Why do you think God put us in this insufferable existence? is there a plan in mind

Slap47 said:
Religious people will say "Bad things happening" is a bad argument, and either post a wojack or make some declaration about free will.

However, it is a great arguement. An all powerful God could simple not do such things and Free Will makes no sense. They act as though people are knowingly rejecting God instead of just not believing it or that they knowingly pick the wrong sect (1/50,000 chance in the case of Chirstianity) when their sect is so obvious.

Its very obvious that religion is a cultural expression most people inherit from their parents that has developed and changed over millennia to adapt to society.
Click to expand...
It's dismissed as an argument because it stems from an inherently childish worldview. It's like punching your mom in the face because you stubbed your toe then telling her she deserved it for buying the house. Traditionally you're not just meant to love God but also fear God and respect the fact that an omnipotent deity would allow for evil to exist in order to test and humble the righteous.
 
  • Thunk-Provoking
  • Islamic Content
Reactions: ToroidalBoat and UERISIMILITUDO
God allowed Satan to have some authority on earth to make a point that life sucks and gave people an objective to dodge his temptations. In other words, we were all tested.
 
  • Thunk-Provoking
Reactions: ToroidalBoat
There's no reason that the universe should conform to our sensibilities, which are largely heuristics useful for living in the tribal societies we evolved in. In philosophy this is known as the absurd

Meaning and happiness are entirely subjective concepts, not laws of reality. You can literally do whatever you want with them
 
ScamL Likely said:
It's dismissed as an argument because it stems from an inherently childish worldview. It's like punching your mom in the face because you stubbed your toe then telling her she deserved it for buying the house. Traditionally you're not just meant to love God but also fear God and respect the fact that an omnipotent deity would allow for evil to exist in order to test and humble the righteous.
Click to expand...

This is a major issue with religions. They encourage people to stop attempting to create a moral system based on rationality and instead blindly obey authorities and texts.
 
  • Agree
Reactions: UERISIMILITUDO
I’m sorry you are suffering. For many it’s a wonderful life.

You can go to church and complain if you like but gods customer service reps aren’t very good - and I wouldnt leave your children with them, either.
 
  • DRINK!
Reactions: Slap47
We got some Fedora tipping ITT so I just want to link toward’s Pete Holmes little bit about “nothing.” Holmes can come off a little cuckoldish at times but damn this rhetoric feels like something Norm Macdonald could have said and that’s the highest compliment I can pay a comedian.
I believe without a doubt that there is a higher force and I have hope it’s the Lord of the Bible (which I have the highest affinity for) but for all I know it could maybe the Greek Pantheon, the stuff Egyptians and Vikings believed, or maybe Elon Musk is right and it’s a simulation. I don’t know so I’m an agnostic theist.

What I do know is that we somehow went from being simplistic violent nomad hunter-gatherers to builders of society who travelled the seas, created amazing technology, and even went out of our planet. And I think our suffering, our challenges in life were the conflicts that forced us to make these breakthroughs.

When “Germs, Guns, and Steel” was every college kids favorite book (until it got quietly cancelled) there was a lot of mockery for the ancient Africans. Oh those silly darkies never advanced! Well if I were one of those 2000 year old Africans I don’t think I would have made tools and animal husbandry either. If you could just happily live on the earth, eat, sleep, and fuck why wouldn’t you?

I haven’t done anything truly noteworthy in life, I’ve only ran & managed my own small business. I say this genuinely my greatest accomplishments today is just optimizing my business in little ways that wound up making my operation run better and my work day easier. I worked out solutions to a conflict.

I don’t want to run risk of powerleveling by shedding any real details on my life so I’ll just analyze Null. I think Null is one helluva Administrator to keep the lights on in this little hub of the internet despite barbarians at the gate trying their hardest to destroy it. I think Null would agree that he wouldn’t be so knowledgeable in internet infrastructure, business management, and legal knowledge had it not been for the countless headaches he endures.

I think pretty much all religions deify the concepts of wisdom & knowledge. And it’s my belief that whatever has created us put us on this earth to attain both. The misery in life is the fuel we need to push ourselves.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Pomniman
Slap47 said:
This is a major issue with religions. They encourage people to stop attempting to create a moral system based on rationality and instead blindly obey authorities and texts.
Click to expand...
How so exactly? I'm a Catholic after having put a lot of time and thought into researching it and thinking about it. I don't blindly follow anything. I follow the rules on morality and ethics because they make rational and logical sense. Nuance does exist. Today at liturgy, the priest gave a homily on what happens to unbelievers. It used to be that the Catholic Church thought that they just went to Hell if they rejected God in life, but over time and a lot of thought put into it, the Church came to the conclusion that we can't understand the mind of God and how His infinite mercy might work in practice even to the moment of death. Therefore, the Catholic Church's position is that they can't verify anyone is actually in Hell because we don't know and can't know that. The Church now thinks that is possible that God's mercy can be granted to anyone at His discretion, regardless if they believed in life or not. You can still reject it, if you like and go to Hell, but that's still your choice to make and that choice can be made to the last moment. Fairly reasonable argument to me. No one is holding me down and forcing me to believe it. I can always say fuck the Church and leave whenever I like. I just think that argument, and many others the Church makes, make rational and logical sense and that is why I decided join with it.

No one likes being told what to do, but sometimes rules are in place for a reason. God didn't tell people to cut off their dicks and pretend to be something they aren't, but without proper moral grounding and understanding why that is retarded, people are doing it anyway because no one can tell me what to do. They are only hurting themselves in the end and such suffering would not have happened if they had just listened in the first place and stopped trying to make themselves their own god. This is what happened at the Fall and continues to happen to this day. God's laws are in place to help us avoid unnecessary suffering in this world, not to cause it.
 
Last edited:
Slap47 said:
This is a major issue with religions. They encourage people to stop attempting to create a moral system based on rationality and instead blindly obey authorities and texts.
Click to expand...
No, it's a major issue with your vanity because you assume thousands of years of philosophy and theology on the subject are all somehow irrational or "blind" because you don't like religion on an aesthetic level. Atheism is more of a "scene" than an idea and it's adhered to because it sounds cool and edgy from a sardonic teenage viewpoint, which some people never grow out of. There's nothing inherently reasonable about it because Atheists are as a whole very shallow thinkers who tend not to read half the things they dismiss as illogical.
 
  • Agree
Reactions: ArnoldPalmer and Mr Bunny
Brightstar777 said:
we are clearly not in heaven, we suffer a lot here, maybe you are just a masochist
Click to expand...
Maybe we do suffer a lot, but I know I've also had a ton of moments of joy, and I still do.

I've never understood "life is just an endless circle of pain and misery" types. Have you seriously never had a good day in your life?
 
There's no god, hence there is no plan. There is zero evidence for either.

What you're seeing is the result of a chaotic system with no all-powerful, all-loving system overseeing it.

Blobby's Murder Knife said:
God didn't tell people to cut off their dicks and pretend to be something they aren't, but without proper moral grounding and understanding why that is retarded, people are doing it anyway because no one can tell me what to do.
Click to expand...

Yeah man, religion would never advocate for cutting off perfectly healthy parts of genitals......

Without religion, nobody would ever have looked at a new born baby boy and thought "he's perfect!.......... but we really need to get a sharp stone and hack that foreskin off".
 
  • Like
Reactions: NIA-DOA 2.0
I am open to there being a god or some sort:

However, it being a god that has some kind of invested interest in us has always seemed silly. If such an entity exists, it probably could care less about us. Do you pay mind to the ants on the sidewalk? No.

Just live your life. It has ups and downs. Those are part of the journey.
 
I've heard the hot take that "this world isn't bad", and "you can't see it" if you think otherwise. To me that's like claiming that "night isn't dark", and "you can't see" if you think otherwise. Of course the world isn't all bad but it does suck overall. One need only look at history or the state of the so-called "3rd World" to get an idea.
 
  • Like
  • Agree
Reactions: ArnoldPalmer and Shamefur Dispray
The short answer is that God permits evil (or suffering, etc.) to bring about some greater good.

Of course, all sorts of objections could be raised against this, but theistic philosophers have developed responses to those objections. Unfortunately, this isn't the type of thing that's easily resolved on an internet forum, and to really get a grip on the details requires diving into some fairly sophisticated works of philosophy and/or philosophical theology.

Brian Davies' book The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil is an accessible starting point.

Edit: Or if that book is too advanced, Davies has a discussion of the PoE in his introduction to the philosophy of religion (which is an excellent book all around).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back