THE POINTLESS SUFFERING ARGUMENT AGAINST THE LOVE OF GOD

Pointless suffering exists.

Suffering is not like pain for suffering is an experience of pointlessness.  If you get through it that does not mean it was not pointless then.  It means it was.  Painting your ceiling white today because you hated the black you put on yesterday does not mean the black was worth it.  Even if suffering is not pointless why does God create your experience of it as pointless?  Is he a liar?  He has to be.  There is no question.  God is not speaking about your suffering so believers have no right to assume your suffering fits him for they cannot be you to know what it was saying exactly.      They are tacitly speaking for him that it fits him.  That is not their place.  If suffering shows God does not love you enough, maybe the ones not loving enough are those people?  They do not love you enough.  You do not make assumptions about the suffering of another to maintain your god belief and faith.  It is exploitation.

A good God would not let it exist.

Therefore there is no good God.

Some modify the argument as follows.

Pointless suffering PROBABLY exists.

A good God would not let it exist.

Therefore there is probably no good God.

Christians change the argument to the following:

If there are useless evils, then there is no all-good God.

God exists.

Therefore we only think suffering is ever pointless - it is not.

To take evil seriously as something you don't want to unknowingly condone, or knowingly condone, means that you need evidence for God that is least as good as the evidence for suffering and evil.

Religion argues that if you say there is no God then you cannot call suffering evil. You have no standard. So that is why they argue that evil proves the existence of God.

That is nonsense. Suffering would still be evil if there were no God or anything at all. If there was nothing that would be good in the sense that there is nothing there to suffer.
 
FREE WILL DEFENCE BRIEFLY REFUTED
 
A good God will only let evil happen if he needs it for a greater good. The Bible agrees where God taught through Paul the apostle that he turns everything to the good of those who he has called to be his servants (Romans 8:28). The idea that the evil God allows may not result in a greater good but just stops things getting worse so that with a specific evil such as smallpox or whatever or without it there will be no improvement has to be rejected because it is very unlikely that evil and goodness will break even. At the same time, this idea doesn’t affect anything we say. It is saying that God allows evil for a purpose as much as the idea that God uses evil for a better or greater good is.
 
Believers say that the crimes of Stalin and Hitler were only allowed to happen by God because, among other reasons, God sought to respect their free will, the greater good of free will.
 
Believers in God state that since God is good, evil and suffering are not his fault but arise from the abuse of free will. God gave us free will so that we could sacrifice ourselves and love him and others. Without it there would be no love and so God is right to take the risk of giving us free will for it is worth the possibility that we will love. In short, people are to blame for suffering and not God.

The existence of free will can be undeniably refuted. To be responsible for an action, I have to know what I am doing the very moment I am doing it. But I can only concentrate on one thing at a time. The moment I will something it is one thought in my mind that makes me do it. I am not conscious of my motives then at that very moment so I do not know what I am doing. I cannot be responsible for what I do therefore determinism (the notion that the will is programmed and is not free) is true. It is only when I look back that I think I knew what I was doing. If God made me a mili-second ago, what I “decide” now won’t feel any different. For all I know God could have done that. Even if I have free will, God could determine it so that I will make the right choices. He could use that method to do it. It makes no difference for all I know the universe could have been created a mili-second ago.
 
Everyone who has examined their conscience is aware of this truth that there is no free will because that job requires examination of whether or not you were conscious of what you were doing the moment you acted badly. Those who oppose the determinist are being unkind.
 
If God exists then as our all-loving maker, he is said to be entitled to all our love, not some but all. I must make him my only God by making him my only love. Believers will say that though it may be the case that there could be inner forces making me do something that they only play a partial role and I still have enough free will to be considered responsible for what I do. But it would follow that I am not fully myself, am not fully free, when I make a choice. God cannot be my God fully unless I can choose fully and make a fully informed choice. Thus God has no right to permit suffering in order that we might love him fully for that is not possible. We don't have enough free will to justify all the evil that has happened especially to babies.

Free will is one hundred percent disproved. And it does not salvage God's reputation if it does exist. Free will is no excuse for a God letting a man hurt a baby because free will by definition is not about anybody letting us do what we want but about me letting myself do what I want. Using it as an excuse betrays an empathy problem. There is no question about these things.
 
In the Book of Job, Job was declared to be sinless by God. Yet God allowed Satan to torment him to the extreme. Job did not sin in all this but then he discovered it was a sin to wonder why God allowed evil and suffering and God approved of his conclusion that it was better just to ask no questions and trust in God and his almighty power. It is not said that this sin existed when he was first tormented but was committed later. In fact it is denied that Job was tormented for it. The Book of Job forbids Christianity to have a theodicy, or a hypothesis that shows how a good God could let evil happen. It is like somebody trying to con you and not allowing you to ask any questions and it infers approbation for such behaviour. That in itself proves belief in God has nasty implications.

We can prove that the notion of a God of perfect love who is able to be our protection against moral pollution and suffering but won’t be for a good purpose is incoherent, hypocritical and brutal for it is contradicted by the existence of evil and moral pollution. Many of the proofs of this are implied by the dogmas proclaimed by the theologians themselves who won’t admit that these sinister offshoots exist. The theologian is to test and examine all the revelations supposedly from the Most High for purity in order to state his dogmas more precisely. That requires the inference of dogmas and truths to be identified and scrutinised. Consequently, she or he must know the truth, the dark truth and nothing but this astonishing truth.

But let us go on and strip the great Yahweh of his disguise. Bare him and his nature as the world’s favourite pipe dream will be manifested. Expose him to the world and then sacrifice him for truth so that his dying blood may poison the Church and true humanity rise from its ashes.

The attempts to reconcile evil with the existence of an omnipotent God are called theodicies.

They take a means and end approach to the problem of evil. That is, they assume God allows evil and suffering to happen for a reason that justifies him letting them happen.  He permits or allows as in tolerates.  So while reason says some things must be intolerable God says different!  Nothing is intolerable.  This downplays evil and thus is evil.
 
Some modern philosophers, though believing in God, reject theodicy. The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil is a book that explicates that approach. This book says that God is not a moral agent. That is, though God is good he is not obligated to make everybody’s life perfect and to save people from suffering. This thought comes from the notion that evil is just a lack of good and not a thing. Evil is like good that is in the wrong place. For example, a knife is good but not good in your chest. God is not obligated to create anything. He is not bound to. Therefore God is not bound to make anything perfect. As far as something is not perfect that is not God’s doing or imperfection is not a thing. God didn’t make imperfection he only made the thing good as far as it is good. This is not a theodicy for it simply denies that God allows evil for the sake of some good. It says that theodicy is nonsense for evil is totally useless. At least in that sense, it is a noble theory.
 
But it still does not save us the bother of trying to work out a theodicy.
 
Say you take it as correct. But then what would you say about a person who believed that he didn’t need to get cured of a disease that he could pass on to his child as he attempts to become a father? He can’t say he is creating the good but not the evil. Even if he was, would he be right to father the child? It would be heartless to look at a sick child and tell him to be happy that he is sick for evil is really just a form of good that is not as good as it could be.

His logic like Gods makes him viler not less vile.

Don't create the evil of sullying yourself for God and faith.

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THE WEB
 
www.colorado.edu/philosophy/wes/Tooley2.html
 
THE ARGUMENT FROM EVIL AND THE EXISTENCE OF GOD by Michael Tooley.
 
http://www.nd.edu/~rpotter/courses/finitism.htm
 
FINITISM AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL, R Dennis Potter,
 
www.ffrf.org/fttoday/august97/barker.html
 
THE FREE WILL ARGUMENT FOR THE NON-EXISTENCE OF GOD by Dan Barker