cyber_zhuangzi

> Now the demiurge is a utility monster.

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.

It's a deep problem with a long history of attempts at answering it, some more satisfying than others. One answer that appeals to many faithful is the idea that all this suffering will be "redeemed", or made to be worth it at the end. Augustine, for example, would take the "NPC" prong of your dilemma by saying that our earthly existence "in time" is not a full experience of reality at all. Indeed, you can find this view, that our conscious experience of reality-in-time is somehow illusory, in many non-Christian sources anywhere from Buddhism to Daniel Dennet. In Augustine's view it's only outside of time, with God, that human beings can fully exist - thus earthly suffering is nothing compared to the joy of being in Heaven. Obviously this is not a foolproof argument, but HN deserves to know the best answers Christian thinkers have come up with.