So for example, the tragedies which occur in your nightmares, after you wake, are given a different interpretation- the interpretation of "non-reality", i.e. it didn't really happen in some basic way that puts them into the category of "life non-tragedy".
From God's (or "a god's", for our dedicated atheists) POV, there is some enclosing context to the events of our lives that makes this mess we call reality "make sense". We don't have that perspective, so we think we suffer, pointlessly.
Along the chain from amoeba to goldfish to humans the understanding of events in our shared environment by each species changes. We think of that change as progressively achieving a "deeper understanding" of reality. The zinger in this recitation of prosaic facts is: your consciouness is not the last one in the chain.
This is what Christians experience (and think of) as "faith". Faith in the wisdom or sense-making of a transcendent God and His plans.
You're begging the question. It doesn't point to that at all.
Furthermore, I'd feel terrible accepting that "fact" if I were faithful. It would reduce my faith to that in a demiurge who can't (ergo impotent) or won't (ergo ignorant or malicious) build/maintain a reality that (1) makes sense in the enclosing context and (2) doesn't require the depth of horror and pain for its components/participants that this one does.
One interesting thing is that the language and imagery used by the mystics of these different and separated religious traditions are often indistinguishable from each other- it's not clear if it was St. John of the Cross or Augustine or Zen Masters Ikkyu or Dogen who is saying them.
On thing they refer to in this transcendent reality is apprehension of "the coincidence of opposites". So for example, the obvious fact that a thing cannot both be and not be at the same time is itself contradicted or "resolved". In logic we say "not both A and not A" (or else a contradiction is permitted and from there literally anything can be proven).
If I were a goldfish, no matter how right the math you read to me was, I would not understand it, you or anything it referred to. Even as the atomic bomb it described exploded, I still would not understand the nature of reality which now quite literally impinged itself on my flesh.
What would it feel like to be confronted with that kind of knowledge? Would we recognize some formulation of it but reject it, as in: both A and not A?
Would it be something impossible, existing outside of what appears to us to be exhausted possibilities?
Not A Not not A Not both A and not A Not not both A and not A. etc?
We can feel the limits of our own thinking when we reach something which is logically impossible. We just can't get our thinking around these things; contraditions seem like an absolute dead end, leading everywhere and nowhere.
Are there things in our lives which we literally experience, like an atomic bomb disntegrating a goldfish, which even as they touch us and we feel them, we simply fail to comprehend the "real" meaning of them? The breeze? A look? A birth? Suffering?
Spirtual insight may be a thing like mathematicqal talent- some people have a talent for it and some people don't. Such a talent may be completely disconnected from normal intelligence. To people who don't have it, it seems like garbage, i.e. self-contradictory, self-pacifying wishful thinking.
Now the demiurge is a utility monster.
> this is not a foolproof argument
Argument? It's an admission.
How is the demiurge taking utility from humans if humans ending up in heaven is the optimal outcome for both humans and diety?
> Argument?
It’s an argument that a diety can both be omnipotent and benevolent if humans don’t know true pain or pleasure in their earthly lives. After all, both earthly pleasure and pain are temporary, so if you can conceive of eternal happiness it might render earthly suffering negligible in comparison.
That is what you're saying. It's isomorphic to your argument; it is your argument's essence.
Expressed that way, the issue becomes apparent. We cannot conceive of something; it is inconceivable. But that inconceivability is exactly what the original argument is asserting - it's a thing beyond human conceptualization. Exactly.
All parties to the argument find agreement on this point.
If you are hoping to make some sense of it all, I found Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl really altered how I see suffering and my place in the world. It's a very concrete book, and outlines a way to live with meaning without needing God (though totally compatible with faith).
Stay strong friend, I believe in a tragic optimism[0] like that outlined in Frankl's 1984 postscript.
[0]: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6807951-i-speak-of-a-tragic...
edit: corrected the quote and added a link
I don't think that this has any bearing on the existence of God, however. Humans are the ones who have created such an overwhelming and toxic physical environment and disconnected social one. For God to truly endow us with free will, He had to allow us to fail, even this miserably, and to cause our contemporaries and descendants to suffer for our failures. We have the hope of Christ's return and eternal life but only after everyone has been given the opportunity to turn to God for hope on earth.
I don't mean to prosthletize — this is how I understand the world and helps keep me hopeful in times of grief, and I hope it helps you too.
This argument isn't really theologically sound. If God exists, he's the one that created a biological system that allows for something as horrific as dementia. That literally has nothing to do with anything humans have done. It's pointless suffering.
> and to cause our contemporaries and descendants to suffer for our failures
Who's failures caused dementia? Certainly wasn't our ancestors fault.
Personally, I gain more comfort from the idea of an impartial universe, than a God who thinks this level of suffering is necessary.
But I do see what you're asking — how God seems to step in more often in the OT. Thinking of all of human history from ~4000BC until now where Mankind "grows up" over time, the concept of God as Father works — parents put a lot of restrictions on their kids when they're young to keep them safe, and remove those restrictions over time. Even if the child does something unsafe at a certain point a parent just has to say "now that you know the consequences, you have to live with them."
In the end, is it really that cruel, when compared to creating a universe that is effectively trying to kill us all every single day...? From animals and plants in the jungle, to solar flares and asteroids, everything in nature is to us what a garrison of armed Stormtroopers is to Han Solo: they might miss most of the time, but it’s not going to be for lack of cruelty or intent.
There is no religion without the person actively trying to be a better person to every single person around them. It doesn't matter what spiritual practices they do or don't do, we are each measured by our hearts with respect to how we treat every person we encounter.
Religion's only goal is to get us to work together cooperatively across all divisions of humanity (from form of religion, to gender identification or sexual preference, to ethnicity or culture) to create caring, accepting societies. Right now, our world's state is the result of our societies being based on competition. That is why there are so many destitute homeless people. The system itself doesn't give a shit about them because the system itself only cares about money.
And this is all the result of human making choices based upon their selfish desires, humans in their packs taking as much as they can for themselves while callously ignoring out-group members. That is not human, and is literally inhumane. For that same society to produce Jeff Bezos demonstrates its brokenness that is also its design.
The problem is that the vast majority of so-called religious folks are only doing so to be a member of the alpha group, instead of being interested in how they can be a better member of a better, all-inclusive society. We have mammalian bodies and those structures inform our potentials. To be human is to rise above that animal heredity and embrace the virtues of humanity: caring, active, effortful compassion being essential.
This is why a prominent Rabbi spoke at Muhammed Ali's funeral. They were both Men of God who spread love and unity amongst and between their different cultures. Anywhere you find universal love and respect for all others, you find God's Religion, whichever form it takes in its society.
And legion are those that selfishly deceive in the name of religion or even try to create their own religions. The child rapist Catholic Priest does not denigrate the Message of Love present in Jesus' form of God's Religion; he only proves his perfidy and that of the organization that hides his sins and felonies from his prey's society.
Also, a priest can't honestly say they love you and serve Jesus if they're raping your children in the back room.
There is truth and there are lies and falsehoods. Nuance is required to discern between them. Most people are just too intellectually lazy to even try. That ignorance leads to many of the systemic problems of our world, not the least of which are religious groups like ISIS/ISIL and the Catholic Church deceiving people with their lies, hypocrisies and oppressions.
Dunning & Kruger, dude. I know where you land on the chart, and I know that you don't know where you land yet think you do.
The non-pathological of us each have the free will to choose to self-evolve ourselves during our lives towards greater compassion for all those around ourselves, or to selfishly gather as much material pleasure as we can for ourselves regardless of the cost to others, be it monetary, emotional, or physical.
We are all actively evolving ourselves every day of our lives, for better or worse, even if all it amounts to is repetitively strengthening one's already accepted habits and attitudes. The exception being when disease or tragedy takes away our ability to rationally choose, as happens with people such as Lee. That is where compassion from our fellow human beings is part of the potential we must each welcome, for such is the moral requirement of being a human being.
We have been given what is both a great gift and a great responsibility with our free will and the mind required to learn and wield it justly and for the benefit of the whole and not just some preferred sub-group.
God is not a white man (full-disclosure: white guy here); It didn't give us free will only to then take it back from us because that means we can become, for example, callous, self-serving, corrupt, power-seeking, hypocritical fake-Christian deceivers of men.
No. The polarity of our morality extends to whichever direction the person can imagine. That is why we are both treasured above all creation and capable of the most brutal of atrocities.
We are free to be good or evil and that means we are also free to not give a fuck.
I don't think anyone has the perspective to make a definitive judgement like that. The situation could be like a young child judging his parents to be cruel and uncaring for making him go to school, which he dislikes. There could be unknowns that would change the judgement if understood.
It wasn't a comparison, but an attempt to illustrate how things may look different based on your knowledge and understanding. Obviously such an illustration is going to be trivial compared to the real thing, since you have to substitute something simple that everyone knows for something no one does.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil#Responses,_def...
It's just difficult for me to envision a crueler God if that is indeed the case. A person who has died long before their body gives way, only to be a constant burden, with virtually no joy, and a constant reminder that your loved one is dead, yet still here.
In the worst cases I say unreservedly that it is a huge relief when the person's body finally joins their mind in death.