If God is good, why is there evil, suffering and death?

[DaveD49]

EDIT:SORRY, BUT I CREATED CONFUSION WITH THE QUESTION BY THE TITLE I GAVE THE POST. THE ACTUAL QUESTION IS WHERE IT SAYS "SUBJECT FOR DEBATE" BUT IF YOU HAVE AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW FEEL FREE TO POST IT, BUT I AM LOOKING FOR FEEDBACK ON THE ANSWER I GAVE. IF YOU CAN POINT TO SOMETHING WHERE I AM WRONG OR SOMETHING I MAY HAVE MISSED.

This question has been often brought up by atheists and rightfully so. It has also been extremely difficult for theists to answer who stumble over explanations. I am not trying to say that "I have THE answer", but I think I might claim that I have a possible answer.

SUBJECT FOR DEBATE: DO YOU AGREE OR DISAGREE WITH THE FOLLOWING AS A POSSIBLE ANSWER FOR THE QUESTION OF IF A GOOD GOD EXISTS WHY IS THERE EVIL, PAIN, SUFFERING, AND DEATH IN THE WORLD?
Please state whether you agree or disagree.
Please explain why you feel that way.

I most certainly do believe as John says in his letter that "God is love. He who abides in love abides in God and God in him." (1John 4:16)

Love by its very nature must be shared, hence this may be the reason why God created us as living souls. Love is best when it is returned, so yes, He wants us to love Him in return. However love cannot be "forced" to love and have it remain love. By its very nature love has to be freely given. So it would be impossible for God to create us "already loving". Certainly He could do that but that would never be true love. Love MUST be freely given. But it would be impossible to do that while we were still in the presence of God. Certainly we could have devotion and awe, but that is not love. In my mind I believe that this is the state of the angels who have not gone through the process of learning how to love.

So, how do we learn to love? First of we had to be given the complete freedom to do any and all evil even though that leads away from God and love, because it is only when we are free to do evil that we are also free to reject that evil and do the good that leads towards God and love. You cannot have "good" without the possibility of "evil". This could not be in the direct presence of God as direct knowledge of Him would skew our free choices. Hence the reason for the creation of the physical realm and why we are only given "hints" of His existence.

Secondly we had to be given pain, suffering, toil and death. These were the "punishments" in the Bible which were given to Adam and Eve for their eating from "The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil". In other words we were given a conscience. In my mind this is the most important point of the Adam and Eve story be cause it essentially describes man becoming fully human when He was given a conscience. We no longer lived by instinct as other animal do; instead we are given the insatiable desire to seek the greater good (or the greater evil). This is what has led us from trees to the ground, from the ground to caves, to huts, to houses, to skyscrapers, and also led us from stones to spears, to arrows, to guns, and to thermonuclear weapons. Every decision we make is based on the conscience.... which way would it be better to turn? Right or left? We are asking ourselves which way would be the "better good". So the existence of evil plays an extremely important part of human development.

What about pain, suffering, toil and death? When you think about it you will realize that is only through our personal experience of these, and how they hurt, either in ourselves of a member of our social circle, that we can learn compassion and sympathy for someone else experiencing the same thing. This starts only within our own social circle. But compassion and sympathy teach us to care about even those outside of our social circle. And it is caring about the stranger that leads us to true selfless love.

This whole thing came to my mind when I realized that the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" meant man being given a conscience. Everything else followed after that. I used to dismiss the A&E story as a simple story of creation, but now I see it as one of the most profound in all human literature because with thought it gives the reason for our existence, the reason for evil, the reason for pain, suffering and death, and what our goal should be in this physical realm: to learn true selfless love.

[JehovahsWitness]

You said that "Theists usually stumble over explanations because they do not imho rely on scripture to find the answers to these fundamental questions." As I said my opinion is that for a person to believe in Scripture they would first have accept the notion of God.

Well given that the OP refers to both God and scripture as a basis for the points therein, I took proving the premise to be as unnecessary as you evidently did in your OP. Would you like to further edit the original post ? Or would you rather start another thread which deals with the premise upon which this one is based?

[DaveD49]

You said that "Theists usually stumble over explanations because they do not imho rely on scripture to find the answers to these fundamental questions." As I said my opinion is that for a person to believe in Scripture they would first have accept the notion of God.

Well given that the OP refers to both God and scripture as a basis for the points therein, I took proving the premise to be as unnecessary as you evidently did in your OP. Would you like to further edit the original post ? Or would you rather start another thread which deals with the premise upon which this one is based?

Sorry, I may be tired but I cannot really understand what you are referring to. Can you explain what you mean? Thanks.

[JehovahsWitness]

You said that "Theists usually stumble over explanations because they do not imho rely on scripture to find the answers to these fundamental questions." As I said my opinion is that for a person to believe in Scripture they would first have accept the notion of God.

Well given that the OP refers to both God and scripture as a basis for the points therein, I took proving the premise to be as unnecessary as you evidently did in your OP. Would you like to further edit the original post ? Or would you rather start another thread which deals with the premise upon which this one is based?

Sorry, I may be tired but I cannot really understand what you are referring to. Can you explain what you mean? Thanks.

Thats okay, baby steps.


1. The original post - OP- (which is the first post in this thread (series of posts) that you will see right at the top of each page here in this thread) presents and argument based on the premise* that there is a God and scripture (the bible) contains ideas from God. It does not try and prove either of these two things are fact. I did what you did.


* A PREMISE a previous statement or proposition from which another is inferred or follows as a conclusion

[DaveD49]

[Replying to JehovahsWitness in post #23]

JW: "1. The original post - OP- (which is the first post in this thread (series of posts) that you will see right at the top of each page here in this thread) presents and argument based on the premise* that there is a God and scripture (the bible) contains ideas from God. It does not try and prove either of these two things are fact. I did what you did.


* A PREMISE a previous statement or proposition from which another is inferred or follows as a conclusion."

Now you are bordering on the insulting. The only Scripture I referred to is the Adam & Eve story as actually talking about man getting a conscience. But you completely ignored the point which I was making in response your claim that essentially Scripture has all the answers. The point I was making is that you cannot rely on Scripture when talking to atheists because if they do not believe in God then obviously the would not accept Scripture. If you see this as a defamation of Scripture, you are wrong. I was only pointing out the weakness of Scripture when talking to atheists.

[JehovahsWitness]

...The only Scripture I referred to is the Adam & Eve story

I see ....

... John says in his letter that "God is love. He who abides in love abides in God and God in him." (1John 4:16) ...

...you cannot rely on Scripture when talking to atheists ...

So why did you refer to scripture ?

[AquinasForGod]

I agree with this in part, but it doesn't fully explain all kinds of sufferings like children suffering to death at too young an age to have learned compassion.

My full answer is here - https://www.freelymeditate.com/single-p ... -the-world

If God is good, why is there so much suffering in the world? This is a good question. It is not an easy question to answer, but that doesn’t mean there is no answer.
Step 1: It is our choice to suffer.
I would start with the fact that God knows everything. He sees the whole landscape of time in one single act. God even knows all possible worlds. This means that God knows if he were to ask us if we are willing to suffer knowing that it maximizes our chance to live in heaven without ever falling away (like Satan feel), would we accept it? God knows who of us would say yes and who of us would say no.
Those who said no, I would rather live the good life, get the good life even if it decreases their chances of heaven. In this way, we all chose to suffer. Not that God actually asked us for he could not ask us before we existed, but God can hypothetical ask us and because God is all knowing, he knows what our answers would be.
Stage 2: We are born were we need to be born.
Also, because God knows the whole landscape of time, he knows exactly when and where any soul needs to be born in order to maximize their chances of heaven. This means we have freewill, which I will get to. God knows that Bob needed to be born in 1979 in USA, Florida to such and such a family in order to maximize his chances of him choosing heaven by his own freewill.
Stage 3: We have freewill.
God is the good. To see the argument for that, https://www.freelymeditate.com/single-p ... t-god-evil
It is good that creatures with freewill exist, thus we creatures of freewill exist.
Stage 4: Created freewill beings will choose less than perfect things
God is the only perfect being because God is eternal. Perfect means that something cannot grow or change anymore. It is as good as it gets. So anything that can grow and change can become better, thus created things cannot be perfect.
Because us freewill beings cannot be perfect, by exercising our freewill, we will make less than perfect choices. Such choices lead to suffering.
Stage 5: God is just
God is fair and thus just. If we cause suffering, then in order for us to grow and learn to love, learn compassion, learn to be sympathetic and such, there needs to be consequences for the suffering we cause. So we suffer.
However, if freewill creatures had to rely on other freewill creatures to cause them suffering when they deserved it, then we might never endure the suffering we deserve and thus never learn to be as compassionate and loving as we could be.
Thus, natural disasters, diseases, and such kinds of suffering.
Stage 6: We all have different weaknesses
Each of us are unique and have different weakness that God knows we must overcome in order that we can blissfully live in heaven and never fall away. If we do not overcome these weaknesses, these possible temptations then like Satan, we would fall away.
This is why demons exist at all. This is why demons know us so well. They know our psychology so well. They serve a purpose for our growth to being loving. We could not rely on only the freewill of men to tease out and test all our weaknesses. Demons serve this purpose. They test us where we need to grow. They help us fix our weaknesses, which we only accomplish in Christ by the grace of God. We learn to align ourselves with the will of God.

I think this answers all major questions of why there is suffering in the world. But you might wonder, why do babies suffer and then die? That seems senseless. They haven’t chosen to do any evil or cause suffering yet, so they don’t seem worthy of hell, but at the same time they haven’t done anything to overcome evil, to learn to love and be compassionate and empathetic, sympathetic, etc, so they don’t seem worthy of heaven either.
If the whole point of being on earth and suffering is to learn to love, then the baby that dies could not have learned that. This is why many believe in the doctrine of limbo.
However, I have a different answer. God knows exactly how we would answer if we were asked if we would suffer in order to maximize our chances of going to heaven and never falling away. This means that the babies that die or young children, God knows they would agree to such sufferings if it increased their chances of obtaining heaven and never falling away.
So one, it is their choice to live that life. However, there is still the issue of them learning compassion and sympathy. They begin that process by being a child that dies young. If they endured enough suffering in life, then in purgatory they reflect back on that suffering, and living a life mentally in this reflection, with a fully developed mind.
They learn of how their suffering caused their parents to suffer. In reflection on all this, they learn the compassion they needed to learn, such as, why people might lash out at the loss of a child or how some lose faith because of it.
All of us have different areas that we are weak in, that we need to overcome. Where we are born and in what time we are born, and what demons test us along the way, all is to maximize our chances for heaven. It is tailored for each of us individually. Only God could weave such a complex web, where freewill beings are all exactly where they need to be in order to maximize the good.
Back to the children. The children that did not suffer much, suffer in purgatory in order to test the little weaknesses they have so they grow to be loving and will never fall away once in heaven.
Basically, those souls have less weaknesses to be purified, but they must still learn compassion, sympathy, etc which they do in their reflection in purgatory.
I think a whole book could be written on just that concept.
I am pretty sure this answers for every kind of suffering.

[DaveD49]

...The only Scripture I referred to is the Adam & Eve story

I see ....

... John says in his letter that "God is love. He who abides in love abides in God and God in him." (1John 4:16) ...

...you cannot rely on Scripture when talking to atheists ...

So why did you refer to scripture ?

My comment was in reaction to your statement that the Bible contains all the answers. This certainly may be true, but unless someone believes in God they are not going to accept any answers from Scripture as truth.

One of my essential points in referring to the A&E story was because of my belief that it is the conscience which creates in us the search for the greater good (or the greater evil)and that is responsible for virtually all the achievements of man. We are no longer ruled by instinct. In my mind this is how A&E are depicted prior from eating from the tree. The were without sin and naked because they did not have the capability of making a free choice between good and evil and did not realize that there was something better than being naked. In the same way a wolf does not care that he is naked, nor is he doing "evil" even if he kills a human. He is living purely by instinct. We see it as something horrible, but the wolf doesn't. I was not using the reference as "proof" of my comments about the conscience, just pointing out that the A&E story can be seen to agree with me. I hadn't noticed this until a just fairly short time ago.

Before I used the quote from John I stated that MY belief was that God is love. I used that quote as an example of Scripture saying the same thing. While there are many quotes in the Bible that say the same thing I chose that one because of its implications. That even if an atheist lived in love of his fellowman he would be living in God and God in him.

[Purple Knight]

The nature of our circumstance has it that humans had regarded suffering/pain/death as being nothing unnatural/unusual except when the idea was introduced of being within a creation and therefore implying that there is a creator

I do think you're onto something.

It's weird to ask about the raison d'être of something that has always been and presumably always will be.

There is no person alive who has not suffered. We don't know what it would be like to never have suffered. For all we know it wouldn't even be consciousness. Isn't consciousness what develops when we learn, and isn't learning what happens when some things we do produce pain and other things produce pleasantness?

I find myself being with you here even though I was on the atheist side in the topic about laws, order, and reason being evidence for god. But it's for the same reason.

People are trying to see outside something we are intrinsically within, that it might be our very nature to be within, and claim that the presence of something we cannot ever be outside of, proves something. I don't think it does.

It's like asking, "If there is a god, why are there bald people?" ...And this is a better case, because not everyone is bald. If everyone was bald, we wouldn't even know what we were asking. So when we ask, "Why is there suffering?" we really don't know what we're asking, because everyone has suffered.

[OneWay]

If God is good, why is there evil, suffering and death?

Because He created it.

[William]

[Replying to Purple Knight in post #28]

The nature of our circumstance has it that humans had regarded suffering/pain/death as being nothing unnatural/unusual except when the idea was introduced of being within a creation and therefore implying that there is a creator

I do think you're onto something.

It's weird to ask about the raison d'être of something that has always been and presumably always will be.

Apotheosis - it appears to be part of the coding humans have installed in our body sets...to push through the barriers of prior learning which has taken us to dead-ends and seemingly compels/propels us each to continue looking for the answers to the questions which arise through this experience.

This is not apparent in everyone of course - but the potential is there and in most cases is active during formative years and somehow satisfied in those who decide they have sufficient answers to explain their existence, even if "I cannot know" is more of an expression of the survival device - where one's survival depends upon the input of information necessary to that end and investment in the big questions can wait/are pointless even asking, let alone expecting that logical answers can be gained.

There is no person alive who has not suffered. We don't know what it would be like to never have suffered.

We do not know this because we do not have access to any data pertaining to prior existence/experience.
For the most part, we are able to imagine what it would be like not to suffer at all...or to suffer continually - and subsequently mythologies have been invented which reflect those thoughts...

The thing is, we experience both, and in that, we gain information about both types of states which are had through experience of the one, overall state.

Isn't consciousness what develops when we learn, and isn't learning what happens when some things we do produce pain and other things produce pleasantness?

It is personality which grows with each single human experience. Consciousness may be the fabric upon which this is made possible/that which allows for personality to be established through an apparently physical reality - which is also a temporary state for each personality grown.

I find myself being with you here even though I was on the atheist side in the topic about laws, order, and reason being evidence for god. But it's for the same reason.

People are trying to see outside something we are intrinsically within, that it might be our very nature to be within, and claim that the presence of something we cannot ever be outside of, proves something. I don't think it does.

All in all we are examining the nature of the beast in terms of human experience - and some type of eventual taming of said beast, which appears to be something which requires the individual to 'go inwards' and clean up the 'rooms' which require attention, therein.

In that, we are not overly bound to any beast-like nature because there is something about us which allows for - at least - the potential to tame the internal beast...so that we express back into the external, something which contributes to the overall taming of the human animal...

...so the myths act as useful fiction... if they can be accepted in that manner.

It's like asking, "If there is a god, why are there bald people?" ...And this is a better case, because not everyone is bald. If everyone was bald, we wouldn't even know what we were asking. So when we ask, "Why is there suffering?" we really don't know what we're asking, because everyone has suffered.

Again, we also have something to compare suffering against, and that is non-suffering.

Asking "Why is there suffering?" would be as strange as asking "Why is there non-suffering?" - re that - the question of being within a creation and implying a creator/creators can shift to more appropriate points of view where - to remain in acknowledgment of only the 'suffering' part gives a false image just as surely as the points of view where acknowledgment of only the 'non-suffering' part also gives a false image.

that, connects with this;

viewtopic.php?p=1102468#p1102468