Religions and Suffering

rpcarnell
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Religions and Suffering

One question raised by atheists all the time is this: "if there is a God, why does he allow suffering?"

The Christian answer to this is "sometimes god creates suffering so that we can value what we have."

This is also the answer most commonly given when people ask "why god won't heal amputees?" So, what happens if I find out I am going blind? Should I pray to God or should I just go blind so that others value their ability to see? Wouldn't it better if we all lived in a world of cats and rainbows where lions eat alongside zebras, and bad things are just fantasies that fill theaters? It'd convince me more that there is a God. 


Luminon
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The truth is, that most

The truth is, that most people learn through suffering. They're only capable of reacting to strong stimuli, and suffering is more readily available than strong pleasure. Smart people can learn their life lessons through observing or even reading and imagining. But most of people just would go on and on. Sometimes people are so reactionary, stupid, selfish or short-sighted, that the world needs a great world war or two, to destroy old states, old political regimes, old devotion to religion, old notions in science, old buildings Sticking out tongue ...you know, everything old. Not that I would like suffering, but it is a lesson to not insist on old things so stubbornly, the more crystallized we like our world, the greater violence will have to come and shatter it. Everything must be able to change, to avoid the unnecessary suffering. Which religions don't understand.

Why doesn't God heal amputees? Well, according to all greater world's religions, when people die, they shed their physical body and later they reincarnate and get a new one. This was also for a long time part of Christianity, Islam and some Jewish sects, along with the classy Buddhism and Hinduism. From the view of eternity, lost limb is just a minor nuisance or a good lesson. Some mystical teachers behind every religion even say that we are parts of God, and so God experiences the world and suffers with us and through us, sort of.

When Christian emperor erased reincarnation from Bible and Islam stopped paying attention to its own reincarnatory tradition, the religion lost its explanatory purpose. Similarly it is with other misinterpretations, that describe karma as inescapable fate. Once shit happens to you, it is a fate and you must not do anything about it. That is bullshit too.

If that mystical interpretation is true, then we are the parts of God with greatest manual dextrity and so it's up to us to learn how to heal amputees and other unnecessary nuisances. Once we develop the knowledge how to, it becomes our full right to eliminate suffering and replace it with much more sophisticated processes of teaching and learning. Certain esoteric source says, that the 'Ancient law of evil' will be replaced by 'Ancient law of divine good-will', or something like that. Which is basically admitting that God is not perfect, still developing just like everyone, and that the planet needs some serious debugging before it will be a comfortable place to live. And people can really help with that process.

Nevermind religion, it got stuck with no answers many centuries ago.

Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.


Beyond Saving
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rpcarnell wrote:One question

rpcarnell wrote:

One question raised by atheists all the time is this: "if there is a God, why does he allow suffering?"

The Christian answer to this is "sometimes god creates suffering so that we can value what we have."

This is also the answer most commonly given when people ask "why god won't heal amputees?" So, what happens if I find out I am going blind? Should I pray to God or should I just go blind so that others value their ability to see? Wouldn't it better if we all lived in a world of cats and rainbows where lions eat alongside zebras, and bad things are just fantasies that fill theaters? It'd convince me more that there is a God. 

Lions do eat alongside the Zebras. They eat alongside, over and even inside of Zebras. 

If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X