Human Suffering: An Atheist’s excuse for denial

Like I said in my previous post, the ignorant atheist is very hard to crack (any nut is) since the questions he comes loaded with, are questions that trouble all mankind.

Among many, one that stands out is the question of Human suffering at the hands of a all benevolent God.

“Why does the world suffer with pain and death, why God allows suffering even on his own people. Why doesn’t not God interfere and stop the mass killings and bombings and earthquakes and Tsunami’s? If God can, then why wont he stop all this?”

And the answer they have made out for themselves is God doesn’t interfere because he isn’t there, he has to be all benevolent like the Bible (or some other books) say or pure evil. If God is all benevolent, he should be able to stop the pain in the world. If he doesn’t than he must be evil and it implies the that the nature of God as explained by major religions falsifies itself,  based on lack of observation and evidence and the atheist thus concludes: There is no God.

However charming and simple it may seem I assure you that the truth is far more complex than the above excuse, Yes, I do not even call it a statement. It fails to be one, terribly. It is painfully childish.

If my six years old asks me for candy all the time and I refuse to give him candy each time he demands it: he concludes that since candy is something that he likes and as he is not given candy every time he wants it than it must mean that his father is a bad man and he surely doesn’t love him. If he doesn’t love him than may be he is not his real father or he is not qualified enough to be his father.

So we have to assume by this view that God has to be in absolute control of everything, every second. Does the Theist books claim God to be doing so? Because only then can it be pointed out as an objection. This notion is implied by interpretation but never actually claimed in words. You would have to jump in the religious room inside its confinements to interpret it and that obviously is not my intention here. As I couldn’t find any such promise(s) except for prophecy matters in the Bible – I gathered that such belief is based on an errant logic.

We do not live in a utopia. Atheistic and Marxist ideology today has gone far beyond to their original roots, which did offer a promise of a Utopian society(at least a core of it), the very same thing that the Bible promises at end of this world. These philosophies just offered a different path, a path without God. But todays atheist nourishes his anger on the premise that Christianity or Judaism or Islam has been murderous or stupid (surmising the great dark era of the catholic church, the crusades etc). It is in nature of man to question suffering and it is not wrong. What is to grasp is that every system like religion has more meaning than what is apparent at face value.

There have been wars and killing in the name of God because it the highest point of motivation one could plot to fulfill his agenda, and it was apparent in crusades, but that doesn’t mean that religion itself was to be blamed for. If that is to be the measuring tape than science has its own blunders. The very foundation of atomic and nuclear bombs and their detonation over japan half a century ago should be enough to blame science. But in all rationality I do not think that science in itself posed that danger. It was an outcome of political motivations. It is what is is.

You can ask the atheist that what if he built a lawn thresher and while playing his son came in front of it. Would the atheist be responsible for the harm done because it was his creation and thus his intent to hurt the boy or simply because he was not good enough to save the boy?

I know it sounds harsh, but try and see my drift. These systems don’t give us the stance of a “God”. They don’t and it is absurd to imagine otherwise. It is pretty cheap and as-sumptuous .

For a start the theist books do not render God as a hap hazard, act before you think – personality. What an atheist finds in his favor in this argument is the goodness of God is mentioned as eternal in such accounts. Almost all suffering exists because of us. wars, famines, genocides. Cause and effect, action-reaction, no matter how charismatically the preacher or the atheist insist otherwise, it is hardly true.

Let us say hypothetically that there is no God and let us eradicate all religion from its roots such as that after 5oo years from now there is no religion left on earth and the word “God” is erased from all languages and words. The world right then wouldn’t even know or think of a God, they wouldn’t have the slightest concept. If such a world could be formed, wouldn’t it still go through earthquakes, forest fires, Tsunami’s, meteor impacts and anything that falls as a disaster. But then there would be no question about a God, just admittance that these natural phenomena occurs. Still would it end suffering? NO, A Tsunami can kill hundreds of thousands of people in a world without religion or God, just as it can today. So one theist may not be able to convince the Ignorant Atheist or justify suffering but face it, the Ignorant atheist is no better able to explain suffering either. All he can do is admit that he doesn’t have a clue except being sorry.

If you break it down all human beings suffer because they want to live, always. When all is said and done, suffering comes to the point of either death or permanent humiliation. Humans can’t abide that. If it up to us we’d all be alive till the next millennium. We do not suffer because we love, we suffer because we do not know any better and that we want life more than anything. So anything that threats to end life or our existance becomes bad, evil. I say this merely as an outcome, not a blame.

However, lately, questions I was presented with were regarding the recent massive earthquakes in Haiti and Japan along with the Tsunami and How God could have allowed this to happen? Now don’t worry, I am not going to defend God. But I have a few questions for the Ignorant Atheist:

Where happened when the dinosaurs died?

When the Pangaea split up? (the collective land mass that existed before the continents split up)

When the last ice age dawned?

If humans in the evolutionary tree were present when all of this happened, what would you say about loss of life and even extinction, since pre-homo sapiens did get extinct. Where does suffering and moral responsibility comes into question?

Is it the first time this has happened?

A hard headed atheist will crush and eat the Ignorant Atheist at this point because Hard Headed Atheists believe that there is no God and in evolution these natural processes like Tsunami’s and earthquakes are natural and in fact necessary to keep the planet alive and sustain life. So a hard headed atheist should never question suffering, he must understand it as an absolute “necessary”. The Ignorant Atheist would only have to concur (since he doesn’t know at all) or else even his own fellow atheists from the other camp will humiliate him and may as well roll on the floor, laughing at him for being naive (which one could say of any uninformed bloke).

There has been life on this planet for more than 3 billion years. all amidst the backdrop of a violent changing planet, with many species rising and becoming extinct.

Why should God be responsible – to stop the evolutionary process or the movement of the tectonic plates, it is an essential feature of our planet. Tsunami’s and earthquakes are not the judgment of God on you and you should never make it personal. Yet as clear and obvious it is, the Ignorant Atheist seems to care that he is so important that he is to be saved at all costs, I only ask why? And why does he even brings up this question when it is subjected to a “God” he believes, never existed.

My advice – You came into this world, stop whining. If you are tired of seeing pain, (some people prefer getting a rope and hanging themselves, they have my sympathies but it is free will not the impact of a deranged God who controls fate.) then you are free to close your eyes and hope that you can keep them close till you die, sixty years from now, more or less.

So where does this leave us with God, is God a bystander? if he doesn’t interfere, is he watching and laughing at us? is he evil? well I don’t think such questions should bother atheists at all since to them there is no God. I see theists quite comfortable with managing such questions with respect to their beliefs as they too suffer and might have some of the same questions.

Bottom line – Suffering is not a point one should argue when it comes to promoting atheism, suffering is universal, it was there when perhaps organized religion was not even present.

I would encourage all Ignorant Atheists to come up with something that they can actually explain rather than throwing question about every dilemma they ever faced and how it haunts their innocent minds.

——-

John