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The “naturalist” Problem of Suffering

idea

Question Everything
Actually this the sub-issue within a much bigger problem.

Why would evolutionary mechanism lead to development of beings that have first person experiential awareness fields? What does having inner subjective experiences add to the processing of external stimuli through the usual neuro-chemical pathways of the brain and the nervous system?

Life starts with plants, single cells, no brains needed. Everything reacts to environment, stores up information from its surroundings. Geologists will tell you rocks are books of information without being alive. Everything stores information. Everything reacts to environment.
 

rational experiences

Veteran Member
As a human. Biology. My bio chemistry does not make electricity.

That words as themed electricity are direct intention is ground mass god earth. Or lightning mass. Subject to removal from lightning.

Hence when a man now owns one word maybe given by him six meanings. Instead of one only meaning. Electricity he places it as a meaning wherever he likes.

Whereas destruction of colder mass is where he gains it. Biology isn't even mass.

He proves he coerces as a sophist scientist by word use by fake thesis. Intentionally as known life's pain sacrifice destroyer. Even theoried about the event Jesus claiming it will give him electricity.

Full human conscious hierarchial human consent.

Electricity kills us and fries us. Known.

He gives himself his gods position theist by his want human intents.

Life in heavens in his self possessed Satan mind is a statement he quotes physical mass. By number use population of the human masses.

Remembering theists minds are now human memory theism self possessed.

He knows he can only resource from physical mass. So he places us now as direct bio information the electricity place. In heavens. So he's doing atmospheric testing.

Why I got burnt. Now the attack is voiced Fading but came with all data so thesis speaking terms of men plus data inference.

As holy mother position womb void saved us. Notified holy mother. Notice how in natural life adult women are his holy human mother. Biology.

Yet trees living bound to his thesis history position from ground mass chemistry. Can be coal burnt as burning bush. Survive living saved. Be position living and coal. And lightning strikes trees.

His thesis the tree.

As his ancient mind thesis wood was also the tree. Life sacrificed. He is a proven liar destroyer.

A long time ago Jesus wrote a man's document the title new no longer Moses was Jesus the document. Knowingly two future human brain burns predicted each approx. 1000 years.

So he wrote advice warning about his conscious self possessed human man science behaviour. Humans consciousness the theist liar using lists.

L corner gone term by ists. Word used as symbolic references only.

Knowing he would not remember in old human memories in a future what he caused.

Knew exactly why he wrote the testimonial as you would not remember.

Here you are not remembering.

He said no man is God versus human theists. Who claimed they are allowed to pretend when any natural body now present hadn't existed.

An outright direct lie.

So he implemented what is said as legal terms...world humanity agreed law.

Man writes evil predator alien themes hidden tree aliens.

I've seen transmitted cloud huge images atop of trees mass.

Seems like it's real satanist brother the scientist destroyers.

Who probably said a lightnings ball of plasma began biology and would test fry us to prove himself wrong.

Yet he'd be standing behind his machine as machine man. Saying I told you I'm AI. Machine kept my life safe. Is the exact human life warning.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
Exactly. Suffering is a survival mechanism - if you couldn't feel your hand burning, you wouldn't remove it from the stove.
No, that is pain. Pain goes away when you remove the source of the pain. Suffering occurs when either extreme damage is done or as we get older our systems can break down causing pain that does not end, or suffering. A pain that does not end is not a survival mechanism.
 

firedragon

Veteran Member
The problem of suffering is perhaps the most sound and difficult argument against the existence of God, after all why would God allow for suffering? Theist have proposed many answers, but such answers usually have a high price to pay, and quite honestly I(as a theist) haven’t seen a “good solution” for this problem

It's not a sound argument brother against the "existence of God". Not at all, and never has been. What you are saying invariably is that it's a problem both atheists and theists have. That is why it is difficult to provide solutions.
 

rational experiences

Veteran Member
Brother human theist. A pain in his own a r s E. Sear. Two types of meanings.

Exact.

Every human is a human. Equal.

When you get over your rich man science history propaganda. Then you'd tell the truth.

A humans says I believe a human suffered extreme pain as there isn't a God.

You'd ask a human so what are you human aware of?

Oh I named earth God types in human science. I removed the God type in human science myself. Caused natural origin conditions I don't own in science to change

Notice you must remind greedy I own everything that he does not own natural mass.

It's the exact answer. I caused it. I knew I caused it. My man human science memory said as I removed human life supported by cold origin mass presence ...I named as God.

So then humans illegally saying when a human never existed can be proven lying. Can be legally for human rights to life human... are finally dealt with.

A human says the closest medical biology advice is bio the ape. Must have had ape sex produced by atmospheric change a human baby mutant. Human.

Ape sex the topic. Finished there as ape first. Then sex. Then human thesis. My human theory for my human egotism.

Sex. Does not go anywhere else in thinking.

Human medical science. Looks at a human. Says as science I identify something is wrong with your human body.

Is exact human science. Medical only.

Science says first two ever humans are dead. Had sex as the human before they died. Exactly advised.

Now are just bodily some type of microbes as dead humans.

Microbe human dead human compared to living natural healthy alive human.

Exact science by humans presence only. Legal position. Legal history established versus scientific human life's destroyer scientist.
 

Ella S.

Dispassionate Goth
In this context I am talking about physical suffering, like the pain that you felt in the surgery room……… most organism wouldn’t have felt any pain, in order to have a selective benefit you don’t need to feel conscious pain (complex mechanism) all you need is to react and avoid pain (simple mechanism) … Natural Selection is unlikely to select complex useless mechanisms over simple and useful mechanisms

Pain tells us when there is something damaging our body, and we evolved suffering as an aversion to pain so that we were more likely to avoid situations that could kill or seriously harm us in order to survive longer and increase our chances of reproductive success.

It is a fairly simple mechanism, I think, although evolution is certainly not beyond developing needless complexity. If a mutation does not prevent an organism from producing fertile offspring, then it doesn't matter how pointless or harmful that mutation is. It will still get passed on, and it will mutate even further after enough generations.

Mutation isn't "random," because it follows fairly well-understood natural laws, but it can be hard to predict and not all mutations are adaptive. There are maladptive and neutral mutations. It's just that the species who manage to survive and reproduce tend to be better at surviving and reproducing.
 

PearlSeeker

Well-Known Member
When we are old we are no longer affected nearly as much by evolutionary drives. We are not going to have more children or be involved in raising them. And once that happens evolution does not "care" about use any longer. In other words, there is no evolutionary advantage to a pain free life after a while so there is no evolutionary drive to have a perfect nervous system.
Is there any evolutionary advantage/benefit of aging? Doesn't longer life span mean you can have more children or better support them?
 

firedragon

Veteran Member
Is there any evolutionary advantage/benefit of aging? Doesn't longer life span mean you can have more children or better support them?

There was a study that shows the more intelligent you are, the lesser children you have. Or was it people who are involved in highly scholarly/scientific professions have letter children? Must try and find that study.

But just thinking about it, just because you live longer you might not be able to bear more children because there is something called a child bearing age. Exceptions could be there. I remember there was an entry in the Guinness book of world records about a woman who had a child in her sixties. Statically I doubt it can make much of an effect. This is just my opinion, so if there are indeed any studies I would like to read.
 

Aupmanyav

Be your own guru
Well suffering is a complex and useless mechanism so why would it evolve by natural selection? It is true that NS is not the only naturalistic option but none of the alternatives that I am aware of seems to solve the problem.
Suffering. We have memory, the repository of experiences, good and bad. Miss the good experiences, that is the cause of suffering.
Both Hinduism and Buddhism emphasize that one overcomes dukha (suffering) through the development of understanding.
Duḥkha - Wikipedia (I do not agree to some things mentioned here)
Duḥkha - Wikipedia (Buddhism), Duḥkha - Wikipedia (Hinduism)
Is there any evolutionary advantage/benefit of aging? Doesn't longer life span mean you can have more children or better support them?
More life experience, more wisdom in some cases.
Aging is beyond 75. No more children (for most), no more child raising (other than grand children).
 
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Heyo

Veteran Member
Is there any evolutionary advantage/benefit of aging? Doesn't longer life span mean you can have more children or better support them?
You take up space and use resources that can be more effectively used by your (better adapted) offspring. There is an optimal age span that is different for every niche and species.
 

sayak83

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
Life starts with plants, single cells, no brains needed. Everything reacts to environment, stores up information from its surroundings. Geologists will tell you rocks are books of information without being alive. Everything stores information. Everything reacts to environment.
Does everything have inner experiences?
 

exchemist

Veteran Member
Is there any evolutionary advantage/benefit of aging? Doesn't longer life span mean you can have more children or better support them?
With human beings, there actually may be an evolutionary advantage for some to live well past reproductive age, as humanity, uniquely, gains reproductive advantage from knowledge, handed on from one generation to the next. Before the advent of writing, this was word of mouth. Having a few village elders around to teach the younger members of the tribe could have helped the tribe to thrive better than if everyone died at, say, 35. In some cases, too, child-rearing (which takes an extraordinarily long time in the human species) would have been a collective responsibility partly shared with an older generation.

So yes I think there are reasons to think longevity could have had some evolutionary value.
 

leroy

Well-Known Member
I
The reason atheists don't have the same problem as theists have, if we use the same example above with an animal suffering, is that suffering is a result of being hurt or it might be a result of how a predator hunting prey takes place using whatever tools it has. But for a theist, God could in principle have made this process unpainful, so there wouldn't be any suffering involved.

So as evolution, evolution could have also made the process unpainful .....if fact it did in in 99.99% of the organisms, only a small minority (some vertebrates) feel pain and suffer.

Imagine a fish that already reacts and avoids dangerous situations// then imagine that his offspring has an extra layer of complexity and feels actual pain and suffering.......why would natural selection select this fish ?
 

leroy

Well-Known Member
Only if s/he is willing to sacrifice either benevolence or omnipotence (or both). An omnipotent god could have solved a problem without subjecting sentient beings to suffering.
In the same way the naturalist has to sacrifice evolution by natural selection and replace it with a mechanism that would select complex and useless mechanisms over simple and efficient ones
 

leroy

Well-Known Member
You appear to be rather confused, again, and are also trying to make up your own definitioins.

Biologically pain is a very useful mechanism. It drives an organism to retreat from harmful or dangerous situations. "Suffering" occurs when an organism cannot retreat from a pain. There could be several causes of it. For example a gnu may retreat from a lion due to understanding what pain is, but the lion may still catch the prey. The prey will suffer for a while from the pain inflicted at its death. They body is telling it to run when it can no longer do so. Pain is still a useful trait for the species, it is just no longer useful for that individual. One thing tha t people that do not understand evolution do quite often is to conflate individual members of a species with a species in general. I can give countless examples of how pain is a good thing. When you throw a 4 ounce rock into the air and let it hit you on the head you quickly realize that doing the same with a 2 pound boulder would not be a good idea. Pain acts as a warning. People tend to be stupid at times and we need warnings. But sometimes our systems fail. Especially as we get older. So things that use to cause a moment of pain now cause long term or even permanent pain. When we are old we are no longer affected nearly as much by evolutionary drives. We are not going to have more children or be involved in raising them. And once that happens evolution does not "care" about use any longer. In other words, there is no evolutionary advantage to a pain free life after a while so there is no evolutionary drive to have a perfect nervous system.

Suffering shows that we were evolved and not created.
Pain acts as a warning
Yes but having conscious pain is not an advantage vs simply reacting and avoiding danger (like most organisms do) ....... an ancient fish will already run away if its bitten by a larger fish......what is the advantage of adding conscious pain to that mechanism?
 
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