<p>Yeah...just wondering.</p>
<p>For the lulz</p>
<p>The question that has plague mankind. You must know that only suffering can lead to true happiness, as they say. Humans have free will, and that means when one human does bad to another they will suffer.</p>
<p>Eventually, I think suffering will cease.
God has not abandon us.</p>
<p>^ You mean with the sweet release of death, right?</p>
<p>@BMan22: I don’t believe that this is the only life that we have.</p>
<p>I believe that God is a God of love and that he has a plan. I also believe that he judges righteously.
Whatever that he decides to happen to me and you, is perfectly righteous.</p>
<p>Darnit, this thread will turn into a massive argument over religion. By the 10th page I will say I told you so.</p>
<p>I’m going to try to cover several basic responses:</p>
<p>-He gave us free will, which is more important than protecting us from everything bad.
-To make us appreciate what is good in life.
-He is playing a joke on us/it’s like the Sims
-To test our faith (e.g. Job)
-God works in mysterious ways. Don’t question.
-This life is a test for the afterlife.
-This life isn’t really life, but the afterlife is/this life is insignificant when compared to God.
-God didn’t do it, Satan did.
-It’s Adam and Eve’s fault/snake/original sin.
-God set the world in motion and took a step back (Intelligent Design/Deism, etc.)
-Karma</p>
<p>I hope I got most of the main ones…
I don’t believe in God though…</p>
<p>You would think that such an all powerful being wouldn’t feel emotions like jealousy etc.</p>
<p>^^ Toxic speaks the truth.</p>
<p>
Well, that’s easy - schadenfreude!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Ugh, I hope not. There’s already another massive one. I think this one’ll fizz out.</p>
<p>I always thought god was just to busy keeping all the laws of physics in check to bother with our petty suffering.</p>
<p>Why does God allow suffering?</p>
<p>A better question is why we allow others to suffer?</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>What can we do about the situations (economic,social,nationalistic) that invite suffering? </p>
<p>Bringing God into questions like this opens the door for unnecessary banter and decisiveness helping us lose sight of whose really being affected… Us.</p>
<p>I don’t remember God (in any religious interpretation, I claim no religious affiliation, not even atheism) allowing suffering. </p>
<p>But I do see us as human beings participate towards the suffering of others either overtly, through legislation, or indifference.</p>
<p>^ I’m apathetic to everything this guy is saying.</p>
<p>^I think the song Heartless would be an appropriate theme song for you. ;)</p>
<p>^The one by Heart or the one by Kanye West? :)</p>
<p>suffering is the vehicle through which enlightenment emerges</p>
<p>so we need it until we can realize we dont need it, but we humans (as a whole) havent realized that yet, if that makes sense</p>
<p>I can offer my opinion.</p>
<p>One of the most popular (and easy) explanations to try to reconcile evil and suffering in the world and God is simply to say that God isn’t. Some people say look around at all of the suffering in the world, and it’s pretty obvious that no God exists. That’s the atheistic evolutionary viewpoint. I was thinking about how the evolutionary theory of accidental creation and random natural selection pretty much depends on things like death and destruction, and the violence of the strong against the weaker of this planet. Those things, according to those theories are perfectly natural. So if natural selection were an accurate world view, than shouldn’t we welcome the death of the small, weak, diseased, and disabled? </p>
<p>There’s a strong conviction in all of us that says that isn’t right, and that people shouldn’t suffer, be left out or excluded. They shouldn’t be abused. They shouldn’t die of hunger. They shouldn’t die of oppression. I’m just being honest, it’s really confusing to me. On what basis does the atheist judge life to be horribly wrong, evil, unfair, and unjust? Where does that conviction come from? How do we know evil is evil? What in us makes us scream out against injustice? An evolutionary worldview assists and operates on genetic superiority, and survival of the fittest. Does this explain racism, sexism, violent crimes, and oppression? That’d be natural selection, right? So why do powerful people (believers and nonbelievers) on a regular basis, humble themselves and serve- sometimes even sacrificing their own welfare to protect the weak? Because there’s a measure of good in us, put there by a great, good God who created us in his image. We can blame the suffering and deny the existence- but I, even intellectually, have a ton of problems with that.</p>
<p>Because the alternative would be for us to all be robots with no freedom.</p>