Can Atheists explain to me why there is evil and suffering in the world?

[Rusk]

Yeah. To me, it opens the possibility that there very well could be much "more".

As @Cid will probably tell you, it can be pushed even further.

I seriously wouldn't be surprised if there were some transcendental quality. "I AM", the way the Jews describe God is totally believable. And if so, anything is possible really.

I can't claim that "I know" the details though, so I really have a hard time believing. You'd have to accept the religious text as "gospel", for lack of a better word. Maybe? I dunno.

Its smart of you to not go into dogmas and keep your mind open imo. I try to do the same thing.

Also just thought this sarcastic video was relevant to your post.

I think it is a boring question honestly. You could have asked "why do we refer to some events in the world as evil" or "is suffering an evil?" or "why do different societies have different views on what is evil and what isn't", or "can objective moral values be discovered empirically or not, if not is there a non physical faculties with which we become aware of these objective values?", etc.

nah, i think it a good question, specially since many responses are "shit just happens" lol

You can be a materialist and not be a reductionist.

Proponents of non-reductive materialism hold that the mental is ontologically part of the material world; yet mental properties are causally efficacious without being reducible to physical properties.

Sounds like mental gymnastics with a pinch of dualism to me.

Anyway reducing everything to chemical processes is very reductionistic, and that is what poster i was talking about did.

 

[meauneau]

From my perspective, that doesn't really explain anything.

Mental properties are separate from the physical universe, not a part of matter? From that view? Sounds spiritual. Is the implication one can be a materialist and be spiritual?

The mental emerges weakly from the physical. You cannot predict the emerging property from its parts. You cannot reduce these emergent properties to the physical. Nothing spiritual. Spiritual and mental seem to be a sort of conceptual trash can in which what seems strange or explainable is disposed of.

 

[Cid]

Talking about the Hoffman avatar my brother.

I know you know what I'm talking about.

Yeah should have put your post, sig and my avatar together retrospectively.

 

[Thurisaz]

Is the implication one can be a materialist and be spiritual?

The implication is that they think they have their cake and eat it simultaneously.

 

[Social Distance Warrior]

Why does everything need a reason for it?

That's the cool thing about being agnostic/atheist, you can acknowledge that sometimes shit just happens for no reason.

Why does evil exist? Because people with the capacity for evil exist. Why do they exist? For no particular reason whatsoever.

Dude that is just lazy thinking

 

[Blackened]

The implication is that they think they have their cake and eat it simultaneously.

Sounds like a difference in semantics.

Like a "Christian Materialist" or some shit. I dunno, I'm not a philosopher. Maybe by definition he is right, but that's not the way I've ever used the words.

 

[Jack V Savage]

I never understood how the existence of God would have any correlation to the existence of suffering. Why would humans make this bizarre assumption that just because he exists he's concerned with your pain?

He's defined as being concerned with human pain by religions that are addressed in this argument. Obviously, one can invent a being whose existence can't be disproven who wouldn't care about humans.

The only consistent definition of God across different religions is omnipotence.

That's not really true. Lots of religions have non-omnipotent gods. And omnipotence impossible anyway.

Dude that is just lazy thinking

We have a natural flaw in that we have to try to explain everything. It actually takes work to overcome that and say what FD said.

Reminds me of Bokonon in Cat's Cradle:

Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder, "Why, why, why?"

Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.

 

[Higus]

Dude that is just lazy thinking

On the flip side, believing that something has to have a complex metaphysical reason for existing could just be over-complicating a simple issue. Occam's razor.

 

[Blackened]

The mental emerges weakly from the physical. You cannot predict the emerging property from its parts. You cannot reduce these emergent properties to the physical. Nothing spiritual. Spiritual and mental seem to be a sort of conceptual trash can in which what seems strange or explainable is disposed of.

Sounds like you are playing a game of semantics.

The mental emerges weakly from the physical? What does this mean?

What does emerging property mean? That consciousness comes out of matter? Ok, sure I buy that. My point is: So what? You've failed to effectively explain anything here, just described something everyone agrees on with fancy lingo.

And further, "it emerges from the physical"... so it can't be reduced to the physical, but it mysteriously emerges out of it? If I disable part of the brain so there is a form of "dim conciousness", am I not reducing certain consciousness? If I take a stimulant, am I not expanding it?

And what does it mean that it can't be predicted? If I take a drug that makes me feel lethargic, is that not a prediction from the matter/mind interaction?

 

[Cid]

Humans are fallible.

I'm sure if we were infallible we'd have that suffering stuff sorted by now.

 

[Cygnus A]

I am curious about atheistic perspective on this issue.

I am sure it will make a lot of sense.

Why did god create evil and suffering? Why did he design creatures that rely on the pain, suffering and death of others in order to survive? Every day there are things trying to kill you, but your immune system is working around the clock to keep you alive. Why did god setup this dichotomy ? Why didn't he just skip designing bacteria, viruses, and other parasites ?

 

[meauneau]

Sounds like you are playing a game of semantics.

The mental emerges weakly from the physical? What does this mean?

There is the strong emergence which is that there is physical and mental properties but only one substance, the physical, and you cannot explain the mental with the physical. Weak emergence is when from the physical substratum you cannot predict the emerging property you observe but can weakly reduce to it.

What does emerging property mean? That consciousness comes out of matter? Ok, sure I buy that. My point is: So what? You've failed to effectively explain anything here, just described something everyone agrees on with fancy lingo.

I can link you to articles which will explain it to you. I can't explain something like this in a post.

And further, "it emerges from the physical"... so it can't be reduced to the physical, but it mysteriously emerges out of it? If I disable part of the brain so there is a form of "dim conciousness", am I not reducing certain consciousness? If I take a stimulant, am I not expanding it?

If physical allows it then it emerges.

And what does it mean that it can't be predicted? If I take a drug that makes me feel lethargic, is that not a prediction from the matter/mind interaction?

From hydrogen and oxygen you cannot predict wetness, fluidity, transparency, etc.

 

[Skarr]

I am curious about atheistic perspective on this issue.

I am sure it will make a lot of sense.

sorry...I must have missed the memo where we agreed to ignore the fact that a good portion of "suffering" in the world is in some aspect connected to a religion? and has been since before recorded history....

 

[meauneau]

Why did god create evil and suffering? Why did he design creatures that rely on the pain, suffering and death of others in order to survive? Every day there are things trying to kill you, but your immune system is working around the clock to keep you alive. Why did god setup this dichotomy ? Why didn't he just skip designing bacteria, viruses, and other parasites ?

He couldn't do better because this is "the best of all possible worlds".

 

[Blackened]

From hydrogen and oxygen you cannot predict wetness, fluidity, transparency, etc.

Not true. I assume you're talking about H2 and O2?

You'd have to define "wetness" for me.

Fluidity and viscosity can be predicted based on temperature and pressure. Fluidity and similar properties are dependent on surroundings.

"Transparency" (i.e. color) can be predicted based on atomic orbitals. This is complicated and I couldn't go into it, but you can google search it.

 

[Falsedawn]

Dude that is just lazy thinking

I beg to differ, as Higus and Jack touched on, humans have an innate urge to understand things, and I believe we miss the forest for the trees sometimes.

It's why conspiracies are so prevalent, why apophenia is a thing, why the just-world fallacy is even a fallacy. We can take truly independent events, and in the absence of any further connecting information, assign a direct flow of causality from a-z. Conspiracies get shot down all the time when the connecting information is refuted, but the metaphysical nature of this argument means that there's no real way to disprove it, so it gets a pass.

To attribute causality of an event to "nothing" is going against the millions of years of pattern recognition and heuristic analysis that the brain has developed to cope with the natural world. It's easy to say that evil exists because god wills it, or try and point at *this* one singular thing that causes evil. It's immeasurably hard to say that evil exists in all shapes and forms and that there isn't always a rhyme or reason for it. For a theist, that might be tantamount to saying that their God is a fraud for not being the basis of morality. For your average agnostic/atheist, this might be akin to saying life has no objective meaning (even though objectivity is near impossible to point to without the presence of a diety anyway).

It's only lazy if you don't consider the philosophical positions of such a stance.

 

[Rusk]

Why did god create evil and suffering? Why did he design creatures that rely on the pain, suffering and death of others in order to survive? Every day there are things trying to kill you, but your immune system is working around the clock to keep you alive. Why did god setup this dichotomy ? Why didn't he just skip designing bacteria, viruses, and other parasites ?

sorry...I must have missed the memo where we agreed to ignore the fact that a good portion of "suffering" in the world is in some aspect connected to a religion? and has been since before recorded history....

I ask about atheistic point of view, and atheists bring up God and religion ... i mean cant one just be atheist without God and religion? lol

 

[Thurisaz]

I ask about atheistic point of view, and atheists bring up God and religion ... i mean cant one just be atheist without God and religion? lol

It's an integral part of "FUCK YOU DAD" Atheism.

 

[Skarr]

I ask about atheistic point of view, and atheists bring up God and religion ... i mean cant one just be atheist without God and religion? lol

you dont recognize how much "Evil" and suffering stem from religions? I dont have to believe in a religion to know that false preachings and ignorant teachings have led to some of the worst events in modern and ancient history

as others have mentioned...evil is a generic term that you would have to define more so to get more indepth responses

greed and ignorance play a strong hand in the creation of suffering

 

[Thurisaz]

greed and ignorance play a strong hand in the creation of suffering

In that case you probably create a buttload of it.