for the deity.
I have seen it written by some goddites we shouldn’t be complaining about evil. All the things suffering, the pain and the struggles were meant by deity to build our character. It seems, to me, omniscience had to go through the charade of making people suffer to guide it in choosing who should be damned and who shouldn’t. Rational people must ask why a god would create animals who can suffer, but didn’t find it in divine omniscience to tell them the suffering was temporary and meant to build their character.
What happens to those who fail this test? Those who for some reason due to their suffering went mad, what becomes of them? Does the deity accept them in heaven and cure them of their madness? And if this is the case, what was the point of omniscience having them here knowing they would go mad and then accept them in heaven whole?
The goddite who argues this is the best possible world must be the most unimaginative sort. From where I sit, I can conceive of a world that doesn’t exist, I can also conceive a world without suffering or a world where all the animals are not conscious of their suffering. To tell me omniscience and omnipotence couldn’t do better than this is, to me, blasphemy against deity.
This comment
But what you call abuse and malicious is a refining of you and your character. Without trial or hardship this would be no test from deity at all. Nor would you grow to learn and appreciate all the gifts and opportunities we are given. You would stay the spoiled school child and never grow to be a man, or a man of God. You see this life is a gift and a test, a proving ground if you will, and God allows evil in the world to see what you will do out of his presence.
on SB’s post on faith very disturbing.
I will end this post by a saying of Celsus on whether the world was created for us or for the lower animals- as we like to call them
We indeed by labor and suffering earn a scanty and toilsome subsistence, while all things are produced for them without their sowing and plowing.