Bman -
I know your post wasn't directed at me but I would like to respond.
Quote: And my level of physical health is TRULY unusual by world standards! This world is sheer, utter hell for 90% of the people upon it.
This is the argument of evil and suffering again. Natural evil (and suffering) comes about because there needs to be regular laws of nature that form a baseline, so that cause and effect are in play, and actual moral choices can be made and ethics can happen. If someone has a physical ailment, its because there are physical laws that govern our present existence, and if we didn't have them then the universe would not make sense, and causality would break down. If only the good results happened and cause and effect broke down people would have good health magically, no matter what was done to their bodies. Then actually doing something terrible to someone else's body would no longer have an ethical or moral component to the action, or would have an unclear moral consequence.
Its debatable whether or not the physical universe was created for anything else other than the possibility of real moral choices to come about.
Quote: Makes me wonder, what tortures await me after I die. (Does "God"
like to play games, ya think???)
Does it not stand to reason that if a "God" exists (or even an intelligent "akashic ether" or what have you) that He/It is an evil, sadistic XXXXXXX???
And what reason do you have to back up this view of God? The fact that there are repercussions for poor behavior? Actually the idea that there is justice in the afterlife makes up for the fact that people can have terrible lives presently, and actually brings meaning to suffering and pain. If there was no justice in the afterlife, if there was not a God who set up laws of (spiritual) cause and effect, then the world would truly be an absurd, sick joke for most of humanity. Most people talk about this as 'the problem of evil' as an argument against Christianity. I think the real 'problem of evil' is that if one doesn't believe in an afterlife there truly is no meaning, goal, or value in all of life that is permanent and worthwhile - life, and especially pain and suffering, is a sick joke for most of humanity.
Quote: (And look at the animal kingdom, where some 60% or so of animals are parasites on others. What sort of "God" would create tapeworms, or grubs which eat out the insides of other animals while they are alive. Or how about the leprosy bacillus??? Sure you can have brutalities like predation, war, ect. but some forms of suffering - including those of ANIMALS, who one cannot accuse of sin - seem more the work of an evil genius that a callous, or even stupid creator...)
The suffering of animals come about not because of their sin (which they don't have), but because of these natural laws that are in play which are necessary for an orderly universe to exist. And an orderly universe is necessary for ethical and moral choices to be made. Tapeworms and other parasites came about through natural selection, which is a law that governs interactions that leads to evolution. To have the evolution of thinking creatures, natural selection must allow for the development of parasites as well. You cannot have one without the other, while still upholding cause and effect for the majority of events of the world.
Put another way, how could God create a physical existence that didn't have cause and effect in play where there is a real ethical system produced? Or how could God keep the positive effects of natural selection / evolution while getting rid of the negative effects and still allow cause and effect to reign so that there could be a real ethical system? The answer to both of these questions, is that
it cannot be done. If you set up laws that allow for the development of humanity in the form of a Francis of Assisi or Nietzsche, then the same laws allow for the development of tapeworms.