Why it is heartless to say that God has a justified purpose for letting people suffer
Why man cannot say it even if it is true
There is a difference between evil being compatible with the existence of God
and man saying it is. Only God has the right to say it and believe it. It is too
serious of a matter for man to speak on God's behalf and condone God's role in
evil or for man to invent reasons why God might allow evil to happen. It is evil
for man then to condone God's role or alleged role in evil even if God exists
and is right to let evil happen. And man needs solid evidence for God's
existence for nobody has the right to lightly say any entity is ultimately
responsible for evil even if its role is justified. Would you like it if
somebody said you stole a loaf to feed your child in abject poverty if you never
took the loaf? They are still saying you did evil even if it was justified. That
is what will upset you. You are still being slandered. If you say God lets evil
happen you have to know why this would be justified. Resorting to saying evil is
a mystery is a cop-out and is disgusting.
Nobody has the right to use an excuse for God when a baby suffers and dies. What
is needed is the reason. No good God would let or worse COMMAND religion to
justify his actions for it is not its place!
Command implies obey or suffer. It tries to pressure you.
Thus for a God to command you to condone his evil proves he should not be
condoned at all but told to go to Hell.
Even if God is not the problem where evil is concerned man speaking about God is
the problem. The problem of evil needs to focus more on what it indicates about
believers.
People telling others all about you does not really mean the others know you. If
what is said is right then that is for luck. But the only way to know you is to
be in your company.
A baby suffers. What takes priority in principle? Helping the baby. If God comes
first it follows that it is more important to tell yourself that he has a plan
for the suffering. You help the baby not to help the baby but to help the plan.
Suppose God comes first. If you had to either help the baby for the baby or for
God it follows that you should do it for God. That shows that belief in God is
not as natural or sweet as people imagine. It is not true that faith in God is
somehow demanded by our nature.
Projection
God by definition is your supreme and ultimate and only authority. If God is
creator, you may accept his existence but you do not accept him. In so far as
you do not accept, to that degree you are an atheist. So to be a proper
believer, you need to accept God as authority. God is not just a theory - God is
about relationship.
What moral values you see represented by God are your moral values. What
aspirations and desires you have you see God as interested in them. So God is
really just man. Man is talking about himself when he talks about God, it just
sounds as if he is talking about God. You cannot personify goodness and wisdom
as God unless you think you know what goodness and wisdom are. You judge what
good and wisdom should personify God. It is all back to you. Your supreme
authority is you.
That means man wants to condone the terrible things that happen by saying they
are the will of God. It is man's will we are talking about and nothing else -
despite appearances. In the scheme of things, a person can only experience a
little of all the suffering that was and is and will be. It is easy to condone
the suffering of creatures other than yourself when you are not those creatures
and when you are a drop in the ocean.
Excuses for God's evil are only for enablers of evil
How can an all-good God stand by while people suffer?
Is the idea of this God allowing suffering and evil contradictory? If it is then
you are saying God is all-good but also evil. You are saying both. You are
condoning his evil. You are incoherently praising it as good. So it is important
to show that whatever your version of a totally good God is, it is not a
contradictory one. Also, you are defying logic and if you can do that others can
do it too in their own way. The world would soon be insane.
For the sake of argument, pretend that God and horrible disgusting and
inexcusable evil are compatible. We don't know that for sure. And we are full of
contradictions. That means the person who argues that God and evil are
compatible may not believe they are because of the arguments. He or she may
simply be expressing his or her contradictory side!! No God can ask human nature
to speak of how God fits evil and evil fits God.
God, it is said, lets evil and suffering take place ultimately because he
respects free will. But would we see a person as good who walked on by as
hooligans beat up a child and who uses that excuse? Using the excuse would make
that person even more bad than he already is. Anyway believers invent other
excuses for God's neglect - they often see the inadequacies of depending on the
free will excuse alone. An excuse in such a grave matter amounts to an insult.
You should experience exactly what sufferers experience before you can declare
the right to assert that their suffering is compatible with a loving creator.
You need a straightforward reason why God could allow suffering to happen - it
needs to be straightforward because you need to avoid the risk of making excuses
for God's responsibility for evil when his role might be unjustifiable. You
cannot be the kind of person who risks endorsing evil in the name of good.
Taking the risk says something about you. It is different if you are forced to
take the risk but you are not.
Human nature favours the person who lets evil happen over the person who
directly does the evil. The wife who lets her husband beat the children will be
more favoured in society and by more people than her husband will be. Perhaps
the husband loves his wife and feels okay about battering the children merely
because she seems fine with it. Then it is more her fault than his. If you were really about seeing people unharmed instead of looking for moral bonus points and smug thrills it would not matter if harm was done indirectly or what. It would matter only that somebody made it happen. To not help when somebody is being harmed is saying harm should happen.
Indirect harm can be more wilful and malicious than direct harm. We are
only encouraging people to find ways to do harm that won't result in them being
stopped on the spot.
Believers know that no matter what they do they cannot control everything that happens after they do something. Consequences can be very unexpected. That risks somebody directly doing evil and triggering the distancing placebo. They feel they did evil yes but now it is out of their hands and in God's or nature's or other people. They tell themselves they cannot ride a time machine and choose something different.
There is a placebo and a deception in putting
a distance between yourself and the harm you do. You feel it
has less to do with you then. You feel okay. Somebody is
harmed and you are trying to feel okay about it. You even
worship a God who you call good as long as he directly does not do
evil. That is a classic projection and it is abhorrent.
If you plan to do evil, you are still a better person than the one who lets
another do evil when he could stop him. Why? Because at least you know what the
evil will be but when somebody else does it you don't really know how bad they
intend to be. Evil is disorder and it disguises itself as good and attractive.
Thus the divine or any kind of being that lets it happen, is consenting to the
lack of control it implies. This being is worse than the person who does evil
because the doer of the evil imposes some control over it and can stop it. A God
who does evil would be hugely superior to the one that merely allows it to
happen. An evil you do has more control imposed on it than an evil you allow and
it will be a specific kind of evil. The murderer of the woman might not murder a
baby. Allowing evil means you are willing literally anything to happen. The
intention is far more evil. To say God is right to let evil happen, is an
extremely serious thing to say. It means you intend to risk condoning what is in
fact wrong. You need proof.
Praising and failing to be angry at enablers who help evil to happen by doing
and saying nothing to challenge it is an irrational but universal human quirk.
Believers take advantage of this quirk to foist belief in God on the unwary and
on those who should know better. It is easy for us to love an enabler God. It
makes us feel better too about how we enable.
Is it a problem when the atheist merely feels that suffering proves there is no
loving God? Should the feeling be enough to justify his attitude? Is feeling
more important than logic here? We look after each other instinctively. If a
child needs help you don't theorise why you should help. You feel you should
help and you help. The answer is yes. The atheist's feeling overrides logic.
Even if there is a logical answer for God allowing suffering, looking for that
answer is evil.
Excusing God allowing suffering is not about loving people at all. Believers do
good in spite of this belief.
Why say evil is a problem and not a refutation of God?
It is a problem if you assume a God in the first place or want to believe in God
or if you put justifying God first or if it is your sole concern. The problem
starts with God not humanity. This alone is religion putting a principle before
people. It is itself evil. Doctrine and religious theory do not come before
humanity. They should exist out of respect for humanity.
To condemn God's morals and how he lets us suffer if he exists is said to be
hypocrisy. Believers argue that you are taking God's standards of right and
wrong/good and evil and using them to build an argument against his goodness or
existence. Translation: "If God's standards contradict how he behaves you are
not allowed to see this. You are unfair and biased and twisted."
Faith in God then involves an implicit or explicit attack on those who do not
believe or who deny that God and morality necessarily fit together. The
believers are biased and unfair and that is what they accuse the unbelievers of.
And if you say it is about God's standards and not what you think they should be
you are lying. You cannot agree with God's standards unless you decide what the
standards should be. So it is back to you. Nobody can give you standards. You
give yourself your own standards. If they match God's they are still yours and
not his.
The doctrine that those who accuse God of being evil or uncaring are stealing
from God's moral toolbox and maliciously or stupidly using his rules against him
is foundational and fundamental in theism or in belief in God. Why?
A God letting terrible heinous things happen is a problem. The evil is so
serious that unless belief in God is important or necessary and good belief in
God cannot be justified. The evil has to be taken utterly seriously.
To solve the problem of evil is about serving good and giving people the chance
of faith in a good God. Or it should be. But it cannot be... believers in God
suffer from a lack of compassion and empathy. Their faith despite its good looks
is fundamentally bad.
FINALLY
"When people work towards reducing human misery, their
actions make the implicit assumption that such suffering serves no worthwhile
purpose."
http://infidels.org/library/modern/nicholas_tattersall/evil.html
