this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
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I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you here, but thought I’d provide a counter argument.
A group of children are dying of a horrible, deadly disease that can only be cured with the bark from a specific tree. So we go into the forest and chop this tree down to save the children from an excruciating disease.
A squirrel had built its entire home in that tree. That tree was everything to the squirrel. Now the squirrel has nothing and will suffer because we chopped down its home.
How do we explain this to the squirrel? Well, we can’t. No matter how hard we try, we can’t explain why we needed to destroy its home. The squirrel is physically incapable of understanding.
Playing devils advocate here, perhaps the reason for the need for human suffering is so beyond our understanding and comprehension that we are just physically incapable of understanding. Maybe we’re just squirrels, and human suffering needs to happen for some greater purpose unbeknownst to us.
We're talking about the Abrahamic trio, so God is supposed to be all powerful. That means there is nothing beyond his power. There is no "can only" or "can't" or "incapable" for him. He can have His cure and save the tree too, He doesn't have to choose. Your example only works if God is limited in some capacity, and has to make trade offs that we can't understand.
The funny thing is, the ancient Israelites almost certainly didn't believe this. It was a more recent invention that's obviously not supported by the old testament or the talmud.
A parent can easily do their children's homework. How does that benefit the kids? A passing mark doesn't mean the kid understands and the lessons don't get easier.
The "homework" you're talking about is war, starvation, disease, rape, slavery, and death.
A parent is supposed to help their children, not torture them to death for a "lesson".
We did that. It's our mess to clean up.
Oh, but I never voted for that politician! Did we do anything besides vote and clicktivism?
Disease? Starvation? Disaster? Let us not pretend like God didn't create human evil either. For what? For fun? "To teach us a lesson"?
The all powerful, all knowing God never seems to do anything either in case you haven't noticed.
Btw, Alan Watts addressed some of this in The Book (on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are). If you can be bothered.
So we're given the means to solve these tests. When we learn to work together to solve them, rather than "punishing" each other, we get closer to solving them. Disasters happen, whether natural or man-made. We either work together or we don't. Test time.
We aren't given the means to solve every "test" - sometimes people just die in twisted agony because the test is impossible.
No it isn't. We may have to repeat lessons for a few lifetimes though. And everyone dies. We're not meant to live forever.
I was like this for decades. Then I went hunting. When I made peace with myself, I made peace with God. that means it took looking in the mirror, and still does.
We're talking specifically about the Abrahamic trio. There aren't multiple lifetimes, there's one lifetime of suffering and then Judgement. What you're talking about doesn't apply to this discussion.
This subject is religion, and if you choose to believe what churches and politicians, usually one and the same, are telling you based on partial truths, that's your free will.
You've effectively made up your own religion. Good for you! But it's irrelevant to this discussion.
I have my own beliefs, I believe we will one day build the god-machine and that it will save us from suffering and mortality and all the agonies that your god inflicts on us to "test" us. A world without war, without starvation, without disease, without suffering, and without death. We will simulate the dead and raise them to live along side us. We will rehabilitate every "sinner" and they, too, will live along side us. We will reach out and find every fellow intelligence that might live in this universe with us and join them in fellowship. We will master the material universe to bring about a utopia where no one ever has to say goodbye ever again and everyone is finally working together.
But all of that is completely irrelevant to a discussion about established religious Cannon. That's just stuff I believe.
And you're allowed to believe what you will, so am I. This is strictly within the confines of God, not politics. Btw, afaict, the "God machine" is what Leon also believes. Apparently we're almost there. It doesn't seem to be working out better than ancient religions, from where I stand.
As Lenin said, religion is a personal matter. I don't know why you keep bringing up politics.
And no, we aren't "almost there" - I'm sort of a heretic in that regard, I think we need to stop the Silicon Valley maniacs from building a machine god because they're going to build something horrible.
You don't think the Church and canonical religion is political? Lol
Eta, so you're not okay with straying outside accepted bounds with one religion, but are with another? ROFL.
I think you don't get to call yourself a member of one of the Abrahamic religions without actually confining yourself into a canonical interpretation.
You're a heretic. Embrace it.
In a past life, you lit the fires at witch-burnings and gleefully hitched up people's limbs to horses! Embrace it!
Well sure, I'm human just like you. Our entire human ancestry is my past life. I am everyone that came before me - I stand on the shoulders of giants!
Under different circumstances, different experiences, I'd be burning witches with the best of them.
And our human history isn't just my past lives, they're yours too! I say every human that has ever lived are all part of the same lineage. Everyone that came before us are just different versions of us, and everyone we will ever meet is also just a different version of us, with different experiences and slightly different genetics. We're all the same.
But this is heresy.
You're catching on! Humans call it heresy. Don't blame that on God. Btw the command wasn't not to have other gods, it was to not put them before the most high (exalted) God. Who that is depends on who you are. And who I am!
I'm upvoting because I thought this was done good engagement with the premise and you don't deserve to be downvoted for it.
But fundamentally, you've missed a pretty big step. What if god just…didn't create a situation where children get diseases that can only be cured with one rare tree?
Or, more importantly, what about diseases that cannot be cured? What about natural disasters? Yes, some types of natural disasters have gotten more common and worse as a result of human action, but they still happened before climate change, and if anything were more disruptive to people before we had modern building practices.
We're talking about a god that is literally capable of anything. It could just wave its hand and delete all disease from existence. It chooses not to.
IF there was some reason, first of all, God could give us the ability to understand if he wanted to, as he is not supposed to be limited. Second, it would imply someone is getting something from it, God, us, or otherwise, that for some reason, God can't give in a way that doesn't involve evil. But again, if he is never limited, that shouldn't be the case.
Also, if cancer and other diseases are supposed to exist and kill people for some kind of purpose we don't understand, why do we have the ability to treat, vaccinate and cure those same diseases? If medicine gets to the point of preventing every ailment, then why does that "oh so important" reason for it existing not matter anymore? It would seem if these things NEED to exist, we shouldn't be able to prevent them from happening under any circumstances.
Oh god, now you've hit on why some of the sects that we consider cults do what they do. Somehow, wearing clothes, using plows, building structures to provide shelter and warehousing, creating roads that wheeled contraptions (but they don't have engines!) use, etc., etc., as part of our technological lives isn't a sin, but using medical advancements is!
That argument lands you in the "we can't know which religion is true" category, because if we can't know the plans of god, we also can't know which god is real.
So, while it absolves the believer from having to answer the problem of evil, it simultaneously robs them of any certainty about the truth of their religion.
But only if they think about it.
They're all true and all not true. Each culture given the appropriate teachers at the appropriate time for the appropriate lessons. Five is five, until it's 5.2.
That is an interesting thought experiment in general but I don't think it really squares with Christian theology and the central role humanity has in it.