killermike wrote:
nofacetimber wrote:
I'm intrigued, because it's not that clear to me, can you share some examples and or instances where you feel this is clearly the case?
Sure. Thanks for the interest in this sort of thing....as you can see, I like talking about it.
I think there are nearly limitless examples of gratuitous suffering. For example, animals were on the scene for millions of years before humans, and in many cases they suffered greatly from starvation, predation, etc. God created a situation where creatures across the planet died painful deaths when he could have done otherwise. This was clearly not for mankind's benefit, or to pull man "closer to god" because we didn't even exist yet. In a nutshell, why aren't all animals vegan?
The question is whether needless suffering is evil. I hold that it clearly is. If I told you that I tortured puppies just for fun, you would rightly say that was a terrible thing to do. Even if I was otherwise the best human on the planet, you would hold that I would be an even better person if I didn't torture puppies. In order to say that the massive suffering in the animal kingdom (which is just one example) isn't an example of evil, you would have to say that a world in which those animals didn't suffer wouldn't be better. That seems wrong on its face.
Wild animal suffering is just one example. All we really need is one single instance where god could have removed suffering without also removing some amount of good from the world. In a world filled with suffering, that's not too hard. Remember, god supposedly created this world, and because he's omniscient, he knew exactly what he was creating. Pointing to "that's just how the world is" doesn't solve the problem. By his very nature, god is required to have created the best possible world.
FWIW, various Christian philosophers have responded to this problem. Alvin Plantinga did a lot of work on the free will solution, but this problem extends far beyond evil created by freely-acting humans (and there are other issues with his response that I'd love to chat about). William Lane Craig, who is one of the best debaters on either side on these topics, has proposed the ridiculous idea that animals aren't actually conscious and don't experience pain in a relevant way.
I don't want to get into a long debate on here. I'm too busy for that. But with your argument you have the presumption that pain and suffering are bad things, why are pain and suffering bad? You can't believe that something is good or bad without some type of standard. Basically your argument turns into something is bad or good based on what you want or don't want. You believe suffering is bad because you don't like it.