Comment by gjsman-1000
6 days ago
> It's a cheap shot because those explanations are absurdly cheap in their logic on how a ultimately-powerful being is there to save us while also being the master of all suffering.
"It's a cheap shot because it's cheap" is not an argument, the logic is circular.
> Why would a morally good being with this power decide to give horrible diseases to innocent kids? Or take your job away, and force you to pray for it so you can get another? It's a bit sadistic.
If a parent tells you don't date somebody, they're a bad fit; and you do so anyway, and they were a bad fit; do you blame your parents for not locking you in their basement to prevent it? Permissive will versus active will is Philosophy 101.
Read it again, I said: It's a cheap shot because the religious explanations to suffering are cheap, they are retconning a fundamentally flawed logic that is not possible to exist unless you invent a yet more convoluted reason. They still do not explain why the suffering can only be abated by being more pious, a good being wouldn't make you beg on their feet to show you deserve to be spared from the suffering it created.
So again, if there's a God, it doesn't care. If your God exists and makes you have to pray for it to solve the suffering it created, it's a sadistic one.
Your argument assumes that an all-powerful being that permits suffering must be the source of suffering and must be sadistic. Those are both specific metaphysical claims that require their own defenses. As one example: Do your parents, who allow you to suffer learning in school, not care about you?
You're treating it as self-evident when there's nothing self-evident about it. The free will defense, soul-making theodicy, and skeptical theism all offer coherent responses. You don't have to find them convincing, but 'I don't buy it' isn't the same as 'it's logically impossible.'
My parents aren't all powerful, it's not a remotely close analogous to the force supposedly responsible for everything there is.
Soul-making theodicy uses one of those cheap cop outs: suffering is necessary because humans need to learn.
Basically all defences use the cheap excuse "you don't understand because you are human", leaving no logical argument left for us to find and requiring just to accept that the all-loving being creates suffering for reasons we cannot know. Which, again, is sadistic.
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