ciphergoth | The Problem of Unfishiness

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I am extremely flattered that my favourite atheistic blogger, Greta Christina, has taken a comment I made in her journal and made a post about it. I'm not sure she's quite nailed it on how what she discusses is different from questions like the nature of abiogenesis, but all the same I like the post and am very happy to have played a part in bringing it about.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

wwhyte.livejournal.com

To me the killer argument isn't even earthquakes, it's diseases. Do we need all the nasty diseases we have, to make this the best world God could have made? Do we need malaria or smallpox?

From:

ciphergoth.livejournal.com

My Dad spent a little time in the Sudan; the example he used to this end was "why did God feel the need to invent bilharzia? Couldn't we have gotten along just fine without that?"

From:

valkyriekaren.livejournal.com

David Attenborough uses a similar example:

My response is that when Creationists talk about God creating every individual species as a separate act, they always instance hummingbirds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things. But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, [a worm] that's going to make him blind. And [I ask them], 'Are you telling me that the God you believe in, who you also say is an all-merciful God, who cares for each one of us individually, are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an innocent child's eyeball? Because that doesn't seem to me to coincide with a God who's full of mercy'

From:

jhg.livejournal.com

"All things dull and ugly
"All creatures short and squat..."

etc.

From:

valkyriekaren.livejournal.com

Well exactly. If there is a God doing all this (which I sincerely doubt) then we should be with all haste turning our backs on Him, for he's clearly a mindlessly violent sociopath.

From:

wildeabandon.livejournal.com

I don't think this argument works on non-creationists. We certainly do need things_that_kill_other_things for evolution to work.

From:

wwhyte.livejournal.com

Right, but they don't have to be as nasty as bilharzia, or the eye parasite.

From:

valkyriekaren.livejournal.com

Assuming an omnipotent creator who could have made the universe work any way he wanted, though, why would he make it that way? Why not make it so that everything lives in universal happiness forever and there is never any pain, death or suffering? Why does an God want to sit by and see terrible things happen? Presumably he knew they would anyway, since he knows everything. So the only conclusion I can come to is that if he exists, he's done it on purpose.

I know the Bible explains this by original sin - that this was how things were in the Garden of Eden, until Eve handed her fella that fruit, and that pain, suffering and death were mankind's comeuppance. Even as a metaphor that seems pretty harsh!

Edited Date: 2008-08-04 03:45 pm (UTC)

From:

wildeabandon.livejournal.com

I think we've arrived at the middle of this conversation...

Because happiness isn't meaningful with reference to the existence of pain and suffering.

From:

valkyriekaren.livejournal.com

Not from where you're standing, no. What about from where God's standing? If God is truly omnipotent, surely concepts like 'meaningfulness' aren't significant to him? Or are you suggesting that logic and meaning transcend God?

From:

wildeabandon.livejournal.com

If God is truly omnipotent, surely concepts like 'meaningfulness' aren't significant to him? Or are you suggesting that logic and meaning transcend God?

I wouldn't describe it as transcending God, but I don't think that the inability to do the logically impossible is a bar to omnipotence.

From:

valkyriekaren.livejournal.com

But then... why bother?

It just seems so much more likely that mankind made up gods in order that they'd have someone to blame when things went wrong, and someone to ask to make things better, than that an omnipotent, omniscient being made mankind just as... a game? An experiment? Not even that, though, since God already knows the outcome.

From:

wildeabandon.livejournal.com

I find "Why bother?" a very difficult question to answer because it's so axiomatically obvious to me that any attempt to answer is going to sound frivolous, but basically, existing is way better than not.

From:

valkyriekaren.livejournal.com

Yes, for the individual, but not for the deity doing the creating - it doesn't matter whether he creates people or not.

From:

wight1984.livejournal.com

"Because happiness isn't meaningful with reference to the existence of pain and suffering."

I do personally accept that there can be intelligent argument about how the existence of pain, suffering and, most importantly, trial is important to bring meaning to happiness, but even accepting it is we still have to confront the sheer quantity and intensity of pain and suffering.

Would happiness be less meaningful without bilharzia as mentioned by

ciphergoth or parasitic worms that eat human eyes as mentioned by

valkyriekaren?

Did we make life less meaningful when we eradicated smallpox?

I think that's part of the problem. Maybe removing all pain and suffering from the world would be a bad thing, but if you had the power to remove AIDs from the world would you think twice before doing so? Would you find it morally dubious for a human who had that power not to use it?

Ironically though, I do think the 'I don't know' answer isn't a bad one :oP Religion isn't science after all :o)