C
carn
Guest
Long ago i understood the reason, why there is now contradiction between a loving, allpowerful, allknowingand non-contradictory God and the suffering in the world at least intuitively.
Why do people have so much problems with this?
To sum it up in my words, it is as if A is willing to erect the perfect city and wants everybody to live with him there, because its a realy cool place and everywhere else is “damned” compared to this city and he realy likes everybody. For the city to be perfect, there must be no crime but also no enforcement of law, cause both are marks of an imperfect society (the former the more serious one). So A has the problem that if everyone just comes to his city, humans being humans, some will misbehave. Then either crime or law enforcement (or probably both) have to be tolerated and the city is not perfect.
What A needs is his fellow citizens to not commit crimes even if the laws are not enforced or in other word he needs not only good people but (with a wordly meaning) saints. People who in perfect freedom choose freely only the good. Unfortunately those people he wants to actually live with him are mostly not saints but average humans. A might choose to only let saints into his city and the rest be “damned”, but he wants everybody in, if possible, so he tries to setup a plan, that as many as possible end up living with him.
So people need to learn to choose in perfect freedom only the good.
Now what certainly does not work is, if A proclaims to everybody in an undeniable way “Here is this real great city and everybody capable of being saintly, which is demonstrated by following rules A-Z can come in.” because people then do not learn to choose in freedom good, they learn to avoid breaking rule X, which is of no help when living in the city, because there should be no rules.
On the other hand, he must inform, teach and train his hopefully future citizens, so they can mature and one day live up to the requirements, he must ask of them for the city to be perfect.
But those two constraints are diametral to some extent. If A teaches people, they might find evidence that A exists, his city exists and will want to get there. They will conclude that they have to follo As rules to get there and this will again result in some people just following rules without learning what has to be actually learned. The result for A will be unsatisfactory, although some might still get it, others will get on the wrong track and cannot be admitted.
So A has to put great care into what information he gives out to his potential future citizens to avoid leading some, which might make it, off track. This might include even leaving doubt about his own and the cities existance (because again, people might just follow rules to get there) and this certainly could exclude leaving behind tangible hard evidence behind, which would be equivalent to an open proclamation of As existance and plans. And this could mean, because people observe their surrondings, tolerate some suffering, because if A allievates suffering too often in a noticeable pattern, because people would notice this and might gain evidence about A leading to the undesirable “follow-the-rules because it is beneficial” pattern above.
Frankly of course this might result for the others in being unable to definitely discern whether A exist or not, at least if they only analyze hard evidence, but for As goal - opening his city for as many as possible - it might be the best solution.
I guess many people might not see this explanation as sufficient to overcome the problem (and it isn’t on itself, because i try to describe by human example what cannot be described by human example) but from this point of view, its pretty hard for me to understand, why people make so much fuss of suffering and Gods supposed qualities. He wants to get as many as possible in his city and in his city he won’t be a tyrant, so all admitted should be well behaved and will not be forced by him into anything (least into losing their free will). And making free-willed humans into a bunch of well-behaving free-willed humans quite obviously erquires a plan more complicated than “Here are my laws, if you don’t follow them, i will strike you down with lightning.”
So where is the exact problem?
Why do people have so much problems with this?
To sum it up in my words, it is as if A is willing to erect the perfect city and wants everybody to live with him there, because its a realy cool place and everywhere else is “damned” compared to this city and he realy likes everybody. For the city to be perfect, there must be no crime but also no enforcement of law, cause both are marks of an imperfect society (the former the more serious one). So A has the problem that if everyone just comes to his city, humans being humans, some will misbehave. Then either crime or law enforcement (or probably both) have to be tolerated and the city is not perfect.
What A needs is his fellow citizens to not commit crimes even if the laws are not enforced or in other word he needs not only good people but (with a wordly meaning) saints. People who in perfect freedom choose freely only the good. Unfortunately those people he wants to actually live with him are mostly not saints but average humans. A might choose to only let saints into his city and the rest be “damned”, but he wants everybody in, if possible, so he tries to setup a plan, that as many as possible end up living with him.
So people need to learn to choose in perfect freedom only the good.
Now what certainly does not work is, if A proclaims to everybody in an undeniable way “Here is this real great city and everybody capable of being saintly, which is demonstrated by following rules A-Z can come in.” because people then do not learn to choose in freedom good, they learn to avoid breaking rule X, which is of no help when living in the city, because there should be no rules.
On the other hand, he must inform, teach and train his hopefully future citizens, so they can mature and one day live up to the requirements, he must ask of them for the city to be perfect.
But those two constraints are diametral to some extent. If A teaches people, they might find evidence that A exists, his city exists and will want to get there. They will conclude that they have to follo As rules to get there and this will again result in some people just following rules without learning what has to be actually learned. The result for A will be unsatisfactory, although some might still get it, others will get on the wrong track and cannot be admitted.
So A has to put great care into what information he gives out to his potential future citizens to avoid leading some, which might make it, off track. This might include even leaving doubt about his own and the cities existance (because again, people might just follow rules to get there) and this certainly could exclude leaving behind tangible hard evidence behind, which would be equivalent to an open proclamation of As existance and plans. And this could mean, because people observe their surrondings, tolerate some suffering, because if A allievates suffering too often in a noticeable pattern, because people would notice this and might gain evidence about A leading to the undesirable “follow-the-rules because it is beneficial” pattern above.
Frankly of course this might result for the others in being unable to definitely discern whether A exist or not, at least if they only analyze hard evidence, but for As goal - opening his city for as many as possible - it might be the best solution.
I guess many people might not see this explanation as sufficient to overcome the problem (and it isn’t on itself, because i try to describe by human example what cannot be described by human example) but from this point of view, its pretty hard for me to understand, why people make so much fuss of suffering and Gods supposed qualities. He wants to get as many as possible in his city and in his city he won’t be a tyrant, so all admitted should be well behaved and will not be forced by him into anything (least into losing their free will). And making free-willed humans into a bunch of well-behaving free-willed humans quite obviously erquires a plan more complicated than “Here are my laws, if you don’t follow them, i will strike you down with lightning.”
So where is the exact problem?
lol, j/k
), so I try to immediately cease upon incorrect doctrinal statements and correct them.