Could A Good God Permit So Much Suffering?

Cypress said:
Americans tend to get their information about Buddhism from Hollywood stars and west coast urban hipster gurus. These kind of people may be incorporating Buddhist meditation and ritual practices into their lives. But these Californians and New Yorkers are not representative of the vast majority of Buddhists in the world.

Samara, or reincarnation is just as supernatural at face value as anything in the New Testament. Coming back to your next life as a bug is a hard concept to grasp.

Buddhism does not venerate a specific creator God, but the classic Buddhist canon definitely accepts the reality of spirits, demons, and deities.
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True. Thank you David Carradine. LOL

The point being that atheists who puff up their numbers by including Buddhists are either proving their ignorance or being dishonest.
 
gmark77 said:
I don't hate Christianity! LOL. Far from it! All of my friends are Christians and I used to be one. It's a cheap and easy thing to assume that because one is atheist that one must also "hate Christianity". Couldn't be less true in my case.

There's actually a fuckton of stuff I love in Christianity. I even kinda dig the "salvation" idea. Not the supernatural stuff but the idea that we should always be cognizant that we are less-than-perfect creatures and we can hurt others without even thinking about it. Christianity's message inspires you to be better and do better. I think if we all understood that each other is flawed that we will act kinder towards each other and we will, in turn, be treated kindly for our flaws.
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Christianity did bring us amazing architecture and works of art, no doubt.
 
Hume said:
As J. L. Mackie (1955, 200) formulated the so-called logical problem of evil:

God is omnipotent; God is wholly good; and yet evil exists. There seems to be some contradiction between these three propositions, so that if any two of them were true the third would be false. But at the same time all three are essential parts of most theological positions: the theologian, it seems, at once must and cannot consistently adhere to all three.

ndpr.nd.edu

Could A Good God Permit So Much Suffering? A Debate

As J. L. Mackie (1955, 200) formulated the so-called logical problem of evil: God is omnipotent; God is wholly good; and yet evil exists. There seems to...
ndpr.nd.edu ndpr.nd.edu
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The problem of evil, or at least the unnecessary suffering of innocents, is one that I’ve never seen an apologist adequately explain.
 
SmarterthanYou said:
God is also the supposed lover of his creations, yet the greatest gift he gave us is free will. Maybe, instead of asking God to stop evil, we should do it as a human being
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You didn’t address natural disasters and disease that kill millions of innocents.

If your god is omniscient and knows everything you will ever do since before you were born, that blows your free will argument out of the water.
 
Cypress said:
HaHa. Yeah. And Americans know about Buddhism from Richard Gere, and from governor Moonbeam Jerry Brown.
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I forgot about Gere and remember the name "Moonbeam" but don't recall much about Brown except Linda Ronstadt's nickname for him. LOL

Although I lived in California in the early 80s, I didn't pay much attention to state politics. Once, while living in tent city in Korea for Kernal Usher 1-81, I received a notice from the State of California that I owed over $700 in back taxes and penalties. As a member of the military, and having living in Florida for a year for flight training, I'd changed my residency to Florida and, thus, didn't owe squat to California.

The notice caught me at a bad moment and, being a little more rash in those days, I wrote across the letter in big block letters
"I'M IN THE UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS
I'M NOT A RESIDENT OF CALIFORNIA
AS SOON THE MARINE CORPS LETS ME, I'M LEAVING YOUR FUCKING STATE."

I shoved the letter into the return envelope and mailed it. Later, I started wondering if that was too rash but I never heard from them again.
 
Dutch Uncle said:
I forgot about Gere and remember the name "Moonbeam" but don't recall much about Brown except Linda Ronstadt's nickname for him. LOL

Although I lived in California in the early 80s, I didn't pay much attention to state politics. Once, while living in tent city in Korea for Kernal Usher 1-81, I received a notice from the State of California that I owed over $700 in back taxes and penalties. As a member of the military, and having living in Florida for a year for flight training, I'd changed my residency to Florida and, thus, didn't owe squat to California.

The notice caught me at a bad moment and, being a little more rash in those days, I wrote across the letter in big block letters
"I'M IN THE UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS
I'M NOT A RESIDENT OF CALIFORNIA
AS SOON THE MARINE CORPS LETS ME, I'M LEAVING YOUR FUCKING STATE."

I shoved the letter into the return envelope and mailed it. Later, I started wondering if that was too rash but I never heard from them again.
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Moonbeam used to jet off to Japan and visit with Zen masters!
 
domer76 said:
You didn’t address natural disasters and disease that kill millions of innocents.

If your god is omniscient and knows everything you will ever do since before you were born, that blows your free will argument out of the water.
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not my God..........i'm agnostic. That being said, I enjoy seeing the die hard bible thumpers get twisted up in their beliefs
 
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