented to explain why we humans experience suffering. To ask why a god invented suffering always seems backwards to me. Still a god that by definition can do anything and has a mysterious mind that we can't understand could be a sufficient explanation for literally any state of affairs. So again, there's not a lot of reason or explanation involved.

I can imagine a much better world than this, and a better universe. As in obviously, unambiguously, clearly better. So it's odd (and possibly a logical contradiction?) that an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving god would leave things like this.

If nothing else, giving us the ability to choose between living in a "suffer and maybe experience character growth" world, or living in a world without any suffering would be an improvement. Just giving us that choice would make this hypothetical god more moral and more benevolent.
 

AlexanderG

Active Member
IMO, if there is a God, they did create a world without suffering.
Humans choose to suffer.
They don't have to.
It could all be beautiful.
But humans choose to see it otherwise.

Humans choose to get cancer, be born with spina bifida, have buildings collapse on them, get intestinal parasites, or drown in tsunamis? I must have missed that part.
 
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Trailblazer

Veteran Member
Humans choose to suffer.
They don't have to.
I heartily disagree because that is as much as blaming people because they are suffering by saying they could avoid suffering if only....

My training is in psychology so I know that is not true. I cannot even imagine saying that to a client. Such an attitude is completely devoid of compassion.
 
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Trailblazer

Veteran Member
I can imagine a much better world than this, and a better universe. As in obviously, unambiguously, clearly better.
So can I. It is called the spiritual world and that is where we are all headed. This life is temporary, it is not forever. If it was forever I could never believe in a benevolent God. That is not to say that I am happy about all the suffering in this world but since I am not God I cannot know all the reasons why God allows suffering, even though I know some of them.
 

osgart

Nothing my eye, Something for sure
Suffering can be a teacher. But there are worse things than suffering that go on. If all suffering can be overcome then I would say it's useful to suffer. Suffering itself is not out of bounds. There are plenty of other things that are.

Living in a world of ultimate fate and ultimate destiny would be a good thing for people who will never learn to be better people otherwise.

If everything was supremely ideal then maybe no one would learn how to live. We would take everything for granted perhaps.

It's evil that serves no purpose, and no greater good. Natural disasters serve no purpose.
 

Link

Veteran Member
Premium Member
I have several questions:

1. Should God have created a world without suffering? If so, why? If not, why not?

2. How could God have created humans with physical bodies without engendering suffering?

3. How could God have created a material world without engendering suffering?

4. If God prevented suffering should God prevent all suffering or just some suffering?

5. If God prevented some suffering should God allow some people to suffer more than other people?

Thanks, Trailblazer. :)

1. He can if people trust the lights of God and listen to them, when Adam (a) doubted, and others doubted with him, everything fell apart for that reason. Otherwise, no pain or tiredness or suffering in the first world God created, but we aren't in a plan A, we are in a fallen world.
2. Same way he will create those in paradise later.
3. Same as above.
4. God's plan was to prevent all suffering but it didn't occur because the veils of light were doubted first by Iblis which was unexpected since he was trained 6000 years in worship of God before the trial he failed. When things failed, he went out of his way to fix things, but his guidance and guides were rejected. Thus suffering has become a cause of honor for those who suffer because of love of God and a way of God of raising their ranks.
5. We all in it together, with empathy, how can one human suffer more then another? The more empathetic and loving you are the more you naturally suffer...
 

Trailblazer

Veteran Member
If nothing else, giving us the ability to choose between living in a "suffer and maybe experience character growth" world, or living in a world without any suffering would be an improvement. Just giving us that choice would make this hypothetical god more moral and more benevolent.
I never really thought of it that way but I can surely appreciate that point of view because God giving us a choice seems more just to me. Instead, we are forced to suffer, often through no fault of our own. And no, to say that suffering is a choice is not true at all because people do not choose to suffer unless they are masochists, and very few people are masochists. I think I am qualified to know something about people who suffer because I have an MA in psychology.
 

Aštra’el

Aštara, Blade of Aštoreth
No. I appreciate the suffering. Many great lessons are only learned after having suffered through some difficult ordeal, and many improvements to our mind and bodies are a direct result of human suffering. It can be horrible at times but it can make people so much stronger, individually and collectively, mentally and physically.
 

9-10ths_Penguin

1/10 Subway Stalinist
Premium Member
1. Should God have created a world without suffering? If so, why? If not, why not?
Of course not.

There's no more noble an act than, when confronted with someone's suffering that you could easily prevent than to shrug your proverbial shoulders, say "meh," and just sit back and watch them suffer.
 

9-10ths_Penguin

1/10 Subway Stalinist
Premium Member
So your answer is that God should not have created a world without suffering.
My sarcastic answer, yes.

I told you: apathy in the face of suffering is noble.

There's nothing more praiseworthy than, say, watching a child in debilitating pain from rickets, knowing that it's easily preventable with the right vitamins, having those vitamins at the ready, but withholding them. Don't you agree?
 

Trailblazer

Veteran Member
My sarcastic answer, yes.
Then please explain why you answered yes.
I told you: apathy in the face of suffering is noble.
Are you being facetious again? Who has apathy in the face of suffering?
There's nothing more praiseworthy than, say, watching a child in debilitating pain from rickets, knowing that it's easily preventable with the right vitamins, having those vitamins at the ready, but withholding them. Don't you agree?
Are you comparing God to a human being, a parent who is watching a child in debilitating pain from rickets, knowing that it's easily preventable with the right vitamins, having those vitamins at the ready, but withholding them? If the parents can provide the vitamins why shouldn't the parents provide the vitamins?
 

9-10ths_Penguin

1/10 Subway Stalinist
Premium Member
Then please explain why you answered yes.
Because I was being sarcastic.

Are you being facetious again?
Yes.
Who has apathy in the face of suffering?
You would have us believe that your God does.
Are you comparing God to a human being, a parent who is watching a child in debilitating pain from rickets, knowing that it's easily preventable with the right vitamins, having those vitamins at the ready, but withholding them?
Yes. I thought that was obvious.

If the parents can provide the vitamins why shouldn't the parents provide the vitamins?
Indeed. And even moreso for a deity who's infinitely more capable of addressing the problem than a human parent.
 

Trailblazer

Veteran Member
After I said that people do not choose to suffer unless they are masochists, I remembered the following passage:

“Those who declare a wish to suffer much for Christ’s sake must prove their sincerity; those who proclaim their longing to make great sacrifices can only prove their truth by their deeds. Job proved the fidelity of his love for God by being faithful through his great adversity, as well as during the prosperity of his life. The apostles of Christ who steadfastly bore all their trials and sufferings—did they not prove their faithfulness? Was not their endurance the best proof?

These griefs are now ended. “
Paris Talks, p. 50

Some people do choose to suffer for a noble cause or a religious belief. I am suffering right now for the Cause of God and I suffer daily for it. I don't have to be here. It is a choice I make.
 

Meow Mix

Chatte Féministe
Ope, it's a PoE-related discussion, I had to stop by at least for a little bit.

I have several questions:

1. Should God have created a world without suffering? If so, why? If not, why not?

2. How could God have created humans with physical bodies without engendering suffering?

3. How could God have created a material world without engendering suffering?

4. If God prevented suffering should God prevent all suffering or just some suffering?

5. If God prevented some suffering should God allow some people to suffer more than other people?

Thanks, Trailblazer. :)

1) If God is omnipotent and omniscient, then God could create a world without physical suffering. Whether or not God should do that depends on the values of the person doing the assessment. If a person values preventing and alleviating suffering, if they value human dignity and life, then yes; they would find that God should have done so. Likewise, this applies to God itself: if God values preventing and alleviating suffering, dignity and life, and so on; then God themself would believe they should have prevented physical suffering.

2) As the creator of how physics work, God could have created a universe in which physics always prevents instances of physical suffering. There are many ways to do this, but an easily cognizable version is a universe with conditional physics; like lines of code.

That code would effectively read something like this: "If knife is cutting potato, allow. If knife is cutting living skin, disallow (set inertia to 0)." This concept can be extrapolated to prevent literally any kind of physical suffering such that physical suffering is simply not possible to occur; and that is within an omnipotent/omniscient being's power to do.

3) The answer is the same as the answer for (2). God could create physics itself in such a way that doesn't allow physical suffering to occur. God would not even have to personally intervene at all once setting this up.

4) This depends on whether God values beings with free will. If so, there are some forms of suffering God could not prevent, such as unrequited love, broken friendships, that sort of thing. God could not prevent a person from lying to their friend, and their friend being angry about that once they discover it. But God could prevent anybody from developing cancer, or being struck by lightning, or being shot or stabbed. Physical suffering is entirely preventable without removing free will.

5) This is a question about justice, I think. I do not subscribe to retributive theory of justice (that people should be made to feel pain of some kind just because they inflicted it on others).

However some valid forms of justice (by this I mean ones I agree with) are rehabilitative justice for instance, or justice that prevents more harm from being done to society. So for instance if someone is put into a prison cell to keep them from hurting other people, this isn't strictly retributive: the purpose is to protect other people and to (hopefully, if possible) rehabilitate the person; not to cause them harm for its own sake as retribution.

So that being said, it is possible that some rehabilitation might be less comfortable than others in proportion to how serious the crime or offense was. The point isn't to hurt the person justice is being done upon, but for instance it probably takes a lot more to rehabilitate a perpetual lifetime liar than it would someone that told a little white lie that one time.
 

The Sum of Awe

Brought to you by the moment that spacetime began.
I have several questions:

1. Should God have created a world without suffering? If so, why? If not, why not?

2. How could God have created humans with physical bodies without engendering suffering?

3. How could God have created a material world without engendering suffering?

4. If God prevented suffering should God prevent all suffering or just some suffering?

5. If God prevented some suffering should God allow some people to suffer more than other people?

Thanks, Trailblazer. :)
I'm sure God knows what He's doing/what he's done (I don't know if it should be past tense or present tense; neither works for a timeless being :S). When we're asking about what God should've done, the answer is that everything's exactly as it should be.
 
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