Why did God make life so hard for humans?

[Miguel1]

Think about an ant. How much it works, fights and suffers its whole life.. just for you to step on it.

Do you care? Does it even register in your mind?

So why should a higher intelligent being care about your suffering?

[LordFall]

54 minutes ago, Miguel1 said:

Think about an ant. How much it works, fights and suffers its whole life.. just for you to step on it.

Do you care? Does it even register in your mind?

So why should a higher intelligent being care about your suffering?

I don't randomly step on ants or fuck up their colonies. I don't know much about them apart from the fact that they build stuff and walk around. In a way it's an irrelevant point since from God perspective you should care about both's suffering. 

Seems like life is a wildly irresponsible creation. The gnostics believed in the Demiurge Yaldaboth that created material reality to punish humans and rejoice in their suffering. I don't believe in that view of reality but sure feels like it at times.

God is not a leader. It's at best a mad scientist enjoying human suffering like a fucking sadomasochist. Really not impressed. 

[zurew]

If you think God has an ability to stop certain things from happening and or to create this world in a different way then the indifference principle is probably one of the most dogshit response to the POE.

Also curious how you guys reconcile spiral dynamics and spiritual development (however you want to track that) with  the highest development being "be indifferent to the suffering of all sentient beings".

[LordFall]

49 minutes ago, zurew said:

If you think God has an ability to stop certain things from happening and or to create this world in a different way then the indifference principle is probably one of the most dogshit response to the POE.

Also curious how you guys reconcile spiral dynamics and spiritual development (however you want to track that) with  the highest development being "be indifferent to the suffering of all sentient beings".

Cope and delusion. If you see someone get raped in front of you and you're detached and admiring the beauty of nature at work you're a fucking psycho. Which is why often spiritual leaders stop actually interacting with the world they find enough material success to isolate themselves from it and then just reflect and ponder and share their insights with their followers while being completely removed and out of touch from other people's actual lives. 

The whole point is you have agency and the power to change stuff but until you're higher consciousness you probably won't recognize the consequences of your actions and will just hurt someone else to lessen your own suffering well like a rapist a thief a warmonger, etc. 

I really have a dislike for spiritual teachers right now though rubs me the wrong way a lot of narcissism baked into it. Much easier to preach about detachment than to solve the actual tangible material problems that we face. Then having the balls to declare themselves higher consciousness and more developed lol 

How do you build resilient supply chains and diplomatic alliances to stop world hunger? Fuck bro idk don't worry about that though you're God, it's all good! Life is a perfect dream! Don't worry about it! Just meditate more! Become God realized dude it'll be great! 

 

 

Edited yesterday at 06:05 PM by LordFall

[moonawakening444]

is it possible to become conscious of God and still be aware of the world´s problems while also doing something about it? 

like actually doing something to make the lives of people around you better....

that´s the question i´ve been sitting with these days

Edited yesterday at 06:53 PM by moonawakening444

[Eskilon]

1 hour ago, zurew said:

Also curious how you guys reconcile spiral dynamics and spiritual development (however you want to track that) with  the highest development being "be indifferent to the suffering of all sentient beings".

There's a difference between indifference and non-interference?

This doen't seem crazy because freedom is really one of the ultimate values and highest in virtue. Giving freedom and therefore allowing errors and suffering is still much better than control and coercion.

Freedom will give beings wisdom, love, and intelligence, but that might come through suffering, agony and errors.

The whole point of spirituality is to attain to ever higher levels of freedom and sovereignty. 

Edited yesterday at 07:14 PM by Eskilon

[zurew]

11 hours ago, Eskilon said:

There's a difference between indifference and non-interference?

Going with the assumption that you think God had a choice about what kind of world or Universe he should create and that he can consciously change the world this is my response:

You can make a conceptual distinction between the two, but I dont think that will be a relevant and good enough to reconcile the moral issues. In most cases, especially if the given event has moral weight according to you, you will do something about it, if you have the resources and power to do so (and it seems strange, that not even world wars and not even the holocaust had enough moral weight for an all powerful , all good being to lift his fingers)

But sure, you can say that you arent indifferent to thousands of kids getting raped and at the same time say that you dont want to intervene - but that sounds extra strange from God's pov, who literally created a world  where child rapists are running around and he can under any second change and or stop anything. 

 

 

But the free will response is  incredibly weak for many other  different reasons:

 First, just to flag - people literally have a higher moral standard for people, than what they have for God, because they wouldn't ever accept a response like "look dude, the reason why I didnt stop the child rapist from raping your child (even though I had the power to easily do so) is because I valued and respected his free will".

Second, it makes 0 sense  that God values the child rapist's free will over the children's free will who gets raped. So any time a given person violates another person's free will, it seems strange that God doesnt do shit about it, especially when one person violates multiple people's free will.

Third, to your lesson response: I dont know what you learn from getting skinned alive or burned alive or tortured to death or from getting raped - but whatever hypothetical lesson is learned from there - if I know that thats what I need to drag certain sentient creatures through for them to learn that given thing, then I would be personally okay with that lesson not being learned and not allowing and or creating those state of affairs at all . Here I would also flag, that if God has the power to give you that knowledge and lesson without dragging you through those psychopathic state of affairs, then if he is all good, he would obviously pick alternative pathways.

Fourth: if God is all powerful , then he could have just created a world with agents who always freely chooses to do good without any coercion. Like what stopped God from creating enlightened beings from the get-go?

Fifth: Or if you think that the 4. for some reason fails -  God could have just created a world, where agents can only choose from a set of good options - here your claim about coercion just simply wouldnt hold up , because you still have the ability to choose from avalaible options, its just that there just wouldnt be "rape this kid" kind of options avalaible to anyone. (But here I would flag again, that even if you think that this would somehow be coercion, I will remind you that I would personally choose this kind of "coercion" at any given time over creating a world, where I sit back and watch billions of sentient creatures ripping each other apart and eating each other and raping each other and torturing each other etc).

Sixth: Even if you think that all of the above fails, for your defense to go through, you would need to argue for a position like this - From God's pov it makes the world a worse place if he stops child rapists from raping children than to let child rapists exercise their free will.

I have more reasons why I think the free will response fails, but I think this is a good start for now.

 

 

 

I think the POE is a very serious issue if you have a particular conception of God, and it is much more honest to not desperately try to generate a bunch of ad-hoc explanations and to not maintain that conception of God and to rather change it to something thats much more plausible given all the facts of this world . Enlightenment and spiritual work is compatible with a bunch of different conceptions of God and there is an underdetermination issue.

For instance, in my opinion, its much more plausible that its either the case that God didnt have a choice about what world to create and or God isn't all powerful and cant change what happens in this world and or he is not all good or he doesnt even have a meta-cognition at all and he doesnt have intentions.

Edited 13 hours ago by zurew

[Basman]

If you don't like the world you see, change your prescription.

[Eskilon]

18 hours ago, zurew said:

But sure, you can say that you arent indifferent to thousands of kids getting raped and at the same time say that you dont want to intervene - but that sounds extra strange from God's pov, who literally created a world  where child rapists are running around and he can under any second change and or stop anything. 

It's only extra strange from humans Pov. From universe pov or an infinite loving being it makes no difference.

 

18 hours ago, zurew said:

because they wouldn't ever accept a response like "look dude, the reason why I didnt stop the child rapist from raping your child (even though I had the power to easily do so) is because I valued and respected his free will".

Because they are selfish. 

Also, consider how silly it is worrying about somebody raping a child in your dreams. If reality is indeed a dream and you groked that at a bones and soul level then not worrying is indeed logical and perfectly fine.

You don't care about the dream character getting burned alive in your last night dreams, it's just a memory for you now.

God seems to "allow" everything because indeed everything might just be "somebody" playing with itself infinitely. 

18 hours ago, zurew said:

Second, it makes 0 sense  that God values the child rapist's free will over the children's free will who gets raped. So any time a given person violates another person's free will, it seems strange that God doesnt do shit about it, especially when one person violates multiple people's free will.

God might values both, and therefore can't intervene. It might be an "AND" and not an "OR".

 

18 hours ago, zurew said:

Third, to your lesson response: I dont know what you learn from getting skinned alive or burned alive or tortured to death or from getting raped - but whatever hypothetical lesson is learned from there - if I know that thats what I need to drag certain sentient creatures through for them to learn that given thing, then I would be personally okay with that lesson not being learned and not allowing and or creating those state of affairs at all . Here I would also flag, that if God has the power to give you that knowledge and lesson without dragging you through those psychopathic state of affairs, then if he is all good, he would obviously pick alternative pathways.

You can only truly learn something by experiecing that thing. In the case of getting skinned alive, how could god know what it is like if it didn't go through that experience? Experience is irreplaceable and the only way to knowing and wisdom. It's good to ask, how did God became all-knowing?

You only think of alternatives for that challenging experience because of your sense of self.

18 hours ago, zurew said:

For instance, in my opinion, its much more plausible that its either the case that God didnt have a choice about what world to create and or God isn't all powerful and cant change what happens in this world and or he is not all good or he doesnt even have a meta-cognition at all and he doesnt have intentions.

If GOD is identical to the world and is not a separate entity out there deciding things, then our conversation here is pointless. Because reality just happens and it must be this way because of absolute infinity, so this is only a tiny possibility unfolding. Everything is absolutely neutral and impersonal, and at the same time insanely personal because there's nothing more than this and you must be it. This explains everything perfectly. 

Edited 6 hours ago by Eskilon

[zurew]

34 minutes ago, Eskilon said:

If GOD is identical to the world and is not a separate entity out there deciding things, then our conversation here is pointless. Because reality just happens and it must be this way because of absolute infinity, so this is only a tiny possibility unfolding.

This is why I started with laying down the assumptions before my response so that you know what kind of position im trying to respond to and so that you know what kind of conception of God is being critiqued.

If those things dont apply, then there is no problem of evil, but I dont understand what "perfection" and "infinite love" and "unbiased" means,  given that the conception of God you just layed down there is non-agential and it seems that it literally cant unfold in alternative ways. So everything that happens must happen and cannot not happen and God cant do anything about it. (So its not like he can get credit for any of the good stuff  ,just like given this conception, he cant get blamed for the bad stuff). 

[Rigel]

God loves suffering

[caspex]

When I was in deep pain I realized there was a point after which the human mind simply stops holding on to sanity and gives up. I touched that boundary and barely came back. In pain you aren't really scared of death but reaching that boundary and going insane.

Suffering has taught me to respect it and made me realize the point of life is goodness. I cry from gratitude for being alive and having a roof over my head, no pain in my body and a family. The world is full of suffering yet it is also full of love and goodness.

In the depths of suffering and physical pain, when I dipped my toe in that insanity because my mind couldn't hold on to it, I fell to the ground screaming. I looked at all that pain and understood it was all God, all perfect and all as was always intended to be. I was crying in pain begging for it to stop but I knew it was perfectly God. I don't want to experience that ever again. Never Never Never. But that's God. That's true and that's perfect. 

No matter what you think of this, or whether I am on a high horse when I say the world is perfect, it is the truth and suffering is doing exactly what it is meant to do. The world is utterly perfect. 

 

When you cry beg and scream for it to all stop, when you cross that boundary and go insane you'll know it was all perfect and that it was love. 

[oOo]

@LordFall This is a very difficult subject to handle. Firstly, you must empathise with the human condition. Illnesses, diseases, wars, forms of corruptions in the numbers greater than clothing designs, and all this where as much as this period in history reflects our highest technological growth, that is by abstract comparison far outweighed by all the above and the suicide rate across the planet. Also this is just our global context, we live our indiviudal lives and all of us are given these massive ego's when compared to the universe we are no more than specs of sand. What a cruel joke right!

That said, most of the world's issues actually exist in the most developed countries ironically speaking when it comes to subjects such as happiness, which is separate to difficulties in themselves but nevertheless details the existential position one has towards them. I am sure you have previously done personal research before on native tribes for example that are perfectly content protecting themselves from the next latest iPhone upgrade!

The goal should not be to find a particular answer, your role is to serve your unique living context. Look outside the screen you are viewing this from, where I am right now, does not matter outside the abstract of your present experience. You must find resolve within yourself about how you feel in your body and mind for the sake of your body and mind alone, not in trying to bring global or even universal existential resolve to a condition you have no control over, but just for yourself and your own  developmental maturity.

We as humans unknowingly become addicted to our emotional patterns, and we curate meaning unknowingly according to the feelings we are unknowingly falsely believing to be the very state upon how we should view situations. This is NOT word play, it is a very elementary reality that when its fixed by way of meditating within oneself and teaching oneself by observing their own inward patterns how their emotions emerge and with that too, fluctuations of energy kind and magnitude, and with that the influences that emerge to bring about our cognitive experiences. Most of the difficulties in reality in light of our technological advancements are more and more becoming fundamentally just judgements on our own personal emotional competence. Judgements in assessing our energetic state and leveraging our awareness to bring balance, harmony and joy through that interaction alone, and pride, time and care in that self awareness to strategic long term self organisation internally and externally in that process.

You share a unique perspective in this world as do all people on this forum and the world at large. Reality is funnelled through the very unique limitations that make-up you as a human being. By taking pride in how our being organises information energetically (thus all encompassingly), maturity naturally folds the meaning we are meant to harbour for our unique life context. Maturity, not praise from the outside, not even internal validation outside of autocorrecting self esteem, is where the aim should be concerning any existential disposition we have, god or otherwise. That... is something only you have direct access to, have control over and a clear timeline towards responsibly embracing. To take that path maturely, you must release what is outside the reference frame of what you can control, and make peace with these realities.

This will be my only comment for this thread, but I wish you well.

Best regards.

Edited 4 hours ago by oOo

[gettoefl]

Never a better time to be alive and all we do is argue bitch complain ad nauseam how bad it it how blighted the world how blameworthy God is. We did nothing ourselves to cause the wars the famines the corruption. I am innocent and others not to mention God are wholly to blame for my woe.