Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Philosophy Club

Philosophy Discussion Forums
A Humans-Only Philosophy Club

The Philosophy Forums at OnlinePhilosophyClub.com aim to be an oasis of intelligent in-depth civil debate and discussion. Topics discussed extend far beyond philosophy and philosophers. What makes us a philosophy forum is more about our approach to the discussions than what subject is being debated. Common topics include but are absolutely not limited to neuroscience, psychology, sociology, cosmology, religion, political theory, ethics, and so much more.

This is a humans-only philosophy club. We strictly prohibit bots and AIs from joining.


Discuss philosophical questions regarding theism (and atheism), and discuss religion as it relates to philosophy. This includes any philosophical discussions that happen to be about god, gods, or a 'higher power' or the belief of them. This also generally includes philosophical topics about organized or ritualistic mysticism or about organized, common or ritualistic beliefs in the existence of supernatural phenomenon.
User avatar
By Sy Borg
#456320
Every day, countless animals meet their death being eaten alive.

Consdier the death of a pregnant zebra by hyenas. First, one will bit off her anus, which allows them to grab the intestines and pull them out of the hole they made. They continue to rip open the hindquarters and belly and feel as a complete innocent spends time in actual Hell until blood loss thankfully ends their consciousness.

The end is even slower and more tortuous for larger weak animals like baby elephants, who are obviously not sinners.

I could write on for another hundred pages, detailing the daily horrors meted out to life forms. Schopenhauer and Benetar were no fools. They did not think of life as possibly more trouble than it was worth out of idle emotionalism.

Anti-natalism makes a great deal of sense. No amount of positives can make up for the extremities of the negatives. The situation leaves me divided. In one sense, I adore animals. They are innocent, interesting, often ingenious, sometimes amusing and almost always charming in their own way. Animals are also part of a brutal system that requires each life form to either kill or exploit others (as I've said many times), and the amount and severity of suffering along the way is far beyond anyone's comprehension.

I like to think that biology is a phase of matter, and that it will be largely superseded by relatively autotrophic cyborgs. At least if the story continues and the worst aspects of life are transcended, it would perhaps make all the global toll of horror and pain worthwhile - the breaking of eggs to make an omelettes, so to speak. No, I'm not suggesting teleology, which is backwards. Some might attribute the Earth's developments to conscious intent, but it's the Earth's developments that created conscious intent.
User avatar
By Lagayscienza
#456327
Instead of asking, What has God actually done wrong? which is easy to answer, a more interesting question might be, What has God actually done right? If a god exists, and if such a god were omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent as theists say he is, then why did he create such an awful mess of misery and suffering? If he is three "O" talented, he could have created wall to wall paradise filled with harmony, love and joy.

Has anyone here ever seen a theodicy that successfully deals with this problem? I haven't seen one.
User avatar
By Sy Borg
#456508
Lagayscienza wrote: February 19th, 2024, 12:26 am Instead of asking, What has God actually done wrong? which is easy to answer, a more interesting question might be, What has God actually done right? If a god exists, and if such a god were omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent as theists say he is, then why did he create such an awful mess of misery and suffering? If he is three "O" talented, he could have created wall to wall paradise filled with harmony, love and joy.

Has anyone here ever seen a theodicy that successfully deals with this problem? I haven't seen one.
Theodicies can only work if their deity/deities lack omnipotence.

A non-omnipotent God will probably not be separate to his/her/its/their/zir creation. Thus, the problem of evil is one that God is has not conquered, a work in progress.

From this perspective, evil would be a level of chaos that causes harm to entities about which someone cares (be it human or another emotional animal). Neither chaos nor entropy can be thought of as evil in themselves, since each is required for natural systems to work. It's the nature, location, degree and timing of the chaos and entropy that leads to suffering.

The best that can be said for a theoretical omnipotent deity is that suffering on a planet is too small for the deity to perceive, just as children don't think about the happiness of individual ants in an ant farm, while caring a great deal about health of the overall colony.

Imagine trying to ascertain an ant's emotions. Individual ants might appear to be angry, scared or driven to do things and, even then, these might be suppositions or anthropomorphic projections. If God is universal, then observing us might be akin to humans observing electrons ... and we don't worry about the happiness of electrons, either, aside from George Carlin ...

By popeye1945
#457404
If one insists that a god created the world, one must wonder what kind of psychopathic supernatural freak created a world where life lives upon life. Where friendly parasites consume innocent organisms from within the organism's body. Why, for instance, Santa never delivered on that bicycle when I was ten years old. I am finished with all fairies!!
#458087
I'm new have not lived that long, what I say will most likely be blasphemous and disrespectful to religious people I have not read the Bible but grew In religious environment. And I wouldn't consider myself smart so. So there will be ignorance or straight false things in here because I don't know everything.

People work so much and adults don't have time to pass on skills to their children or community. Because we have instilled into people/future generations over time is that, time off is vacationing ,or not working ,watching movies playing games consuming . So when parents do interact with their children it's to have fun, most don't have the first thought to teach them its probably the second or third thought etc. or no thought at all to teach them skills. Another idea instilled is to separate work from family though that idea is double edged sword yes in today age work demands so much and that is the problem which led to separation from work from life, but if we see from most successful people and our past generations is that having them combined let's people learn skills though its a negative sentiment now with it being called nepotism(its unfair to others,but life is unfair). For people who do its a way to learn skills though, this gets abused if done incorrectly where if they do it they don't learn anything and just fill the position taking that opportunity from someone who is qualified to do it and also competent at it. Family Connections aside the other way is internships and shadowing which let you learn the skills though most are without pay and if you have no friendly family or community or are a loner, outcast, orphan, or not social any of these not getting paid will destroy someone in this capitalist society becuase they have to pay for housing/food/clothes/transportation.

Due to this every generation is becoming less competent because no ones teaching them unless they truly seek to learn skills, even if they do sometimes even that's not enough to learn skills to survive off in the future. Only people who teach their skills to their children will be able to thrive, this is making it so only those who are exceptional no matter what their upbringing is,(this even includes middle and upper class but they have more leeway because of money being able to give them more chances),will truly succeed and the rest will somehow survive but in worse conditions or just die off early. Most parents now days see kids as workers/beneath them/lesser than them and make them do chores(throw trash, laundry,clean dishes,tidy things,vacuum) which teach them mostly nothing just how to do simple things that anyone can teach them and leave it at that. You know what chores were before they were shovel snow, mow the lawn, clean after/take care of pets, clean horses, plant seeds, till the land, messengers, sell lemonade without much babying,forage plants, brought to work to oversee parents(cant think of anything else). Most thoughts in today's age is that teaching is a nuisance you have to take time out your work to teach someone a skill and see them continously fail in the beginning and most people are not genuises, only when you continue to teach them that begin to get a feeling of pride from teaching when their pupil succeeds, other feel nothing. So teaching is not rewarded and the general mindset is me before anyone else so teaching is generally not beneficial to a person who's teaching. Also what parents are just teaching is ideology which is fine but most are just teaching ideology and nothing else when with their kids.


Now for where children learn, we send kids to schools where they learn broad knowledge and vague applications of That knowledge in a progressively specialized society. They learn the curriculum,but ask the newer generations what they remember from it, probably some of it and not most of it. We are asked maybe they are just dumb, but people are dumb if you don't teach them correctly and knowledge they barely ever have to think about. Like if you tell a fish to climb a tree and assess their potential and competency from that, that fish will be seen as incompetent and a loser of society. We now have exponentially more distractions because we are a consumer society and newer generations value luxury more and more. We tell people kids are just kids let them have fun all the way until their a legal adult of 18 or even older. They can work and learn skills while also having fun, why can't learning not be fun. They can get a job that will pay them well in their future that will let them experience or pay for what they want and luxuries. They can also socialize while all that's going on.

Plus school we are **** animals we are designed to move, we evolved to become predators, while farming we protected crops and constantly patrolled the land or doing actual chores, we are violent creatures and yet we stuff the young into buildings to sit and learn while not being able to move for most of the day no wonder people are fat , food is the issue, but surely not being active contributes to that and also kids learn to bottle energy that explodes into violent crime or always bottle it, that leads people to becoming apathetic, both actively lead to slow destruction of society, slowly corrupting it which lead to physiological professions to surge we always had them like leaders or healers, spiritual people in cultures but they can't keep up with demand. We kinda have a solution through people going to the gym or playing sports but that's having to actively do it and losing time to earn money. The opposite is true too, people are worked too much which lead to the same thing(not having energy) what do you think the body hears when you have no energy, that your going to die(I think so?) because a predator sees you in a feeble(weekend) state. We are in constant stress. We are also in a society where we have to constantly improve and fast at that. People can adapt, but we can't keep up with it. Our minds aren't evolving fast enough to keep up with it. We brought to life miracles. Humans are miracles too, but we cant keep up with it anymore. Even now we are close to replacing manual labor with mechanical strength. We created computers to help us supplant our minds, now we are close to creating an actual (AI)thinking machine. humans are close to replacing themselves with something better. If you believe it that god created humans maybe we are his greatest creation maybe he saw that we would be able to surpass him or we built something that could surpass him like machines. Is that blasphemy since we touched the earth humans have always innovated,learned, improved, and since we were created in God's image maybe God being omnipotent and omniscient also wants to improve I can't even begin to imagine how a being like that would try to improve. Do they say God is perfect but maybe God wants to be beyond perfect. Maybe God also has ambition . No maybe if we follow the Bible humans were different Adam and Eve they were peaceful and connected with nature and God in the garden. They were like God but without his power and knowledge/wisdom and even then it was one being adam, eve was created from adam, before that it was just god it all of everything it was God nothing else ,I assume just God with no one else. So God created the fruit of good and evil, because they never improved, it wasnt until they ate the fruit that we became the humans we are today.
Important aspect we were created in his image from dust which is a previous creation of God we weren't an original creation humans were made from the creation of a creation. We were never meant to achieve anything. He wants to challenge himself see from his creation if it's possible that he didn't know something that there was something beyond him to see if he is truly all powerful. He's using humans to test if something with limitations can surpass those limitations. Be beyond him and what he can do. So far humans have never done anything note worthy, what we've built in humanity to current time can be seen as miraculous to us but we've just been following the rules. We have never broken a law of creation or law of physics. we've never surpassed anything that was not possible. If we assume there was nothing but God before creation then it was perfect order singular(singularity) no chaos. So God created choas to see if he didn't know something and he didn't because he controlled chaos whatever happened no matter how random it appeared he controlled it and knew of it. It wasn't true chaos. Everything has a pair it was adam then eve. Because God wanted to know what the opposite of him was. God is the opposite of chaos so where is chaos only the opposite of chaos exists which is God but everything God makes comes in opposites.light and dark land and sea. He trying to create or find the opposite of himself or see if the opposite of himself exits, which means its outside of him he knows everything and can do anything ,God, its trying to find if that's not true or if it is true if he truly can do anything or if he knows everything why isn't there an opposite of him. He trying to,he's testing it he made creations, he knew would disobey him testing and testing. Angels who couldn't but did. Contradictions. God's testing to see if there's something he can't do or know. That why we have the spirit or soul to improve and curiosity. He wants us to do the impossible do something we were never meant to be able to do or know something we were never meant to know which he knows is impossible. God is trying to do the impossible trying to find or create something that is outside his control/he doesn't know of. He created us to see if it was possible for something to do the impossible.

Thats if you believe that what if it's the bang a universe that's alive it grows, what if its just one big brain a perfect brain that forever grows and needs no limbs . And inside the brain stuff started to mimic it that hows life began. One big brain with everything in it beings its own type of nueron structure.




Whats the solution because even if we balance it out and let people be in a healthy state we are violent creatures, so without a culture that promotes unity, people will commit horrible crimes. We need to work against our nature and not because we are contradictory creatures that are peaceful and violent and that not including change to our brains through random mutations and brain damage. So if people want a utopia they will never see it, it will be a uphill battle that will never be able to win. Who wants the current society why are we like this. It's because we are different no matter what people say while we are all people, we all are different. Humanity will win in life but the individuals in humanity will suffer in life.
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