How can there be a god?

You should. That's basically the very definition of cruelty.

 

This is the sort of rationalization used in abusive relationships. I think that's telling.

 

It is more complex than you suggest.
There are millions of people who are suffering in this world .. and millions that are not.
Is it possible to create a mortal world in which there is no suffering?
I wouldn't of thought so.

Death comes to all eventually, and a positive attitude beats a negative one.
"Look at the flowers and not the weeds"

 

We wouldn't have to avoid looking at the weeds if God hadn't planted them, though.

 

This.

Belief in the supernatural is not a necessary precondition for having a sense of justice. IMO.

Just a thought, not a question to answer in public: Is there a real-life in-the-flesh person you can talk to about Louie (freely, not family who might depend on you for comfort in this context)?

 

You seem quite annoyed with this God you don't believe in, for not conforming to your own requirements?

 

I tend to look at it as ... this is the world we inhabit.

It's a finite world, subject to contingency. Things come into being, things pass away ...

There may be n other worlds, under different conditions, some better, some worse perhaps, who knows?

 

Those walking according to the flesh tend towards the flesh; those led by the spirit to what is spirit. Flesh tends towards death, while spirit aims at life and peace
(Romans 8:5-6)

Knowing the soul to be superior to the material senses, steady the mind by spiritual intelligence and thus subdue the lower self by the higher, and kill this formidable enemy called desire.
(B Gita 3:43)

I think this is central to almost every faith?

 

Thank you so much for sharing that with me, it means a lot. And thank you for explaining your beliefs with me.

 

Plato implied that we all inherently know what is good or evil, that we don't need anything, such as a deity or a religion, to convey this to us, unless someone is not in their right mind, we all know whether we are doing something good or evil and we choose to do one or the other. In this respect, we all answer to our conscience.

Thank you for thinking of this, I keep in touch with my friends and joined a Facebook group who are all dealing with this exact experience we went through with Hemangiosarcoma and Louie. Each day the pain lessens and this weekend is the first time my whole household is sitting around and talking about the good times with Louie, our prior pets, dogs in general, instead of grieving hysterically. Again thank you . . .

 

I have more of an issue with the fact that believers so easily justify tragedies and natural disasters.

We all have our coping mechanisms, I get it, but to try to paint these things as "good" in some way is... well, it's wrong, in my opinion. They're not good. We need to do our best as a society to combat them and their destructive effects.

 

..such as?

 

I think a few folks may be in for a bit of a surprise to find out some of the folks they're required to share paradise with, lol

 

...every tragedy and natural disaster? From every cancer victim to everyone killed by hurricanes. To say that these are the product of a loving, just God, well, I just don't see it. Telling people that have experienced tragedy that it's actually a good thing and they deserve it usually doesn't provide much comfort and makes you look like a sadist.

 

What do you see?
That everything happens by chance, and that when you are dead, you will know no more and it is all meaningless?

 

I don't think everything happens by chance, I think they happen predictably according to the laws of nature, of which we are merely one product.

Meaning is something we evolved to help our species survive. It can only exist while we are alive to experience it.

 

What is the point of survival?
Is this life so pleasurable that we must survive to enjoy it?
I don't get it. Most of the time I am in physical and mental pain.

However, I don't blame G-d for that because He created me etc.
I see that life has more meaning than worldly pleasure.
..and I don't believe that when I die, I might as well not have been born.

 

I think this is a nonsensical question, in my opinion. "Points" are something that we evolved to come up with because they help us survive. Survival would be a meta-purpose, not being a true purpose itself nor having one. The concept of a point is, itself, a relatively recent one. Evolution came first.

I am indifferent towards pleasure, although a healthy mind and a healthy body usually goes hand-in-hand with pleasure and contentment, anyway, and health is a good measure of how well one is surviving.

I'm sorry to hear that. Me, too. I just went in for another surgery and I feel the pain through the prescription-strength painkillers.

Neither do I, because I don't believe God exists.

I agree. In fact, outside of what I consider to be our objective purpose (which is maximizing welfare, not pleasure), I obviously recognize that humans can find relative meaning in a wide variety of things. I'm not the arbiter of what other people feel is meaningful or fulfilling.

I don't believe that, either, so I'm glad we're in agreement on that one.

 

I am not so sure that it is nonsensical..

You say "Meaning is something we evolved to help our species survive".

Is it really about the survival of a species?
..or isn't there a more cosmic reason why we experience our lives, perhaps learning things in the process?

I refer to meaning in a cosmic sense .. just like an historian gets meaning from his history books.
History cannot be wiped out by death.

 

It's really an adaptive mutation that was naturally selected for because it was beneficial for our continued survival and reproduction. The "cosmic reason" would be "because of abiogenesis, chemical evolution, and biological evolution."

Depends on what you mean by "history." Many unrecorded events go forgotten forever every day as the last people who remember them die. If by "history" you mean "the past," although I would protest at this use of the term, then I agree. Our death doesn't erase what we did in our life. I think that much should be uncontroversial and obvious to everyone.