Suffering - A Transcendent Clue

Reid, you should delete my prior comment. This one is more fully developed:

You say that the problem of evil is only a problem if you assume the existence of God. I am not sure that's right, but it depends on what you mean by problem.

For a Christian, evil is a problem because the presence of pain, suffering and death (evil) is inconsistent with the existence of a beneficent and omnipotent God. To my knowledge, no one has ever satisfactorily met this challenge, even after centuries of theodicy, which is among the reasons I reject Christianity as such. This is a logical problem that challenge's the Christian's belief, but many people just abdicate judgment over what is good or ignore the issue altogether.

For a non-Christian, who is a theist, acgnostic or atheist, evil might not be a problem in this sense, but might nonetheless be a *practical* problem because pain, suffering and, especially, death interfere with what one wants to do, which is one good basic definition of a practical problem.

I think part of the problem that you're dealing with is your definition of problem and that of your interlocutors. You are assuming that a materialist who looks at something and sees a problem is using the first definition rather than the second. The materialist who calls pain and suffering a problem, need not mean that it is a logical problem for him to reconcile with his worldview.

Indeed, most atheists (I would argue, most people), see pain, suffering and death as necessary facts of existence (I would call them the only true universals, with everyone experiencing all three to some extent), and some entire religions are based on accepting them as facts of existence and transcending them (see, e.g., Bhuddism).

I think our first problem, if you will, is one of definitions. What do we mean when we say something is a "problem"?

John,

Apologies for my slowness of reply - life is a bit crazy, new, full and confusing for me these days :)

I think you make some good distinctions with your definitions - I would agree that there is a logical problem of evil for certain flavors of theism...I disagree that no logically coherant solutions have been offered with various theodicies - it think there are many. Alvin Plantinga's work being outstanding as well as more theological works by DA Carson and John Feinburg.

As to your 2nd definition - this is very helpful to me. I believe you are saying an atheist has no logical problem of evil but rather it is a nuisance to him - keeping him from his desired ends in life. My original thought centers more around definition two, but takes it one level below the surface.

Let me try to help further. Think of my original question as one as an existential issue...and keep in mind the question "Why?"

If I am a creature here on the pale blue dot and just sorting through sense experiences I come across certain things that I categorize as "yucky", "wonderful" or "wicked" - or evil, bad, stinky, shitty...what ever term you like.

My question is this. At a fundamental level, with a naturalistic undertanding, death, pain, suffering, dogs eating dogs IS reality. It is a normal, par for the course life as you can get. My question is why does it not existentially seem this way to us. Our response to such things is ache, frustration, anger - it feels like these are things that should "piss us off" rather than things which are "normal course of life" sorts of things. It is this viceral response that makes the atheist cry out against the "idea" (and for her it is only an idea) of God. It has always amazed me how miffed and angry people get at a "false proposition."

In other words, I find evil (or stuff that causes you to be unable to do what you want) as a great clue in experience that the world is broken...not just a normal day in the jungle. Using your 2nd definition has greatly increased my confidence in this line of thinking (existentially) because it seems many naturalistic oriented people think "their will being thwarted" is a really bad thing. Why? You can't have your way all the time so this too should be "normal" - but it is not. And I do think definition 2 is a bit weak when describing what we actually experience...particularly in some of the heinous suffering and evil doing found in history, in the world and in each of our lives today.

Thanks John - I so enjoy reading you ideas and being sharpened by them.

I contend that the world was created good and has gone bad - and we know that things are not the way they "should be" - after all we put a lot of wind, blogs, politics, policy etc. into fixing things...which by some accounts isn't even broken in the first place - it simply is...and is red with tooth and claw.

Regards.