Suffering

Post date: Dec 13, 2020 6:52:25 PM

If there is a so-called god, then he chose to let tsunamis occur, knowing that it would cause huge suffering... How could a perfectly good so-called god create a world in which that sort of natural disaster regularly happens, and regularly brings huge misery to humanity...

People choosing to live in what they know is a flood plain, or next to what they know is a volcano, or in what they know is an earthquake zone, etc... There remains a massive amount of apparently gratuitous suffering, occurring beyond human control in our world...

Suffering of animals before the emergence of mankind... Suppose we make the conservative assumption that for one hundred million years before the appearance of man, there existed species that were capable of suffering pain... Most of those creatures must have died painful grisly deaths... They would have been eaten alive, died of dehydration or starvation, been burnt alive in forest fires, buried beneath volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, and afflicted with awful diseases... Here is one tiny fragment, reported in the press, in the huge mosaic of animal suffering: Farmers have reported a rise in the number of calves, lambs, and sheep pecked to death [by ravens]... Animals not killed have been left in agony as the birds eat their eyes, tongues and soft flesh of their underbelly. What counterbalancing good justifies allowing this universal misery to run on??? Furthermore, this colossal animal suffering cannot be seen as a kind of very long run of very bad luck for animals, something which was avoidable in the world as so-called god has supposedly created it... For so-called god (who say he exists) has created an animal world which is divided into herbivores and carnivores... One consequence is that the flourishing of some absolutely requires, the suffering of others... Either some animals will die of starvation, or other animals will be torn to pieces and eaten... The animal world has been set up in such a way that widespread and extreme suffering in it is absolutely inevitable; and it is suffering which has nothing to do with any supposed benefits arising from the possession by humans of so-called free will... At least in the case of humans, the flourishing of some does not require the suffering of others, even if in practice the two go hand in hand...

So, the position we reach is this... Even theists recognize that the existence of the suffering in the world is at least prima facie evidence against the existence of so-called god... For about 2,000 years they have struggled to find a plausible explanation for it, but without success, and it therefore remains as a compelling reason for denying the existence of a so-called god whose suppose to be omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good...