Necessary suffering? Example?

[pig]

The self-fulfilling logic in this thread is painful.

There is no “reason” behind cancer. Cancer is a disease for which there is no cure. As human beings, we tend to create reason for ourselves. In the case of cancer, we can “find” a number of reasons: perhaps the cancer is part of God’s plan, and because God is omnipotent, we can’t understand why he allows people to get cancer. Or maybe chemotherapy is God’s gift to humanity, to help us fight cancer (why He wouldn’t just cure cancer is beyond me).

Cancer is not a “moral” issue. The person who gets cancer did nothing to “deserve” it. There is no “free-will” involved with contracting cancer (with the possible exception of skin cancer). So why would God allow someone to get this disease? It’s part of his “plan”? Or maybe God “works in mysterious ways”?

It’s beyond me.

There was an archeological dig long ago in arizona or some such place into pueblo indians of thousands of years ago, or maybe less.
But, however, they found the skeleton of a teenager with a severe case of being run over by something resulting in both his legs being broken, healed, but badly and permanently abscessed.
Now this child could not work nor could he walk without crutches and so, was dependent on the kindness of his society.
That society benefited from that child’s suffering more that they would have benefited from wealth, knowledge and prosperity. They actively and hopefully as a group, took that child into their care. They must have done, as his broken limbs healed, though became abscessed.
This society of humans benefited by becoming more humane than they might have, if they were not already, becoming merciful, compassionate and kind in looking after a suffering child than they would have become by living a life of luxury and ease from responsibility and compassion.
One persons suffering, though terrible, potentially made these people great.

I have a great fear of waking up from a dreaming sleep in some luxurious California suburb of the wealthy, famous, healthy, and frivolous and being in need of some tender loving care as a down and out suffering human. Would they pretend not to see me? or increase their humanity by draining the pus from my swollen painful limbs?

 

[Lochias]

The self-fulfilling logic in this thread is painful.

There is no “reason” behind cancer. Cancer is a disease for which there is no cure. As human beings, we tend to create reason for ourselves. In the case of cancer, we can “find” a number of reasons: perhaps the cancer is part of God’s plan, and because God is omnipotent, we can’t understand why he allows people to get cancer. Or maybe chemotherapy is God’s gift to humanity, to help us fight cancer (why He wouldn’t just cure cancer is beyond me).

Cancer is not a “moral” issue. The person who gets cancer did nothing to “deserve” it. There is no “free-will” involved with contracting cancer (with the possible exception of skin cancer). So why would God allow someone to get this disease? It’s part of his “plan”? Or maybe God “works in mysterious ways”?

It’s beyond me.

Exactly, it’s beyond us. But we know that He loves us, regardless of disease and the evil of others.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Well, hard to feel sympathetic toward someone who walks up to an apple tree and starts demanding pears from it. You don’t like the answers, but you got 'em. Apples is apples.

Great answer!

The problem is in trying to find logical necessity in a factually contingent world, where “logical” connections are only, in fact, factual ones. In a world where everything is factually, but not logically, contingent upon something else, to find “logically” necessary suffering is an impossibility. Once a factual connection is made between suffering and a good, then the OP can disclaim it by appealing to a logical “possibility,” however improbable that disproves the logical tie.

There is no “logical” connection between getting stabbed in the heart and dying because, given medical advances there will come a time when some treatment that is self administered will make this current, only apparent, difficulty a “trifling thing of the past.” :doh2:

Suffering is not a logically necessary state, so it is impossible to find a “logical” connection between it and any other reality.

It is not clear to me how God is bound by rules of logic in a universe that is fundamentally one of “brute facts.”

When someone “kills” another person, that is not a logical act, it is a non-rational one. It has nothing to do with logic. Why should God be constrained to logic as the only means to deal with the non-rational beings that perpetrate and perpetuate insanity?

 

[Bob_Crowley]

To answer the OP’s question, we’d have to go back and put ourselves in God’s position before He creates anything, either the spiritual world, or the natural. This incidentally implies God exists, so we won’t go into that.

We also have to assume that even then, before He made anything, He is both Love and Good in the total senses of the words. Since He is both, then He would be more or less bound to give of Himself in some form or another, otherwise all you’d have is this narcissistic God so bound up in His own Goodness and Love, that all He does is admire Himself.

But since He may wish to relate to another, then this would I think be the “start” of the Trinity, in that God the Father sees Himself reflected in God the Son as in a mirror, with the Holy Spirit the bond by which they see each other.

Since they are all “God”, there is no possibility of rebellion at that stage.

But if God then wishes to make subservient conscious, moral creatures, which can reflect back to Him his qualities, He runs into a moral dilemma. Will He allow the possibility of rebellion or not? If He doesn’t, they’re not free.

If He does, He runs the risk of rebellion, and hence sufffering. So by virtue of His decision to create moral creatures, either in the spiritual or natural realm, He runs the risk of suffering. In that respect, I think suffering is unavoidable - God cannot create subservient, moral, spiritual, intelligent creatures without the risk of rebellion, and hence, suffering, despite His omnipotence.

We then end up with a Christopher Hitchens, self described as a “misetheist” as well as an atheist, one who “hates God” partly because of the suffering he sees around him. No doubt he is still a misetheist for a different reason, but no longer an atheist, a consequence of God’s original decision to allow us some measure of free will.

I am reading a book by Peter Kreeft, where He claims all suffering is ultimately by God’s “Grace”. I dispute that. How is untreated leprosy a gift of “Grace”? Or a child being beaten by abusive parents?

 

[shoe]

Suffering is the result of sin entering into the world. And sin’s entrance into the world - and therefore the entrance of both physical and moral suffering - is related to mankind’s rebellion against a Holy and Loving God, which first came about by Adam’s using his free-will choice to disobey God. Therefore, suffering in the world is the necessary consequence of humankind’s rebellion against his Creator.

 

[fred_conty]

A reply to all.

The “greater good defense” says that God only allowes “necessary” pain and suffering, but does not allow “unnecessary, gratuitous” pain and suffering. It means that whatever pain and suffering exists, it is a LOGICALLY NECESSARY PREREQUISITE to some greater good, and the phrase “logically necessary” means that the amount of “pain and suffering” cannot be lessened without losing the resulting “greater good”. Not even God’s omnipotence can lower the amount of pain and suffering without losing the result.

This is not MY concoction, it is the so-called “greater good defense”. The question of this thread is to provide an example of such “necessary pain and suffering”. So far there was no example.

A few people tried to say that the crucifixion was such an act. Not true. There is no logical impossibility involved in “pardoning” our transgressions, without the “self-sacrifice”. Remember, ONLY logically contradictory solutions are unavailable to God. If a solution does not lead to a logical contradiction, then God COULD instantiate it.

This thread has NOTHING to do with the so-called “free will” defense, which is a completely different ball-game.

It would be nice, just for once to stay within the stipulated framework of a thread, and not to worry about the derail attempts. But, I guess, that will not happen any time soon - if ever.

I do not know if this will answer the question, but here is an example of “unnecesary” pain for a greater good.

From a christian point of view only, St. John the Baptist wore a garment made from camel’s hair and ate locusts and honey for his food. This of course was voluntary on his part and not “necessary”. But he did it to bring noteriety to himself. That he might be the forerunner of Jesus Christ to point to Jesus as the one who was prophesied by the prophets as the messiah. Now if St. John the Baptist had not chosen this suffering way of life in the desert, then people would not have been drawn to listen to him . So he chose to suffer to be a beacon for Jesus, for the greater good of mankind.

Now an objection could be, that God could have done it some other way so then it is not a “logical necessity”. But it could be argued, it is not for anyone to tell God anything, and that if he choses to do it this way, then God himself made it a “logical necessity” from all eternity in his divine intellect. Man is limited to the facts as they stand now, and not by the possiblities that could have been but aren’t.

You said,
“logically necessary” means that the amount of “pain and suffering” cannot be lessened without losing the resulting “greater good”.

For this, it would be necessary to specify exactly how much pain must be experienced. Just how would that be done? Can exact measurement of pain be specified, no more and no less? How could that fact be known?

Just a thought.

 

[JDaniel]

The so-called greater good defense for the “problem of evil” is based upon the assumption that there is a “greater good” result, which cannot be reached (despite God’s omnipotence) without some “necessary suffering”. (There are some additional assumptions, which we can disregard for the time being.)

Is there an example of such “greater good”, which cannot be achieved without some “logically necessary suffering”? I tried to find an example, but failed. Please concentrate on a logical sequence, where the suffering is a logical pre-requiste - meaning that without the suffering the greater good cannot achieved.

Trurl:

It’s the story of a man. It’s the story of a man who built his business. As time went on, his business thrived and he became wealthy, then even wealthier. Soon, since he was a “god,” in his own mind, and he gave no thought to God. In fact, he became agnostic, then atheistic. He had loads of fun. Spent his money on wine, women and song - despite having a wife and children. And then, the end of that empire came to pass.

When the end came, it came hard and fast. His wife found out about his infidelities and divorced him. His children felt as though he had abandoned them. The government changed the rules for the accounting for his business so that it forced him into bankruptcy. Within a two-year period of time, he went from riches to rags. He lost his house and his bank account. He took up life as a vagabond, grabbing a meal where ever he could.

In the end, he found a relationship with God. He recognized that he did not, in fact, build his business by himself. He discovered that he did not create his opulent lifestyle all by himself. God concurred in the building of all of that, yet never did he take a moment to thank Him. He allowed himself to become his god, and manna to become his co-god.

The annihilation of that lifestyle, and his family and his business, brought him full circle back to that relationship with God mentioned above. Now, even though that lifestyle hasn’t returned, the many years of pain he went through in his downward spiral, has essentially come to an end. In his current life, his relationship with God has strengthened his resolve to be an exceptional partner with Him, if God allows it. He has found other religious interests that have made him happier then he had been for the past 15 - 20 years, and that involve his arduous climb back to Holiness. Now, he knows no other way to live, despite having to work very hard in his old age, and he knows God is concurrent with him in it.

That’s the short and sweet of it.

God bless,
jd

 

[Trurl]

I do not know if this will answer the question, but here is an example of “unnecesary” pain for a greater good.

From a christian point of view only, St. John the Baptist wore a garment made from camel’s hair and ate locusts and honey for his food. This of course was voluntary on his part and not “necessary”. But he did it to bring noteriety to himself. That he might be the forerunner of Jesus Christ to point to Jesus as the one who was prophesied by the prophets as the messiah. Now if St. John the Baptist had not chosen this suffering way of life in the desert, then people would not have been drawn to listen to him . So he chose to suffer to be a beacon for Jesus, for the greater good of mankind.

I have no problem with pain and suffering which is volitional. If someone wishes to emulate Jesus’s passion by having himself crucified, that is his own business, and no one should interfere.

You said,
“logically necessary” means that the amount of “pain and suffering” cannot be lessened without losing the resulting “greater good”.

For this, it would be necessary to specify exactly how much pain must be experienced. Just how would that be done? Can exact measurement of pain be specified, no more and no less? How could that fact be known?

We could not p(name removed by moderator)oint it with 10 decimal’s worth of accuracy, but we sure can make a good, educated guess. Suppose that someone could point out the greater good, which was the direct, logical corollary of the holocaust. It would be clear that if the holocaust never happened, then this “good” would never have come to pass. So at that point we have some untold amount of suffering, which was logically necessary for the ensuing greater good. So far, so “good”.

This is the question: “suppose that one of the victims would have avoided the capture, by sheer luck” (there were many who did). To make the holocaust “logically necessary” the proponent of the “greater good defense” in under the obligation to explain why and how the lucky escape of one person would have negated the “good”.

 

[Trurl]

Trurl:

It’s the story of a man. It’s the story of a man who built his business. As time went on, his business thrived and he became wealthy, then even wealthier. Soon, since he was a “god,” in his own mind, and he gave no thought to God. In fact, he became agnostic, then atheistic. He had loads of fun. Spent his money on wine, women and song - despite having a wife and children. And then, the end of that empire came to pass.

When the end came, it came hard and fast. His wife found out about his infidelities and divorced him. His children felt as though he had abandoned them. The government changed the rules for the accounting for his business so that it forced him into bankruptcy. Within a two-year period of time, he went from riches to rags. He lost his house and his bank account. He took up life as a vagabond, grabbing a meal where ever he could.

In the end, he found a relationship with God. He recognized that he did not, in fact, build his business by himself. He discovered that he did not create his opulent lifestyle all by himself. God concurred in the building of all of that, yet never did he take a moment to thank Him. He allowed himself to become his god, and manna to become his co-god.

The annihilation of that lifestyle, and his family and his business, brought him full circle back to that relationship with God mentioned above. Now, even though that lifestyle hasn’t returned, the many years of pain he went through in his downward spiral, has essentially come to an end. In his current life, his relationship with God has strengthened his resolve to be an exceptional partner with Him, if God allows it. He has found other religious interests that have made him happier then he had been for the past 15 - 20 years, and that involve his arduous climb back to Holiness. Now, he knows no other way to live, despite having to work very hard in his old age, and he knows God is concurrent with him in it.

That’s the short and sweet of it.

God bless,
jd

A simple lightning strike (a la Paul on the road to Damascus) could have achieved he same result. In that case the family and all the other affected people would have been spared of their suffering.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Is there an example of such “greater good”, which cannot be achieved without some “logically necessary suffering”? I tried to find an example, but failed. Please concentrate on a logical sequence, where the suffering is a logical pre-requiste - meaning that without the suffering the greater good cannot achieved.

Developing a higher threshold for pain and suffering in order to “steel” oneself to always choosing good despite any possible suffering that might come created by evil or the negligence of others. Just as courage is not developed except by facing and standing up to danger or risk, overcoming fear or trepidation in the face of suffering or pain is not achieved except by facing the reality of suffering and overcoming its psychological hold.

In other words, overcoming the specter of suffering and its power to intimidate or cause moral agents to allow or do evil to spare themselves suffering.

 

[sw85]

The so-called greater good defense for the “problem of evil” is based upon the assumption that there is a “greater good” result, which cannot be reached (despite God’s omnipotence) without some “necessary suffering”. (There are some additional assumptions, which we can disregard for the time being.)

Is there an example of such “greater good”, which cannot be achieved without some “logically necessary suffering”? I tried to find an example, but failed. Please concentrate on a logical sequence, where the suffering is a logical pre-requiste - meaning that without the suffering the greater good cannot achieved.

You REALLY REALLY REALLY cannot think of even one example where an evil thing resulted in some greater good? Even in your head?

By the way, the “greater good” defense isn’t really a defense. It’s an effort to show that the problem of evil is not in itself insurmountable. Since the problem of evil depends for its rhetorical force on the claim that there is no possible way omnibenevolence can be reconciled with the fact of evil in the world, to refute it it’s only necessary to show that there is at least one possible way, and it’s not even necessary to prove that way’s correctness. The mere fact that one can be thought of is sufficient to disprove the argument.

 

[Lochias]

A simple lightning strike (a la Paul on the road to Damascus) could have achieved he same result. In that case the family and all the other affected people would have been spared of their suffering.

Why do you think earthly suffering is something to fear and avoid at all costs?

 

[JDaniel]

A simple lightning strike (a la Paul on the road to Damascus) could have achieved he same result. In that case the family and all the other affected people would have been spared of their suffering.

Trurl:

A similar experience can be shared by many. Must God, in your opinion, lightening strike all of them? Whence do we take individual responsibility?

God bless,
jd

 

[Peter_Plato]

Trurl:

A similar experience can be shared by many. Must God, in your opinion, lightening strike all of them? Whence do we take individual responsibility?

God bless,
jd

I suppose he could if he wanted human existence to resemble a badly written cartoon. Thing is, he likely wants to form human beings with a deeply human set of experiences, feelings and motives rather than little freakish cartoon creatures who fear the animator’s pen above everything else.

youtube.com/watch?v=pxFV0MQ9wH0&sns=em

 

[Eric_Hyom]

Trurl;

But you did not define "love

God loves each and every one of us as he loves himself.

Can God love us more than he loves himself?

 

[Trurl]

Why do you think earthly suffering is something to fear and avoid at all costs?

Only the unnecessary, gratuitous suffering. That is why I ask for ONE example of logically ncessary suffering, which cannot be lessened… but so far, in vain.

 

[Trurl]

A similar experience can be shared by many. Must God, in your opinion, lightening strike all of them? Whence do we take individual responsibility?

It was merely an example. There are infinitely many ways to “wake up” that “rich person”, without inflicting the suffering of the bystandards. Why do I have to spell out everything in minute detail?

 

[fred_conty]

I have no problem with pain and suffering which is volitional. If someone wishes to emulate Jesus’s passion by having himself crucified, that is his own business, and no one should interfere.

We could not p(name removed by moderator)oint it with 10 decimal’s worth of accuracy, but we sure can make a good, educated guess. Suppose that someone could point out the greater good, which was the direct, logical corollary of the holocaust. It would be clear that if the holocaust never happened, then this “good” would never have come to pass. So at that point we have some untold amount of suffering, which was logically necessary for the ensuing greater good. So far, so “good”.

This is the question: “suppose that one of the victims would have avoided the capture, by sheer luck” (there were many who did). To make the holocaust “logically necessary” the proponent of the “greater good defense” in under the obligation to explain why and how the lucky escape of one person would have negated the “good”.

Trul, you said, “…we have some untold amount of suffering, which was logically necessary for the ensuing greater good.”

If I am not mistaken, the equation is if there is a (from 1-10) 5 in pain, then there must be a 5 in goodness in proportion to the pain. So that there is a 1 to 1 ratio, pain to good. But it isn’t clear to me why you need to see a 1 to 1 ratio.

 

[Trurl]

If I am not mistaken, the equation is if there is a (from 1-10) 5 in pain, then there must be a 5 in goodness in proportion to the pain. So that there is a 1 to 1 ratio, pain to good. But it isn’t clear to me why you need to see a 1 to 1 ratio.

That is a tad simplistic. Going into more detail, the argument is this:

1. There is some amount of suffering, let’s say (on the scale of 1 to 10) it is measured as “5”.
2. Let’s say that the greater good is measured as 6 or more (up to ten). (This is still very simplistic, there are more factors to consider, but for the time being let’s keep it simple).

If this case, we can tentatively say that the suffering of “5” is justified to achieve a “greater good” of 6 or above. If the good would only be “5”, then we have a stalemate, no loss and no gain.

Now comes the tricky part. If the same good of “6 or more” could be achieved by a suffering of “LESS THAN 5”, then the suffering of “5” cannot be justified any more. The point is that if you can achieve the same good, with a suffering of “4” (or lower) then the "suffering between “4” and “5” was unnecessary and as such unjustifyable. It is not enough that there would be “any greater good”, even if it is truly “greater”, but the suffering MUST be minimized.

 

[Eric_Hyom]

Trurl;

But you did not define "love

If God loves each and every one of us as he loves himself, that appears to be a greatest good.

Can God love us more than he loves himself?