God is the author of pain/suffering - true?

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refulgence

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Please critique my logic here:


  1. *]Millions of years before man existed, there were dinosaurs and other creatures.
    *]Millions of years before man could have “fallen” or committed sin, some of these creatures suffered and died. The strong hunted and ate the weak, some were caught in forest fires, some fell off cliffs, some got sick and died, etc.
    *]Hence, God is the author/planner/creator of pain and suffering

    I’m not saying God is the author of sin - that’s different. I’m saying God designed, planned, and implemented pain and suffering.

    I’m having a hard time reconciling that with a loving God.
 
God claims to be the author of evil (or “calamity” depending on your translation) in Isaiah 45.
 
I don’t see an issue with this. Pain is a tool through which we come to understand our actions. A child touches a hot stove, feels pain, and comes to the conclusion that touching a hot stove is a bad thing. A person get scratched by their cat or dog, and realizes that they probably shouldn’t pull the animal’s tail. (or whatever it was they were doing)

Pain plays a very important role in the development of any species, because it gives us something to work against, a goal of sorts. It helps us to learn and develop. Are there inordinate amounts of pain? Yes. Dying by fire would be horrible, but on the vast scale of the history of death, the number of beings that this has happened to is infinitesimal. It is unfortunate that it does happen, but then, if we couldn’t recognize pain then we wouldn’t understand that it’s unfortunate.

There’s an episode of House that addresses this (potential spoilers, if you haven’t watched House). He has a patient who cannot feel pain, period. Every day she has to check herself all over to make sure she hasn’t cut herself, made herself bleed, have any broken bones, etc. At one point, she throws herself off the second floor balcony, breaking a couple of bones, yet, even when she can barely move after having done so, she continues to insist that she’s just fine; she doesn’t understand what’s wrong with her.

Without pain, we would all be like her.

Does pain suck? yes. Is it necessary for our survival? Absolutely.

You could argue that God could have created a world without the possibility of pain, but that’s another, much much longer debate which I don’t care to get into 😛
 
ngill09 said:
God claims to be the author of evil (or “calamity” depending on your translation) in Isaiah 45.
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God does not create objective evil. From the NAB:
Code: 
 4 I form the light, and create the darkness,*** I make well-being and create woe;*** I, the LORD, do all these things.
8
5 Let justice descend, O heavens, like dew from above, like gentle rain let the skies drop it down. Let the earth open and salvation bud forth; let justice also spring up! I, the LORD, have created this.

Woe, according to dictionary.com:

noun
1.
grievous distress, affliction, or trouble: His woe was almost beyond description.
2.
an affliction: She suffered a fall, among her other woes.
interjection
3.
an exclamation of grief, distress, or lamentation.
Origin:
before 900; Middle English wo (interjection and noun), Old English wā (interjection) (cf. wellaway); cognate with Dutch wee, German Weh, Old Norse vei, Latin vae

Synonyms
  1. anguish, tribulation, trial, wretchedness, melancholy. See sorrow.
Tribulation, sorrow and the like are not objectively evil; we can grow and learn from pain.

In this particular passage, God is also describing the woe that those who undergo justice will suffer.

Any other passages you’d care to take grievously out of context? :rolleyes:
 
Lochias said:
God does not create objective evil. From the NAB:
Code: 
 4 I form the light, and create the darkness,*** I make well-being and create woe;*** I, the LORD, do all these things.
8
5 Let justice descend, O heavens, like dew from above, like gentle rain let the skies drop it down. Let the earth open and salvation bud forth; let justice also spring up! I, the LORD, have created this.

Woe, according to dictionary.com:

noun
1.
grievous distress, affliction, or trouble: His woe was almost beyond description.
2.
an affliction: She suffered a fall, among her other woes.
interjection
3.
an exclamation of grief, distress, or lamentation.
Origin:
before 900; Middle English wo (interjection and noun), Old English wā (interjection) (cf. wellaway); cognate with Dutch wee, German Weh, Old Norse vei, Latin vae

Synonyms
  1. anguish, tribulation, trial, wretchedness, melancholy. See sorrow.
Tribulation, sorrow and the like are not objectively evil; we can grow and learn from pain.

In this particular passage, God is also describing the woe that those who undergo justice will suffer.

Any other passages you’d care to take grievously out of context? :rolleyes:
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How is it taking out of context? You were the one who assumed I was talking about “objective evil”, which you had no reason to do since the OP was about the pain and suffering of pre-human creatures.
 
refulgence said:
Please critique my logic here:


  1. *]Millions of years before man existed, there were dinosaurs and other creatures.
    *]Millions of years before man could have “fallen” or committed sin, some of these creatures suffered and died. The strong hunted and ate the weak, some were caught in forest fires, some fell off cliffs, some got sick and died, etc.
    *]Hence, God is the author/planner/creator of pain and suffering

    I’m not saying God is the author of sin - that’s different. I’m saying God designed, planned, and implemented pain and suffering.

    I’m having a hard time reconciling that with a loving God.
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  1. if i may suggest: dump the dinosaurs - now, i’m a dinosaur and have had daily pain for decades, but you don’t need it for your argument
    all you have to say is that everything exists because God creates it; pain exists; God is the creator of pain

    there’s lots written about this subject; i enjoy C.S. Lewis’ style, so i’d recommend “On Pain” - he even discusses animal pain, altho’ not dinosaur pain

    btw: pain =/= suffering (depending on one’s definitions)
 
Hello, brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus!

It is clear in our hearts and minds that God created all things. But one important detail is: God did not ask anyone to commit sins, but humans do that. Well, God does not like and does not want to see anyone suffering, we in the human condition cause it to ourselves as consequences of our actions. A pot of water is boiling, if someone put your hand in there certainly will hurt, otherwise nothing will happen. Ok, nobody wants to suffer, but it is worth remembering that even Jesus was not spared to meet and go through this reality, Divine, Human who does not have and never had any sin, and how about us? Too many imperfections, too many weakness, why would we be? God sometimes allows us to feel pain which often works as purification of our soul, when we enter into deep reflection on our actions and return to the way of Christ that biblically speaking, has never been easy to follow, but it leads us to a very satisfactory eternal result. God bless you!
 
We are to pick up our cross and follow Jesus if we want to rise with Him.

If we cannot avoid pain it can become a source of sanctity for us if we do not get angry and bitter about it.

Many saints gave example for us with regard to pain. They also remind us that if we knew the value of suffering accepted with love, we would embrace it for the glory of the Lord and salvation of sinners.

Of course, we are not forbidden to alleviate our suffering, when necessary, with pain killers.

Suffering of all kinds gracefully accepted conforms us to Christ.

God allows suffering because He loves us. He wants to bless and sanctify us through it.

He also gives us deep joy and peace to aid us on our spiritual journey to union with Him.
 
ProdglArchitect said:
I don’t see an issue with this. Pain is a tool through which we come to understand our actions.
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A fawn that burns to death in a forest fire (millions of years before humans existed) will not understand its actions. It will only suffer and die.

Why? What does that say about God? This is my question.
 
refulgence said:
Please critique my logic here:

Millions of years before man existed, there were dinosaurs and other creatures.
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at least that is what we think. There are serious scientists, though, who question that theory. I’m not saying it is necessarily not true, but you asked to critique your logic. First premise is probable, but not yet totally proven.
Millions of years before man could have “fallen” or committed sin, some of these creatures suffered and died. The strong hunted and ate the weak, some were caught in forest fires, some fell off cliffs, some got sick and died, etc.
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The first part of this second point depends on how you accept the first: was it really before man or not? Do we, can we certainly know that? As for the rest, you need to look at what your stand on “suffering” is. Do animals “suffer”? They do experience pain (which is another way to put it and I am much more comfortable with that). One could argue that pain is a necessary nerve reaction in the animals, so that they don’t self destruct and preserve their own lives. Is that the same as the “suffering” intelligent beings experience? There is certainly some connection between the two, but then, you can “suffer” without experiencing physical pain. And you can experience physical pain without spiritually suffering.
Hence, God is the author/planner/creator of pain and suffering
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This will depend a lot on what you think about the first two.
I’m not saying God is the author of sin - that’s different. I’m saying God designed, planned, and implemented pain and suffering.
I’m having a hard time reconciling that with a loving God.
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To inflict pain and to love do not necessarily contradict each other in our world. For example, a father will discipline his children for their good even if they don’t like it.
The answer of Christ to this dilemma was to accept the suffering of the cross; that’s the supreme answer.
 
refulgence said:
A fawn that burns to death in a forest fire (millions of years before humans existed) will not understand its actions. It will only suffer and die.

Why? What does that say about God? This is my question.
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The individual suffer will understand that it is dying. This understanding will have no meaning to that particular deer, true, but to the species a whole it has meaning. Pain, as I discussed before, is necessary for our survival. It was just as necessary for that deer as it is for us. That this one particular deer died a painful death does not negate the necessity of pain.

All that aside, why should it say anything about God? There were creatures before humans, Why God made them we don’t really know; I personally like to think it’s because God knew we would think they’re awesome (because, I mean, who doesn’t think Dinosaurs are awesome?). It is not our place to understand why God does what he does, we aren’t capable of understanding that.

The deer experienced pain because there was pain to experience. Pain, as I demonstrated in my previous post, was necessary to our development as a species. Unfortunately, for the reality of pain to exist for us, it must also exist for all other physical entities, whether they existed before us or not. That deer experienced pain because it is necessary for us to experience pain; and necessary for deer as a species to experience pain so it can understand what to avoid to stay alive.
 
refulgence said:
A fawn that burns to death in a forest fire (millions of years before humans existed) will not understand its actions. It will only suffer and die.

Why? What does that say about God? This is my question.
Click to expand...
That deer is gone, there is no suffering; animals are not eternal beings.

Why was there a deer? a forest fire? why are deer flammable? why is there pain? why did it die? why did it not know it’s way out of the fire? I’m not trying to be silly; well maybe I am.

I don’t know what you are getting at.

Please answer your own question: what do you think it says about God? Maybe that would be a start to getting an answer to your question.
 
refulgence said:
Please critique my logic here:


  1. *]Millions of years before man existed, there were dinosaurs and other creatures.
    *]Millions of years before man could have “fallen” or committed sin, some of these creatures suffered and died. The strong hunted and ate the weak, some were caught in forest fires, some fell off cliffs, some got sick and died, etc.
    *]Hence, God is the author/planner/creator of pain and suffering

    I’m not saying God is the author of sin - that’s different. I’m saying God designed, planned, and implemented pain and suffering.

    I’m having a hard time reconciling that with a loving God.
Click to expand...

  1. Adam was a living soul…in Eden…from where an angel with a revolving sword of fire drove him out…and is stationed there by God to bar his return. If Adam was on this planet…wouldn’t you see the angel with the revolving sword?

    Ps…Perhaps the Big Bang is a result of Adam and Eve. It is interesting how galaxies revolve in a fiery circle.
 
Pugsly said:
Adam was a living soul…in Eden…from where an angel with a revolving sword of fire drove him out…and is stationed there by God to bar his return. If Adam was on this planet…wouldn’t you see the angel with the revolving sword?

Ps…Perhaps the Big Bang is a result of Adam and Eve. It is interesting how galaxies revolve in a fiery circle.
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When God clothed Adam and Eve in animal skins…I get a mental image of a herd of early, soulless hominids…and Adam struggling to find Eve in the group.
 
Like others said, pain is naturally healthy, because it is a natural, elementary mechanism of defence, survival and evolution. Imagine yourself (or your pet) being unable to feel pain and you’ll realize how dangerous it would be, for humans and animals alike.

But does God micromanage nature’s life, to the point of directing/stopping the fall of a stone over a deer? How is God’s will implied when there’s a forest fire, a tsunami or a volcano eruption and a tree/insect/dinosaur/man is spared, while another tree/insect/dinosaur/man perishes, at a distance of few meters or centimeters?
The usual answer is “nature is cruel / indifferent”, but people never attribute this kind of cruelty or indifference to God. Instead, we use to rationalize it by saying:
  1. God permits evil or pain to happen for greater good. But what is the greater good in this case? Evolution?
  2. God doesn’t micromanage everything in nature’s life. But: Luke 12 “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered” and Matthew 6 “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them”.
  3. Man’s sin is to blame for ALL the suffering and death of animals, plants, nature in general. But man is obviously a latecomer on this planet and his mechanisms of defence and survival are identical to the ones of animals much older than him. I wish people stop trying to defend this theory (Adam and Eve are guilty for the “falling” of creation) using false arguments - that dinosaurs and other creatures before man didn’t suffer and die or that animals can’t suffer.
 
vames said:
Like others said, pain is naturally healthy, because it is a natural, elementary mechanism of defence, survival and evolution. Imagine yourself (or your pet) being unable to feel pain and you’ll realize how dangerous it would be, for humans and animals alike.

But does God micromanage nature’s life, to the point of directing/stopping the fall of a stone over a deer? How is God’s will implied when there’s a forest fire, a tsunami or a volcano eruption and a tree/insect/dinosaur/man is spared, while another tree/insect/dinosaur/man perishes, at a distance of few meters or centimeters?
The usual answer is “nature is cruel / indifferent”, but people never attribute this kind of cruelty or indifference to God. Instead, we use to rationalize it by saying:
  1. God permits evil or pain to happen for greater good. But what is the greater good in this case? Evolution?
  2. God doesn’t micromanage everything in nature’s life. But: Luke 12 “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered” and Matthew 6 “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them”.
  3. Man’s sin is to blame for ALL the suffering and death of animals, plants, nature in general. But man is obviously a latecomer on this planet and his mechanisms of defence and survival are identical to the ones of animals much older than him. I wish people stop trying to defend this theory (Adam and Eve are guilty for the “falling” of creation) using false arguments - that dinosaurs and other creatures before man didn’t suffer and die or that animals can’t suffer.
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Adam and Eve are the ones that have changed the nature because of their sin. If you can’t imagine something like this doesn’t mean it is not real, but only that you lack deep scientific knowledge. I don’t say that I have it though…
 
Ion said:
Adam and Eve are the ones that have changed the nature because of their sin. If you can’t imagine something like this doesn’t mean it is not real, but only that you lack deep scientific knowledge. I don’t say that I have it though…
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What does science have to do with believing the Genesis literally?

And if 1) Adam and Eve are the ones that have changed the nature because of their sin and 2) nature did exist millions of years before the apparition of man, then => God was so angry with Adam and Eve, that He chose to punish all the nature and make it suffer, age and die even millions of years before the birth of the first man. A punishment applied on an innocent nature for the sin of man, long before the sin was committed. A retroactive curse. Is that what you believe?
 
vames said:
What does science have to do with believing the Genesis literally?

And if 1) Adam and Eve are the ones that have changed the nature because of their sin and 2) nature did exist millions of years before the apparition of man, then => God was so angry with Adam and Eve, that He chose to punish all the nature and make it suffer, age and die even millions of years before the birth of the first man. A punishment applied on an innocent nature for the sin of man, long before the sin was committed. A retroactive curse. Is that what you believe?
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Science contributes to our understanding of God and creation. I have an idea of what a day means for me in terms of how my life is structured and how as a human being, I parcel out time. Because of scientific inquiry, I know that a day for God is on a much, I would like to say infinitely, greater scale.

I believe people read that nature also fell with man in the following:
Romans 8: 18 In my estimation, all that we suffer in the present time is nothing in comparison with the glory which is destined to be disclosed for us, 9 for the whole creation is waiting with eagerness for the children of God to be revealed. 20 It was not for its own purposes that creation had frustration imposed on it, but for the purposes of him who imposed it- 21 with the intention that the whole creation itself might be freed from its slavery to corruption and brought into the same glorious freedom as the children of God. 22 We are well aware that the whole creation, until this time, has been groaning in labour pains.

If we were meant to tend the garden, we are most certainly not doing our job; that may be at least part of the problem. I don’t know.

It is not so much “retroactive curses” as it is that the past takes on different meanings based on what follows.
I can’t say it any better than C.S. Lewis:
“Son,‘he said,’ ye cannot in your present state understand eternity…That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, “No future bliss can make up for it,” not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say “Let me have but this and I’ll take the consequences”: little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man’s past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man’s past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why…the Blessed will say "We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven, : and the Lost, “We were always in Hell.” And both will speak truly.”
 
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