They get familiarized to the experience of pain in a way that is safe and harmless to them. Why would that not be a benefit? Why gratuitous?RealisticCatholic:
Because the toddlers do not “benefit” from the pain of teething. There is no logical necessity involved. They cannot “offer up” their suffering. In a created world there no “natural” result. The omnimax creator is only limited by logical contradictions. All this amounts to unnecessary, gratuitous suffering. While it is true that suffering is not necessarily evil, but allowing gratuitous suffering IS evil.
They cry and whine about everything and expect everyone around them to cater to their every need while they just lay about and sleep most of the day. Then they have the gall to wake up their moms and dads (and everyone else) at all hours of the night to feed them and change them. They could do with a little toughening up, no? No pain, no gain, right? A little stoicism is good for the soul.First, isn’t that a bit “offtopic”?
As you can see, this suffering is not gratuitous. Just because you can’t think of a way in which it is beneficial, does not mean that no such way exists. It does not even mean that such way is hard to find for other people. It might also be that you could have found such a way on your own, if only you would have tried a bit harder.
I agree… this teaches them at a young age how to deal with ongoing pain in a safe way.
For the most part, although some just get old and cranky.HarryStotle:
I agree… this teaches them at a young age how to deal with ongoing pain in a safe way.
It will help them when they are older
I suspect a correlation between the use of acetaminophen and numbing gels for relief of teething pain and the increased numbers of snowflakes and the perpetually aggrieved by assorted micro-aggressions at colleges and universities among the same cohort. Could be an interesting study.HarryStotle:
I agree… this teaches them at a young age how to deal with ongoing pain in a safe way.
It will help them when they are older
Let’s see what you wrote previously:
As you can see, they do benefit, thus this your claim is wrong.
You don’t need to comprehend the process to adjust physiologically to pain and increase your threshold to it. It needn’t be a conscious process to benefit from it.
And learning from, habituating or accommodating to pain need not be a conscious process involving comprehension. Babies could very well habituate to pain in the sense of adjusting their tolerance levels without needing to comprehend the process involved. Increasing tolerance to pain could be a distinct purpose for teething pain, and therefore it wouldn’t be gratuitous.HarryStotle:
The evolutionary process is not a conscious endeavor. If we use the anthropomorphic language, then evolution does nor CARE about the individual, it only CARES about the propagation of the species. Look at all those vestigial organs, “leftovers”, which serve no purpose, like the appendix. It is only “good” for appendicitis.
It obviously does.
As you can see, you would not weaken your argument (at least not yet) by saying something like “That was a bit imprecise, I meant that benefit does exist, but could be achieved otherwise.”.
Actually, the burden is on you to demonstrate that the pain is entirely and provably gratuitous and can have NO possible benefit as far as the omnipotent and omniscient God is concerned. Good luck with that.HarryStotle:
For this to be true you would need to prove that there ARE actual instances of pain, which cannot be avoided or lessened even for an omnipotent deity. Don’t forget that it is insufficient that there would be some beneficial effects coming from the pain. It is also necessary that pain experienced cannot be lessened without losing the (alleged) benefit.
Where it started…
No, actually, it may be at the core of the current (including @YoungSheldon?) generation’s problem: