this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2025
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Well the theological explanation is that what we consider evil or suffering is just a necessary function of God's world.
Would a world truly without any sort of hardship or strife be worth living in?
Isn’t what you described heaven?
This is fantastic, I've never seen this response to that question.
My personal faith involves Alan Watts’ thought experiment on God.
God made heaven, had everything, and it got boring. So God made a new adventure where god is challenged, but they always succeed. But this too became boring.
So God, with infinite power, imagined a world where they forgot they were god. They didn’t know what would happen next.
And that is the adventure you and I live in now. Eventually, we’ll get back to heaven / nirvana / reconciliation with God, and then go on another adventure.
Yes, and it can be argued that God makes us live an earthly life before we go to heaven for exactly the purpose of understand strife and hardship so we can understand and appreciate heaven.
I should say I'm not religious nor am I anything close to an expert on theology.
Makes perfect sense. I make my kids sleep outside 2 days a week so they can appreciate the warm home I provide them
Builds character. And Lyme's disease.
Evil doesn't exist so clearly you are an excellent parent
I remember when my parents took me camping too. It actually did indeed make me appreciate modern creature comforts more and gave me a healthy appreciation for camping/wilderness/nature, oddly enough.
Do you give your kids everything they ever want? Do you never have to force your kids into doing things they don't like, such as long journeys or school or brushing their teeth?
It can also be argued that bronze age peasants made this shit up because they were afraid of thunderstorms
Not that any discussion of theology makes any logical sense, but then why did angels get a pass? They have free will, they do not suffer or have evil and they live for eternity in heaven. Are they somehow... deficient because they didn't get a turn on a hellish Earth? Did God figure out he made a mistake doing it that way and switch to the Crucible Version? Oh, there's that pesky lack of omnipotence again.
The argument still stands; god is either incapable of creating a universe without suffering where you can still derive meaning, or is not willing to create one.
The only potential explanation I could see is the absolutes in which we set things. The paradox of an ultimate being is flawed (could god microwave a burrito so hot that not even he could eat it?) because it presumes that the being exists within the confines of two opposing absolutes cannot coexist; something either is, or isn’t. However, if some being would be considered supreme in our universe, it could be because it exists outside of its confinements, meaning that conflicting realities (paradoxes) are possible - the burrito is both not too hot for god to eat, while at the same still being too hot for him to eat. It’s just not possible for us to comprehend because in our understanding of reality, something cannot exist simultaneously as the opposite of what we’ve recognized it as. It would mean it either no longer fits the definition, or reality exists in a way that’s so much more complicated at the same time.
It’s often expressed in multiverses in a lot of fictional settings; a universe where god made a burrito so hot not even he could eat it, and a parallel universe where he could, and both universes are both observable and interactable with god. But even then, it’s kinda brain-melting, like some kind of nuclear-hot brain burrito.
I’m sorry, I’m kind of hungry.
Some animals do not have the taste receptors to be affected by "spicy hot". It would not be a test of omnipotence to be able to turn off those receptors if they are present, and so unlimited hotness would be easily possible.
I was saying temperature, not spiciness
Of course. You can challenge yourself without hardship. It would just be on your own terms instead of whatever bullshit other people or circumstance is constantly throwing at us.
Voltaire has a great novella called Candide about a philosopher who thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. It's hilarious.
Found the ceo