No but plenty of people use it to dodge a good God, Alex being one. And I’m not sure that’s true. I don’t think a paradise we left (or got ourselves thrown out of) makes it worse. It’s like saying hell is locked from the inside. It’s meant to soften.
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That is how Alex frames it. As the end shows he says their end has been dismal. The whole argument is untold and insane amounts of animal suffering. Not to mention human suffering. But from past material, I know Alex is big on the animal issue.
Gentlemen, would you agree that the problem of suffering is intrinsic to virtually
all religion? Many, many denominations have come (and many have disappeared)
through the process of trying to devise specific answers. Inevitably, the metaphysical
explanations leave us without a Universally Satisfying answer.
An old testament scholar from Yale (I forget her name) made a powerful presentation
about the suffering of Job, and essentially used the old school answer that this is what
God intended, and to “Keep calm and carry on!” These words are not hers… but I
think Calvin would have liked that expression.
Is it mostly the modern age perspective that finds that so unsatisfying?
When my Pilgrim ancestors were exposed to the NEW trinity of
”An all powerful god, and all knowing god and an all loving God”, the
original Pilgrim Church in Plymouth Massachusetts threw out the old
clergy, and replaced Fire & Brimstone with Love and Unitarianism.
A third of the Church stomped out, walked across the Plymouth Common,
and established a Fire & Brimstone Congregational Church!
A landmark 1820 Massachusetts Supreme Court case, Baker v. Fales,
ruled that church property—including buildings, silver, and funds—belonged
to the “parish” (the majority of the town’s voting citizens) rather than the
“church” (the actual communicant members).
So, in many towns, the majority of citizens had become Unitarian, while the
core church members remained Orthodox/Trinitarian. Following the court’s
ruling, the Trinitarian minorities were forced to vacate their historic meeting
houses and build new ones down the road. (“The Congregationalists
kept the faith; the Unitarians kept the furniture.”)
But eventually, Calvinist suffering fell aside most everywhere, as the intellectual
center of Congregationalism had moved away from orthodoxy. In 1825 the
struggle culminated in the formal separation of the American Unitarian Association,
where the liberal congregations officially broke away, leaving the “Orthodox”
Congregationalists to defend what remained of their Calvinist heritage.
**Then in the mid-1800s, Horace Bushnell, often called the “father of American
religious liberalism,” provided the theological framework to move past Calvinism
without becoming Unitarian.
**
He challenged the Calvinist emphasis on a “crisis” conversion experience (being
“born again”) and instead promoted Christian Nurture, arguing that children should
grow up in a Christian home never knowing themselves to be anything other than
Christian.
He replaced the Calvinist view of the Atonement (substitutionary sacrifice) with
a “moral view,” emphasizing Jesus as a moral example rather than a sacrifice for
sin. The 1865 Burial Hill Declaration was produced by the National Council of
Congregational Churches (they met at Burial Hill in Plymouth). While they nominally
reaffirmed their faith in the “confessions of our fathers,” they notably omitted the
word “Calvinism” and refused to explicitly endorse the specific decrees of John Calvin.
This signaled a shift toward a broader, more ecumenical “evangelical” identity that
was less tied to strict Reformed dogmas. The final “sweeping aside” is often identified
with the adoption of the Kansas City Statement of Faith in 1913. This document
officially replaced earlier, more rigorous Calvinist confessions with a brief, modern
statement that focused on character, service, and the “Fatherhood of God.” It
represented a radical break from the past, effectively ending the era where
Calvinist orthodoxy was the standard for the denomination.
By the time the Congregational Christian Churches merged to form the United
Church of Christ (UCC) in 1957, the denomination had moved almost entirely
into the camp of Mainline Protestant liberalism, prioritizing social justice and
ecumenism over traditional Reformed soteriology.
On the OTHER SIDE OF CULTURE, we had the world’s geologists to thank
for a new view that played well with stepping away from Calvin orthodoxy:
In the 1830s, Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology argued that Earth was
shaped by slow, consistent processes (like erosion) over millions of years. To
reconcile this with faith, many 19th-century Americans adopted “Progressive
Creationism,” viewing the “days” of Genesis as vast geological epochs.
From 1859 to 1880s, Darwinism provided a narrative for how life changed
within that vast timeframe. And the general idea of biological evolution
gained rapid traction in American scientific and academic circles.
From the 1880s to 1900, there was pushback by niche religionists who
were skeptical of “Natural Selection” because it seemed too random and
lacked a clear mechanism for how traits were passed down. The “missing
piece” of evolution—how traits are inherited—arrived with the birth of
modern genetics.
Gregor Mendel’s laws of inheritance were rediscovered, providing a
mathematical basis for how traits are transmitted. Thomas Hunt Morgan’s
work with fruit flies in 1915 proved that genes are located on chromosomes,
transforming genetics from a theory into a physical science.
The Modern Synthesis, formulated during the 1930s & 1940s, fused
Darwinian natural selection with Mendelian genetics, creating the unified
“Modern Synthesis” that remains the standard model today. The application
of radioactivity to dating rocks finally allowed scientists to assign absolute
ages (billions of years) to the geological strata, confirming the “Old Earth”
required for genetic evolution to occur.
In 1944, Oswald Avery and colleagues demonstrated that DNA was the
carrier of genetic information. And finally, in 1953, Watson and Crick solved
the double helix structure… demonstrating how genetic information was
actually coded and transmitted from generation to generation.
And through it all, the metaphysics of suffering and sin, was variously
mitigated and re-stated by anyone who wanted to explain or dispute
suffering in a religious Universe.
G.Brooks
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Of course.
Vinnie
I certainly wouldn’t.
Nor, I suspect, would anyone else who is aware of the nature of Loviatar, Kali, Apep, Mictlantecuhtli and various other deities of war, death, chaos, plague etc.
The problem of suffering may be intrinsic to virtually all Christian religion, but that’s a very different question.
And this is the reason why in the other topic I said that there might be reasons for it such as the sin of the angels whey they rebelled against God. I’m still not sure about it but always thought that the universe and the natural world, as it is, isn’t the way it was supposed to be. I have been given some good counter argument but I’m still not fully convinced
Big bang actually challenges a lot the idea of eternity of nature. This is why it wasn’t taken lightly at the beginning and they tried to disprove it
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Those religious beliefs may offer their answer to the question of suffering but do not remove the problem of suffering when the suffering hits too close. There is always the question ‘why?’, usually an attempt to somehow push the suffering as far as possible and often an attempt to find the person or group who can be blamed for the suffering.
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Beyond the rational argument for the necessity of a first cause, there’s another point worth considering: humans have never longed for something that isn’t, at least in principle, attainable. Throughout history, every human desire—whether noble or depraved, good or evil—has corresponded to something real or potentially real. There are no known examples of purely invented, unattainable desires.
If God, the immortal soul, or ultimate justice did not exist—if in the end, someone like Richard Huckle and someone like Father Maximilian Kolbe both simply become worm food—this would be the only known case in which a deeply rooted, near-universal human longing had no real object, no possibility of fulfillment.
Humans also appear to be natural dualists (see: Dualists from Birth – American Scientist). For materialism or atheism to be entirely true, it would require that evolution, which otherwise shaped us with instincts and desires directed toward real and attainable things, made a single irrational exception—giving us deep, enduring yearnings for something entirely illusory.
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It’s also worth noting that the ‘Father’ of the Big Bang theory, the Catholic Priest George LeMaitre, explicitly made it known that he had zero interest in seeing his theory enlisted as an apologetic weapon for Creationism. And since we can’t know what transpired ‘before’ that event, it doesn’t even lay to rest the question of beginnings. It just puts a barrier between us and whatever that might have been.
LeMaitre was just doing science, and saw nothing in it that threatened his Christian faith.
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Exactly. The issue was precisely this: not only did it not threaten his Christian faith—it was actually compatible with it. (Which isn’t to say that the Big Bang proves God’s act of creation, only that it doesn’t contradict it.) Meanwhile, many materialists felt threatened by the idea. That’s where concepts like the multiverse or the Big Crunch come in—hypotheses that, ironically, are even less substantiated than the idea of a Creator. These theories often seem motivated by the need to uphold the belief that there are infinite universes, and that we just happen to live in one of the rare few fine-tuned for life.
I’ll be damned if I know I why. I mean, I can understand being a materialist. But wanting materialism to be true? That’s something I just can’t wrap my head around.
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I like the way C.S. Lewis put it somewhere - that desire doesn’t fully explain why people have the beliefs they do. Because there are those who believe despite wishing it were not true; those who believe and want it to be true; those who don’t believe, but wish it were true, and those who don’t believe and are glad to conclude it’s not true; (not to mention all the messiness, then, of exactly ‘what’ all it is that’s being accepted / rejected in each case!) I believe all four of those loose categories have some population of great minds to be found in all those respective corners.
Of course but I just can’t wrap my head around it, it seems completely absurd to me that someone would want something like that to be true.
That’s not the problem of suffering. That’s just suffering.
That’s ‘Why me?’ rather than ‘Why?’
But, anyone who based their theism on the 3 modern ideas of:
An all powerful God,
An all knowing God, and
An all loving God
would inevitably have a problem with the Universe as humankind
finds it, yes?
G.Brooks
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Definitely.
But that is definitely not “virtually all religion”.
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Intrinsic may go too far but my affirmation of his statement was simply saying an accounting is necessary for all religions. Maybe they think their god delights in cruelty. Either way, I take it most people are going to wonder about the problem of suffering and every religion should address it. How they do so is another matter.
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I agree in general as I’d liken that desire to the desire to take your own life. But there are caveats. For example, if I had to choose between my dearest family members suffering eternal conscious torment in hell and everyone just sleeping forever….. Eternal nothingness can certainly be more pleasant than the thought of eternal torment.
Edited to add: Materialism can be preferable to a caricature of god.
Vinnie
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The point is that the “problem of suffering”, as opposed to just “suffering”, only occurs in religions that include a benevolent all-powerful deity. For religions where god(s) are either not benevolent or not all-powerful, this “problem of suffering” simply does not exist, so does not need addressing.
Your posts are strongly indicative of you knowing this, and trying to avoid admitting it.