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Post by OldSamVimes on Dec 30, 2019 13:47:56 GMT
That's either projection or negative assumption. You can do a quick google search into what 'Spiritual consciousness' is if you're curious. I agree, if your worldview doesn't do service to your mental health then it's time to become curious and step out of your comfort zone and broaden your perspective. You can still engage in the game and think the game is worthwhile while being conscious that it's a game. I think of being human as 'playing the human game'. One thing for sure, people who take things seriously invariably suffer. How so? You're the one claiming everyone who doesn't agree with your metaphysics are "spiritually unconscious." Isn't it you who's making an awfully big assumption there? I don't need to do a Google search to recognize woo terminology. I'd say it's less about your worldview doing service to your mental health and more about your worldview actually having some resemblance to how the world actually is rather than how you just want it to be or imagine it to be. Anyone who thinks they know 'how the world is' is a liar. The more you learn, the more you realize how little you know. The human mind is an unfathomable mystery, as is the Universe.
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Post by OldSamVimes on Dec 30, 2019 14:05:00 GMT
Life After Death: Sikhs believe that upon death one merges back into the universal nature, just as a drop of rain merges back into the ocean. Individuality is lost. Sikhs do not believe in heaven or hell. Heaven can be experienced by being in tune with God while still alive. I guess individuality being lost would seem like death to most people. Most of us are somewhat invested in our life stories and names. I really like the drop of rain into the ocean analogy. I often think we are falling raindrops who have forgotten we are the Ocean. It is interesting that the Abrahamic religions tend to see the afterlife in individualistic terms while Dharmic religions see it as more collective (or in Buddhist terms maybe destructive is a better word). Of course, the problem of evil is not really a problem for Dharmic religions in general since they tend to be pantheist or atheist so there is no question as to why God created the world to have suffering in it since they either hold that there is no God or that God is the world and therefore suffering just is rather than being a choice. I grew up going to Roman Catholic church which was an external, judgmental God. I much prefer the Eastern Philosophies, where 'God' can sometimes be described as a vast ocean of consciousness where Universes and worlds appear then disappear endlessly. Thanks for the thoughtful post.
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Post by northern on Dec 30, 2019 17:32:18 GMT
Who are you to question my question of his questioning.😛 It was a typical religiously pious and shallow dogmatic approach you took that needed to be called out for its arrogance and absurdity of belief. Spoken like a true atheist nitwit... |
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Post by rizdek on Dec 30, 2019 18:46:55 GMT
It actually doesn't assume God exists...because the question is "Why WOULD God let us suffer?" So the question is conditional of there being a god. But the question does assume a kind of God who might give a rats ass if people suffer. Perhaps God doesn't care at all about people who, to him/it, are no more than ticks on a horse's ass or the fungus that grows under a log in the swamp. So it might be indifferent or it might even kind of enjoy making things suffer...just to watch the response since god itself can't suffer. I don't think the "any amt of suffering is nothing compared to eternal life" works because THAT assumes an afterlife...an afterlife of supposed bliss. Just because a god exists is no indication of any afterlife...much less one of bliss. But the question then would be why would a God that gives a shit about humans bother with the "3 score and 10" of suffering if it is dwarfed by an eternity of bliss? It seems a big waste of suffering that a god with any benevolence at all would avoid if for no other reason than to keep from looking like a dick. What would be the point? But as above, perhaps God wants to look like a dick. But as for suffering here...I'm perfectly happy and have suffered almost none at all. So, I'd have no bone to pick with a god. But I am aware of many who seem to have suffered extensively...horribly...an in many cases not at all due to any fault of their own. I guess I can be relieved and not worry about them because...you know...any amt of suffering those dweebs endure is nothing compared to an eternal afterlife. Presumably said god is gonna make up for all those children suffering chronic malnutrition and abuse just so I can have my slice of fucking free will. I agree that the question assumes (for the sake of argument at least), that some from of God exists. If we're going to discuss the question 'Why WOULD God let us suffer'? We need to acknowledge that suffering has a different context if physical death is not the end. Any belief in God (external, internal or pervasive) comes along with the idea 'When we die that's not it'. "Just because a god exists is no indication of any afterlife...much less one of bliss." I can't think of any historical religion or people who had a belief in God(s), but no belief in any afterlife at all. Can you give me any examples of any religion of belief system believing God exists but 'There's no afterlife'? Perhaps deists don't necessarily believe in an afterlife. This site discusses it. I don't put too much stock in the established religions of which I am aware. They seem pretty much manmade and designed for crowd control and perhaps psychological support. I was speaking more abstractly and from a perspective of arguments and lines of reasoning that seem to lead people to believe in God or gods. There are some pretty good arguments that might lead one to believe there is some sort of "other" power that caused and influences the natural world. But I'm not aware of any good arguments that support the afterlife. Here I'm speaking of an eternal or essentially eternal afterlife that doesn't include NDEs or OBEs which, as far as I can tell, can all seem to happen to people near death but who are not actually dead as in all brain activity has ceased and their physical body has started to deteriorate or they've been prepped for burial.
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Post by Huxley on Dec 30, 2019 19:39:09 GMT
God allows suffering for the same reason you do. If there were no suffering or pain we wouldn't be alive. It's part of a package deal.
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Post by Isapop on Dec 30, 2019 20:10:28 GMT
God allows suffering for the same reason you do. If there were no suffering or pain we wouldn't be alive. It's part of a package deal. Unless you're talking about the kind of suffering or pain we get when our hand sends us a signal to remove it from a flame I make no sense of your answer. Empathetic people with decent impulses don't allow suffering in the way that God allows it. Instead, they try to prevent or alleviate suffering where and when it's within their power. And they would do far more of it if they had God's power.
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Post by FilmFlaneur on Dec 30, 2019 21:06:53 GMT
God allows suffering for the same reason you do. If there were no suffering or pain we wouldn't be alive. It's part of a package deal. Unless you're talking about the kind of suffering or pain we get when our hand sends us a signal to remove it from a flame I make no sense of your answer. Empathetic people with decent impulses don't allow suffering in the way that God allows it. Instead, they try to prevent or alleviate suffering where and when it's within their power. And they would do far more of it if they had God's power.
Even Jesus didn't do far more of it with God's power. He only supposedly cured a few lepers but did nothing for the others world wide. The reason being, I have been assured by apologists, is that "no one asked him to", as if Lepers would prefer to remain sick by default. Oddly enough though, even without invitation, he managed to die for us all.
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Post by Isapop on Dec 30, 2019 21:48:28 GMT
Unless you're talking about the kind of suffering or pain we get when our hand sends us a signal to remove it from a flame I make no sense of your answer. Empathetic people with decent impulses don't allow suffering in the way that God allows it. Instead, they try to prevent or alleviate suffering where and when it's within their power. And they would do far more of it if they had God's power.
Even Jesus didn't do far more of it with God's power. He only supposedly cured a few lepers but did nothing for the others world wide. The reason being, I have been assured by apologists, is that "no one asked him to". Oddly enough though, even without invitation, he managed to die for us all. A less obtuse reason offered by apologists would be that healing the sick was not Jesus' purpose. Healing was evidence of his divine power and authority, giving weight to his words. But as for why God the Father fails to say, "Tsunami cancelled" or "No need for kids to get cancer", no major religion offers any answer that holds up. That's why the question persists for centuries.
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Post by FilmFlaneur on Dec 30, 2019 21:57:53 GMT
Even Jesus didn't do far more of it with God's power. He only supposedly cured a few lepers but did nothing for the others world wide. The reason being, I have been assured by apologists, is that "no one asked him to". Oddly enough though, even without invitation, he managed to die for us all. A less obtuse reason offered by apologists would be that healing the sick was not Jesus' purpose. Healing was evidence of his divine power and authority, giving weight to his words.
Let's not forget that being sick can, er, be a good thing: " Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because whoever suffers in the body is done with sin. 1 Peter 4:1. So that's all right then.
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Post by Huxley on Dec 30, 2019 22:55:36 GMT
God allows suffering for the same reason you do. If there were no suffering or pain we wouldn't be alive. It's part of a package deal. Unless you're talking about the kind of suffering or pain we get when our hand sends us a signal to remove it from a flame I make no sense of your answer. Empathetic people with decent impulses don't allow suffering in the way that God allows it. Instead, they try to prevent or alleviate suffering where and when it's within their power. And they would do far more of it if they had God's power.
God has made provisions for us to receive healing. If we don't act upon it, it's not God's fault.
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Post by Isapop on Dec 30, 2019 23:21:47 GMT
Unless you're talking about the kind of suffering or pain we get when our hand sends us a signal to remove it from a flame I make no sense of your answer. Empathetic people with decent impulses don't allow suffering in the way that God allows it. Instead, they try to prevent or alleviate suffering where and when it's within their power. And they would do far more of it if they had God's power.
God has made provisions for us to receive healing. If we don't act upon it, it's not God's fault. And when you say that to someone whose family was lost to a tsunami, or to parents whose five year old will be dead in one year from cancer, how should they understand its application in their lives?
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Post by Deleted on Dec 31, 2019 2:01:13 GMT
When I say 'unconscious' I don't mean physically unconscious, I mean spiritually unconscious. If you have all your basic needs met (food, shelter, clothing), and you're not more or less in a state of perpetual awe at the mystery of existence itself, you're unconscious. If you have no sense of wonder anymore, and the Universe ceases to be a source of mystery and magic, you're unconscious. Not believing everything is 'real' doesn't mean I'm not susceptible to feeling nerve impulses while I'm trapped in this biological organism. That said, my dentist has at least two clients that decline all freezing when getting painful dental procedures done. He says they meditate a lot and one is a Buddhist. Maybe they'd let you go hit them in the face with a hammer? Feeling physical pain doesn't necessitate the belief that 'the suffering is indeed real'. You feel pain in a dream when you're getting hurt, the pain feels real and the dream environment can feel as real as this one.. but then you wake up. If you're not the body, then any pains that happen to the body are temporary and do not happen to you. One shouldn't be in "awe at the mystery of existence" since mystery is just ignorance I agree overall with what you're arguing here but this is a bizarre point. Humans should absolutely be in awe at the mystery of existence (way, way more than they generally are, actually - any semblance of genuine human reflection or intelligent philosophical discourse seems to be at an all time low lately, at least in America) and stop acting like they - beings hardly that far evolved from apes - have figured the universe out. And mystery can be an extremely beautiful thing in this strange life, equating it to nothing more than ignorance is, again, just a bizarre perspective.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 31, 2019 2:05:05 GMT
Because if 'God' exists then any suffering here is as transient and temporary as a feeling of fear on an amusement park ride. I'd say it's more that a hypothetical God would not see things the way that people do. We are approaching this from an animal perspective of pain = bad. I'd have to imagine the literal creator of reality as we know it doesn't see things through a purely human lens. I prefer to look at the idea of God as nature/the universe itself. Suffering is a natural part of it. We ascribe meaning to the suffering that isn't inherently there. Then we get confused and scared and hurt and ask our projected understanding of a "God" why.
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Post by Toasted Cheese on Dec 31, 2019 3:24:30 GMT
It was a typical religiously pious and shallow dogmatic approach you took that needed to be called out for its arrogance and absurdity of belief. Spoken like a true atheist nitwit... Spoken like the typical conceited assumption of a nitwit theist...
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Post by Eva Yojimbo on Dec 31, 2019 5:36:45 GMT
One shouldn't be in "awe at the mystery of existence" since mystery is just ignorance I agree overall with what you're arguing here but this is a bizarre point. Humans should absolutely be in awe at the mystery of existence (way, way more than they generally are, actually - any semblance of genuine human reflection or intelligent philosophical discourse seems to be at an all time low lately, at least in America) and stop acting like they - beings hardly that far evolved from apes - have figured the universe out. And mystery can be an extremely beautiful thing in this strange life, equating it to nothing more than ignorance is, again, just a bizarre perspective. I was trying to distinguish between being in awe at "mystery" and being in awe with "existence." Existence is awesome, but mystery is just representative of our ignorance about existence. There's nothing awe-worthy about our ignorance, and there's nothing less awe-worthy about things we understand. Basically, what I'm saying comes from these two articles that I strongly agree with: www.lesswrong.com/posts/6i3zToomS86oj9bS6/mysterious-answers-to-mysterious-questionswww.lesswrong.com/posts/x4dG4GhpZH2hgz59x/joy-in-the-merely-real
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Post by Eva Yojimbo on Dec 31, 2019 5:45:41 GMT
How so? You're the one claiming everyone who doesn't agree with your metaphysics are "spiritually unconscious." Isn't it you who's making an awfully big assumption there? I don't need to do a Google search to recognize woo terminology. I'd say it's less about your worldview doing service to your mental health and more about your worldview actually having some resemblance to how the world actually is rather than how you just want it to be or imagine it to be. Anyone who thinks they know 'how the world is' is a liar. The more you learn, the more you realize how little you know. The human mind is an unfathomable mystery, as is the Universe. If you're talking about "how the world is" in some Kantian "ding an sich" way, then sure; but we can certainly know "how the world is" in an "our maps seem to match the territory" way. That's how (and why) science and rationality function so well and are so useful. When you have beliefs, marks on your map, that don't connect to anything in the territory, our sensory experience, then you're in the realm of making shit up, and then you're only limited by your imagination (which can imagine reality being far more ways than how reality actually is). Yes, the human mind is an "unfathomable mystery," which is why when you pick up a 1000+ page textbook on cognitive/neuroscience it just says "unfathomable mystery" on every page.
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Post by Eva Yojimbo on Dec 31, 2019 5:50:55 GMT
This doesn't seem to have much to do with what I said. To answer "why would/does God allow suffering?" first requires God existing to be answerable, otherwise you might as well ask "how many angles can fit on the head of a pin?" or "do Gargoyles hate elves?" How is a walk in the woods on a beautiful day evidence of anything beyond the fact that our brains evolved towards appreciating certain aesthetics? This thread is about people who ask the question 'Why does God allow suffering'? Or, 'If there's a God, why would He allow suffering?' In both instances we're assuming some sort of God exists for the sake of the question. It's a philosophical question and 'proof of God' doesn't enter into it at all. Have our brains evolved towards appreciating certain aesthetics? Why is it that many people can walk past a beautiful sunset and not notice anything spectacular? Perhaps a feeling of awe is the default and all our conditioning with schools and media limit and narrow our perspectives? I understand, but my entire point is that in order to answer the question you have to have some knowable facts about God, otherwise you can rationalize why god (any god) might would allow suffering. How is that any different than the "how many angles can fit on the head of a pin?" question; in either scenario, you're just making up an answer with no evidence to support it. To say our brains evolved towards anything doesn't mean some individuals haven't developed to varying degrees, or don't place more emphasis on certain aspects of what the brain can do than others. Perhaps someone doesn't recognize the beauty of a sunset, but they recognize the beauty of a Mozart symphony, or a Keats poem, or a Van Gogh painting, or their child's laughter, or their partner's smile, etc. Not many people find nothing about reality beautiful, but it's awfully arrogant to claim that those who don't find what you find beautiful to be spiritually unconscious.
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Post by OldSamVimes on Dec 31, 2019 8:06:50 GMT
This thread is about people who ask the question 'Why does God allow suffering'? Or, 'If there's a God, why would He allow suffering?' In both instances we're assuming some sort of God exists for the sake of the question. It's a philosophical question and 'proof of God' doesn't enter into it at all. Have our brains evolved towards appreciating certain aesthetics? Why is it that many people can walk past a beautiful sunset and not notice anything spectacular? Perhaps a feeling of awe is the default and all our conditioning with schools and media limit and narrow our perspectives? I understand, but my entire point is that in order to answer the question you have to have some knowable facts about God, otherwise you can rationalize why god (any god) might would allow suffering. How is that any different than the "how many angles can fit on the head of a pin?" question; in either scenario, you're just making up an answer with no evidence to support it. To say our brains evolved towards anything doesn't mean some individuals haven't developed to varying degrees, or don't place more emphasis on certain aspects of what the brain can do than others. Perhaps someone doesn't recognize the beauty of a sunset, but they recognize the beauty of a Mozart symphony, or a Keats poem, or a Van Gogh painting, or their child's laughter, or their partner's smile, etc. Not many people find nothing about reality beautiful, but it's awfully arrogant to claim that those who don't find what you find beautiful to be spiritually unconscious. You don't need to know anything about the God(s) being discussed to see that any question including ANY imagined God will also have the component of an afterlife of some sort. There are no religions or belief systems where people believe in God(s), but also think 'When you die, that's it.' There are two main 'templates' for Gods, external and separate, or all-pervasive. Western or Abrahamic religions in the first case and Eastern religions in the second case. As far as I know, they all have an afterlife of some sort. If unconscious people don't like being told they're unconscious then they should start seeking. It was interesting when you said that people who use the term 'Spiritually Unconscious' are probably 'using it to feel they're more enlightened than others', even though it's a commonly used phrase if you look it up.
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Post by Huxley on Dec 31, 2019 14:28:24 GMT
God has made provisions for us to receive healing. If we don't act upon it, it's not God's fault. And when you say that to someone whose family was lost to a tsunami, or to parents whose five year old will be dead in one year from cancer, how should they understand its application in their lives? Things of this nature are revealed to the heart, not to the mind. The mind can never understand the things of God. There are many scriptures on healing in the Bible. Do all people that claim God's healing get healed?...NO! Some do and some don't.
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Post by rizdek on Dec 31, 2019 14:33:41 GMT
God allows suffering for the same reason you do. If there were no suffering or pain we wouldn't be alive. It's part of a package deal. What kind of suffering are you talking about? Why do you imagine suffering or pain is necessary to be alive or to feel like you're alive? What about some people who think there is some sort of eternal idyllic afterlife with no suffering? Do you think they imagine that life won't be "living?" I don't know of anyone who seeks suffering for suffering sake. Pain? Sure some exercise until they hurt...but that is pain with a goal that isn't the pain. And yes some medical procedures are painful, but recovery is the goal...not pain or suffering. and I guess some religious types deprive themselves...but the goal seems to be religious benefit. People, other than masochists or the insane don't seem suffering for suffering sake. Who do you think seeks suffering for suffering sake?
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