Death is pretty hard to accept, but sometimes even more so than others. I have been to funerals for people that died in their fifties, sixties and some even in their nineties. But it was then the closing chapter in a book that had a chance to be written and even read, if you get my meaning.
Today I went to the funeral of a five year old. The son of a co-worker but that did not help. When you see someone you know, a grown man, tear up like a child and wail and so palpably suffer, no human eye, no compassionate eye can remain dry.
The service was Catholic and the message one that I have touched on many times in this forum, which is the question or problem of suffering. Suffering and death of the innocent. The priest, wisely, did not try to spin a moral to such tragedy but acknowledge their questions and called all to faith, for it is in times like these that anyone can lose it.
But it struck me. How sometimes in this forum the “big questions” are treated but not the important questions. Questions that are raised by reason, by the scientific, but the questions that really matter are those that we ask on bent knee, with a broken heart, with eyes full of tears. Not in the height of our rationality.
The family lost a child that had seen only five summers. How can one talk to someone in that position, the parent that mourns, that God doesn’t exist, or that this life is all there is. That is some cold shit to say. Who could care at that time about the rational doubts that can be raised about the existence of something greater or benevolent in a time that one needs emotionally, with passion, something higher and benevolent, if not “a Being” then a message that is higher, a narrative that is benevolent.
The question is not: “How can you believe in a God that allows an innocent to die?”, but “How can you be without belief in something Higher and benevolent when you see an innocent child die?”. It is cold comfort to say that “God ways are a mistery to us”, but even colder to say that “energy is neither created nor destroyed but transformed”. Nature is neither good nor bad, but by that virtue it is also indifferent to our tears, our cries, our wails. God maybe a mistery at times, but that mistery accentuates the expectation that God is partial, is dicerning of value and that in this Highest Perspective, human life is inherently valuable.
In the end, all I could say to that man was to hang in there and to let his faith carry him through this difficult time.
i think you said the perfect thing…i served countless funerals when i was young as an altar boy in elementary school…it has always been pretty easy for me to take death because of my faith…faith, faith faith.
Arguments aside, I really think that if on one hand, innocent suffering is one of the biggest obstacles in believe in a benevolent god, the absence of an ultimate significance and mortality are the biggest obstacle in disbelieving in some higher power.
I have addressed this issue several times, here and elsewhere.
There are really 2 questions, how can we deal with our grief and why did my child die so young?
The second it actually easier to bear although it sounds callous. Suffering and (premature?) death exist because we have free will. God cannot interfere without negating our free will. But that doesn’t mean God doesn’t care, just the opposite. The difference is that we look at the death and suffering in our lives from the perspective of our threescore and ten, while God looks at things from the perspective of eternity. Each case of suffering or death is a monument to God’s committment to our free will–and thus to our individual identities.
What if there is no God? There may not be, in which there is no need to ask why, but again there may be a God. The difference is hope, not faith.
As for grief, it is the easiest thing to say, but the hardest thing to bear, that the only salve for our grief is time, and not having to ask “Why?”.
Sadly, faith is meant for times like these and is not needed when everything is going well. Did faith speak at the birth of the child, or was it the swollen chest of pride? Did faith speak when that child spoke its first words, took its first steps, or was it pride? What is it that is battered when, at the tender age of five, the object of my pride is taken from me – perhaps brutally? It may seem callous, but it isn’t meant to be. I am trying to reconnect with reality and avoid illusion, since I believe that this is the only way ahead. Is it really faith that is lost under such circumstances?
Rationality is often not around when it seems important. Perhaps you can feel yourself reeling back at my “rational questioning” above. The contrite heart is what God is said to welcome as a door to the holy of holies. It is more important than sacrifice and Jesus says that the mourner is fortunate, because only he can receive comfort.
Benevolence in this situation, I believe, is the presence of a warm heart of faith. It isn’t a call to have faith, but the presence of a faith that believes for those mourning, a hand, a hug, and an organizer, someone who cares. That is the role of the priest, not the wagging finger of accusation, calling mourning people to a faith that they need at that moment from others. The priest is there to care and to be faithful, so that his witness will encourage others to be there when they are needed and the priest is elsewhere.
I agree. But God is there when we are those people caring for others in his name. I believe in a God “in our midst” willing us to be his angels – not with clever words, but with warm heart. This God isn’t dead – unless we are.
The family in question was an active member of their chuch. When things are going well it is when it is most easy to have faith. As Satan explained to God, he did not deny the fidelity of Job but explained that he had been greatly “blessed”, therefore had a good reason to believe in God and to follow Him. But Satan wanted to challenge Job’s faith in the way that faith is challeneged in most of us. It is calamity, not success, that challeneges our faith in God as we believe Him to be.
Now there are some questions that you ask which only this family can answer, but, for sake of argument, I want to risk some answers.
Did faith speak at the birth of the child, or was it the swollen chest of pride?
Faith, as well as pride can seem to speak to us in such special moments. In the case of this special family, I would say that it was faith in a benevolent God that spoke to them on that day of joy; that they felt blessed by the Almighty and given the gift of a georgeous baby-boy. It would be only later that they would find that their gift from God had Leukemia.
Did faith speak when that child spoke its first words, took its first steps, or was it pride?
I don’t believe that “faith” or “pride” need to be the things that speak. When you feel joy, do you ask yourself whether your joy is due to faith or pride? One can be a christian or muslim or simply believe in something higher but they don’t necessarly demarcate faith from pride or anyother strong feeling. Do they not feel pride in their Church, or religious community? If they feel pride does that falsify their faith? Does it mean that he who is proud of their Honor Roll kid cannot have faith? I find the suggestion mistaken, if that is what you’re suggesting.
What is it that is battered when, at the tender age of five, the object of my pride is taken from me – perhaps brutally?
What is battered is positive religion- the idea that God is under our thumb, that God is under-stood, that God is KNOWN. Let me go back to the story of Job. What was battered in Job was the innocent faith of Job’s friends. Each provide Job with a clear dialectic to explain to Him WHY all of this calamity has come to him. How it was deserved. Job, who knows himself, rejects all rationality being fed into his suffering. It is undeserved suffering and that destroys the idea of a rational or positive religion. What is left for Job is his faith. As St Anselm put it, the order is first faith and then reason. In times of plenty faith takes a back seat and reason moves into the forefront. This is when the ghosts begin to speak to the living. but when calamity strikes, reason leaves us and we are left with a ghost-like God, mute and mysterious. Some can then explain away the ghosts.
The priest was not wagging a finger, far from it, but encouraging what might be weakened, because regardless of Paul’s opinion on the matter, it is my belief that faith is a choice one makes, and not a determination made by God. The priest did exactly what you ask of him. It was me who spoke as if I was the priest and call a friend to have faith.
Yes, and 2 of the most beautiful grandchildren ever born. They are always foremost in my mind every time I go into this.
As I said, the only comfort for the pain of such grief is time, nothing anybody could say would help, and I certainly wouldn’t bring it up to someone else experiencing such emotional distress. But at least I wouldn’t be nagged by that awful question, “Why?”, and driven by it into some hate-filled withdrawal. I see mine as at least a better answer than the the one we get from the revealed religions, “It’s part of God’s unknowable plan”, or no answer at all.
I’ve experienced first hand the hate for God, and by extension others around them, brought about by not having an answer to that question…Why?
I agree with you here. I only asked the question that I did because you seemed to dismiss a parent’s questioning the death of a child as something that would be so easy. And really, there is NOTHING that one can say - but only choose to listen and nothing more to the heartbreak of someone who has lost a child. When you look into those eyes, and they look back, no words are necessary.
But that is you - but many people do ask the question “why” even though they know there is no answer. Perhaps they have a sense that if they ask that question long enough, something will “come” to them.
Not everybody withdraws into hate and I agree with you. I have gone to religious services - funerals - where there was an attempt made by the priest to soften the blow, so to speak, but words really simply cannot. Even to tell someone that “time” will take care of it means absolutely nothing - there is only the moment and the suffering in the moment.
If you feel that you have experienced the “hate of god” it was not god. If someone is in so much pain though that the only thing they can do is to transform that energy, that pain, into hate, you ought to feel compassion for them.
And I am suggesting that something. Some people seem to be able live with what to them appears to be God’s aloofness, others can’t. But in either case, if they believe that God interacts with us and could have prevented the death, they feel they deserve answer from Him and are resentful when if isn’t forthcoming–no matter what they say, even to themselves. They don’t understand the implication and the importance of free will and God’s committment to it.
No, they don’t, but if as I said, they believe that God could have prevented it, I think their resentment is unavoidable. Hatred, like that of disillusioned revealed religionists, can lead to self-destructive overreactions like hard atheism or just nebulous anti-social self pity.
No, it was not God, at least not The God who loves and needs us so much that he gave us our free will, knowing He would suffer the burden for what it costs Him and us. And all the compassion in the world, if they feel they’ve been wronged by God, won’t help. Even Jesus on the cross suffered from a lack of such understanding. Would it have been any comfort to him to know why? I think it would. Crucifixion is unbearable as it is. But that along with the feeling of betrayal had to have been soul crushing.
I believe God feels all the suffering and grief we feel as well as our joy because He can do nothing about it without destroying our free will.
Hello Omar,
I’m sorry I didn’t catch your post, I was in Portugal.
Yes, I see what you are pointing to, although to understand this issue only from Job is a bit restricting. If someone understands his loss in that way, then it is perfectly acceptable. I only have a problem if other people use Job to explain my loss. Did the family understand their loss in this way?
My point is that we assume a lot when we become parents – but we fail to see what dangers accompany life. Did I make that child, or was the child a gift? If the former, then it is a shock to see that it isn’t perfect. I and my wife are the providers of the genes that make up that child, any weaknesses or strengths it has may be attributed to a good or bad match. If the child is a gift of God, on the other hand, I must take what I am given and learn to interpret that gift in a way beneficial to all.
Pride, as invoked by something that gives pleasure or satisfaction reflects in some way credit upon oneself or ones group, and isn’t far off from having a high or inordinate opinion of one’s own importance or merit. I’m not saying that it isn’t usual – it just isn’t spiritual.
The problem with the friends of Job is that they don’t leave Job alone, but preach their ideas of morality. When Job comes around, it isn’t morality that changes his mind, but the realisation (in the storm) that he should shut up. He must accept reality and understand that he can’t understand the things of God. The Job story is still primitive but Job gets back to life, not because of his lack of fault, but because he is humble.
This is disturbing in the modern day, because it isn’t an answer to questions and it doesn’t solve anything except to put us back on our two feet in reality. It becomes clearer that it is no more than this when you ask the question from the point of view of the children – why did I have to die? Just because my Dad is pure?
OK, I have experienced several priests acting in the way described and if it wasn’t so, the all the better.
This is my first post to this forum, I was wondering where to start and this topic caught my attention, as it is one of the main mysteries of religious belief to me (I’m an atheist myself), and have always wanted to understand better a religious person’s point of view on the question of ‘why do the innocent die/why do bad things happen to good people’, in a sense.
I myself truly do believe that this life, right here, is all there is, and I can completely see your point that if I were ever to lose a child then this belief I have would possibily make the situation much harder to take than if I believed that there was something after this, be it heaven or another life, or something else entirely. I do sometimes dabble with wanting to believe that perhaps there are other parallel worlds that you move onto next, not a heaven at all, but another life, just not in this world as we know it, but that’s moving off topic, and I really only ponder this thought.
But I balance this, because the reason I choose to assert to myself that this is all there is (and that it was not created by anyone or anything but chance of evolution and happenstance) is because I think this makes the world seem a much more wonderful place precicely because I believe it’s here by complete chance or ‘accident’ if you will. It makes it seem more brilliant that we’ve evolved and there are so many natural wonders and social developments in the world. That’s my balance, and I accept that because it’s accidental, because no one oversees or controls or knows what’s happening; anything can happen. Innocent people or children can die because there is no higher being or aspect of life to care or by conscious of this.
So, my question is, why is religious belief more soothing than that?
To explain my question; I understand that believing in another life after this, or something to that effect, would help to ease the guilt and loss and pain - because of course you would want to believe that a young life didn’t just end and that was it, that was the end. But… what I don’t understand (and forgive me if I sound ignorant - I’ve never asked this question before) is why believing that there is a higher power or being (or whatever it may be) that would allow that, cause that, or ignore that happening… is comforting. Isn’t it harder and more chilling to have to accept that someone/thing/power whom you believe in would create a world where innocents die all the time? Rather than having to accept that it was an accident that for whatever reason could never be prevented. If religion has a way of aiding those who strive to be good, then isn’t it worse to think that whatever you believe in could have prevented the innocent’s death, but for whatever reason, did not?
You see, I think both questions, though touching upon slightly different aspects of the issues, need to tie together - they can’t be separate, because one relies upon the other, I think. What I don’t understand is: why do people choose to take comfort in the knowledge of something higher when that very something did not prevent the innocent death. Doesn’t that taint it? Isn’t that contradictory in some way?
I would love someone to explain why a higher power’s mysterious ways are more comforting than there being no plan or purpose – because surely a plan in which innocents die is a very tainted one indeed? At least without religious belief you can take some vague comfort in knowing that, no matter how painful, accidents and deaths happen, inevitably - but a higher power surely takes that aspect of inevitability away, does it not? If there is a mysterious plan to which these deaths are aiding or working towards?
Nature is neither good nor bad, the universe is neither good nor bad - because neither have consciousness, yes. But, religion teaches that there is a consciousness in a higher power, that must know the pain and suffering of the world - so why is this comforting?
If there is nothing but this, no consciousness overseeing, then life is valuable because it’s here by chance, it can be celebrated while it’s here, but if it ends, then, that’s truly awful, but at least it was not taken away. If life is taken away by a conscious that oversees… doesn’t that question the value of that life? In the world, each person can value life as they wish to, there are societies rules and guidelines, but it’s still so much down to personal ideologies (which is often a bad thing, if people don’t value life, of course) – but if someone/thing unknown ultimately decides on the value of each life, isn’t that worse?
I hope I haven’t come across as too ignorant! Though I choose not to believe in higher powers or religion myself, I still want to understand why many people do, at the very least so I am knowledgable of both sides of the entire debate/issue, and hopefully grasp a greater overall understanding
Don’t just fall in the mental mistake that belief in God=Christianity, or even that belief in something higher cancels out any possibility of a world much like what you describe, a world of awe and wonder. Chance evolution can be relabeled as the whim of God, for example. Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to sell any gods around here…that is a personal choice, one that I myself have not taken. I am for lack of a better word, an agnostic because I see my position as vacillating between one camp and the other. But I believe that I could never be an atheists or an atheists, because I believe each position requires more faith than I can muster. But what does it matter? Do we need to know for sure that there is such and such and the character of such and such, or negatively, doe we really need to know that there is no way that such and such is real? So I live my life with a joyful doubt in either position. I don’t have to worry about maintaing an explicit belief and I can always sign up to either camp if convinced that I should.
But, IF, and that is a big if, I was out to defend that family then my position might sound something like:
“As you assert that this is all there is, so do I. Our difference stands simply in what we mean by “all”. Mine includes the possibility of something Higher, God, Creator of all that there is, the Ground of all Being. Words like “anyone” debase God to a human level, nor is God an “anything”, “chance” is not excluded from Him and “evolution” might very well be part of His action in the world as Creator. The Catholic Church does not rule out evolution. The Freedom of God is expressed as “chance” and “accident” in our world. The world is wonderful because there was no need for it’s creation. It is a work of art- completely useless for the Creator.”
That there is a God, does not detract from the wonders of the world. It is the wonder of the world that in fact led me to assert that this is the work of a Creator, that is, God. It is the fact that life on Earth seems accidental that also led me to believe that someone went out of his way to make this improbable thing happen.
God does oversees what is happening- He is what is happening and that as well imply that anything can happen because God is a free being, constrain by not rules or determinating causes. But this is wherte I part ways with you. We assert the beauty and wonderful nature of the world but approach death quite differently. To me innocent people do die but because of the freedom of God and not because there is no higher being. There is a higher being, a being that because it is as High and Beyond what is human, can act in ways that are inhuman to us. But I believe in God and that means that I believe that what is beyond my comprehension today tomorrow will be clear in my heart without any need for words. This belief is not incompatible or mutually exclusive from the belief that human life has value and that therefore a Perfect Being cares for human live as inherently valuable. This I take on faith, just as you take on faith the opposite view that there is no higher being to care, no creator and no preserver. But what consolation is there for our grief in atomic theory? And if it was anything anything more, but instead is just that a “theory” and thus we cannot even resign to an objective truth, but only believe it. Well then, belief for belief, I’ll keep that which keeps me strong when times are rough, that belief that I and those I love matter, that my suffering is not gratuitious chance but the unscroutable will of something that values my life, that created me and sustains me, that my life may stand as intended to be rather than a mere Spandrel."
Now to some questions:
1- Isn’t it harder and more chilling to have to accept that someone/thing/power whom you believe in would create a world where innocents die all the time?
A- People die all the time, but “innocent” makes little sense in an atheist’s vocabulary. To me inncoense relates to innocense in relation to a standard set by God when He said that all is good. If there is no God then all we have left is an indifferent Nature and if this is accepted then there is no sense behind “innocense” or for that matter even “guilt”. Man would be beyond any merit or reproach.
Accepting that there is a God also brings with it the capacity to qualify a death as that of an inncoent or a guilty person because then Nature would be interested in us and there would be a standard by which to measure the quality of a person. Otherwise merely the fitness of a person qualify the person. The difference between man and man would be simply the measure of success.
2- If religion has a way of aiding those who strive to be good, then isn’t it worse to think that whatever you believe in could have prevented the innocent’s death, but for whatever reason, did not?
A- I don’t deny the problem of evil, just as the priest did not try to explain away the death of the child, but even if you do not understand why the child had to die at least you live in the belief that it is not the end for him, that what he was did not just end right there, but moved on to a Higher reality to continue his own Being. We accept the death of a child as the will of God rather than the negligence of God, as if he was our health care provider. The atheist’s has to live those days again and again thinking whether he or she took her child to the right doctor. Did they do all that was possible? Would another have found a way to cure my son? Was my child’s death caused by human error, by something preventable? At least the religious folk finds ways to reach closure with the painful moment. Religion mourns the dead, marks their passing in ceremony and also marks a grave were the survivors commute with the part that survives, a belief that, of course, is impossible for an atheist. Through these, death, even the most unexpected, are absorbed and life goes on.
Innocent means “free from moral wrong” in anyone’s book, and we associate morality with a certain maturity, so I think that it is quite reasonable to speak of the “death of the innocents”, even as an atheist. This is especially true when someone approaches me in my loss to tell me that there is a God who “oversees what is happening.” The question immediately arises as to whether this overseeing God wasn’t paying attention or was distracted when my child died.
As I have said, the death of a child is utterly devastating, but the benevolence of God that we seek is in the presence of a warm heart of faith. This is God in action through the human-being at hand. It is the presence of a faith that believes for those mourning, a hand, a hug, and an organizer, someone who cares. The priest is there to care and to be faithful, so that his witness will encourage others to be there when they are needed.
Therefore, there is no consolation to be found in some illusory “someone/thing/power” who created the world and promises to prevent such devastating things happen, but in the God who is there when they happen and takes our hand to lead us back to life. It is the God who is there when we are those people caring for others in his name. I believe in a God “in our midst” willing us to be his angels – not with clever words, but with warm heart.
The “evil” in the death of a child is only malevolence from the perspective of morality. This means that in the universe or even in the world, the death of a single child goes unnoticed – despite the fact that my world has just broken apart. The child lived and it died – an untimely and far too sudden death – but it followed the way we all go. The evil lies in the fact that a child has been taken from me and I say that it should not have happened. There is no questioning of the atheist in the way described above unless there is reason to think so, but that could apply to believers as well. If we had the belief that the child has “gone on” to a higher level, we wouldn’t mourn. Only, perhaps, if we believed that there are certain prerequisites to “moving on”.
The only thing that prevents an untimely death is fortune, and I’m not sure that we all have such fortune. The question remains what we do when someone meets such an untimely end, or what we do ourselves, when our end is coming? To believe in guardian angels is to move into the area of superstition – to expect a guardian angel to protect me when I do silly things is flippant and stupid.
Morality is a standard of behaviour, according to which certain behaviour is praised and other prehaviour proscribed. But as many philosophers have known, once you throw out God then there is no objective standard and so each standard available is relativized and circumscribed, limited as valid for this or that culture or society.
In this dopo Nietzsche world we live in this is ususally what we find, this moral relativism at the seat of a former god. We can study morality anthropologically, but we may not advance the truth or error of any moral code. Morality, as a standard, is not just to be associated with maturity because in fact morality is inculcated and passed on in the first years of a child’s life. The first few years in a person’s life are spent learning…morality. Do this, don’t do that.
Innocense is a lack of knowledge of such standard. It is not knowing what one ought to do and what one ought to do is always tied to a prescription. To be “free from moral wrong” means to be ignorant of the norm. But in a world without God there is no Standard, but a multiplicity of them. Jesus was able to ask his Father to forgive our actions because we did not know what could be known, the Standard. Without God there is no Standard and so what we have is a world of perspectives, of moralities, each correct and true to the group and never universally unless secured by force. In a worldview like Jesus’ you can speak of innocense of those that crucified the Son of God, but in a worldview without this belief then what the crucifiction was is not a wrong in a universal sense but only in the eyes of Jesus and Jesus followers while the romans merely did what was right according to their own morality which cannot be judged by Jesus’, but stands side to side to His. There is no hiearchy of actions or moralities. So then “innocent” becomes “innocent” in these eyes but “guilty” in these others. Those that tormented Jesus were innocent if God exist, because there is moral standard which they are ignorant of and therefore free from it’s impugntion; but if God does not exist then they are not “free” because there is nothing that could they could “free from”.
The unnecessary death of an innocent child (remember that I define “evil” as lacking necessity) is “evil” from a moral perspective, but it is not as you insinuate the arbitrary morality of the parents. It is not the parents that say that it shouldn’t have happened but the moral tradition of which they are part and expression. Revealed religion posits a universal morality, a morality revealed by God to mankind and that stands as immutable. In the Christian morality the innocent are constrasted to the guilty and Jesus even tells us that one must be as a child to enter the Kingdom and that theirs is the Kingdom. This accentuates a moral tradition that values faith, like the faith of a child, an obedient child who does as he is told to do and only goes wrong where he simply had not been told what to do. That is an innocence that most cannot even aspire to. When an innocent suffers or dies it rocks our faith because of the counteraction it has against revealed morality we have received. It is not that I say it shouldn’t have happened but that the tradition that was revealed to us by God says that it shouldn’t have happened.
We mourn for ourselves as much as for the child. Knowing that a loved one is in europe living a good life does not make us miss them any less. We are saddened by the loss of their company in our presence even if they never truly leave us completely as they endure in our memories of them.
Now you may believe that all that separates us from an unexpected death is just fortune, but as Einstein might say God does not play dice, and so what happens in the universe has a cause of which the event is an effect. So that God may be all in all, there is no place left for Moira. I recognize that the unexpected does happen but not because we had bad luck or ran out of luck or our “fortune” was such and such. Rather I believe God to be free of constraints and that value begins and ends with Him. When Job rants against his fortune and about the Omnipotent God behind it he is not smitten and destroyed because Job is innocent of God who categorically transcends finite man. His rage is fueled by revealed morality that tries to explains even the unexplainable. Simply put even revealed morality is finite, written and spoken in the language of men. The mystery of Gods actions is the greatness, the transcendentness of God over man. Job’s problems with God begin and end with revealed traditions that ossify and cannot speak of our condition. If all that there is is the written word then God is guilty of guilty of a contradiction. But Job transcends, goes beyond the tradition that encarcerates his so-called friends and finds a new revelation, a revelation of tenderness and humility. Job’s need for an answer is similar to the grieving family need for meaning. But Job received an answer most would find unacceptable. Those that find Job’s answer unnacceptable are those Feuerbach and Voltaire imagined busy projecting God and inventing God, who will nothingness, in the words of Nietzsche, who desire to fix the form and condemn life for the sake of the one. If we were only as kind to God as God is kind to us.
God was willing to spare a city of sinners if he could find just one righteous man in the city. God’s answer to Job is to amplify Job’s perspective. Certainly God does not belittle Job loss…He does not even address it, He goes beyond it. Yes he has suffered but does his suffering condemn God? A city of sins is vindicated by just one gracious man, so too Job’s loss cannot take away from the greatness of God.
I do hear what you say and we probably agree far more than we know. What do we matter? We both reject flights of human fancy and call for humility, but I am tracing the plight of man as a side effect of the human experience of God, of which we should be aware of our blessings, and not just as the hubris of mankind. To know of God makes one want to know Him. Should not we feel for the innocent? For this is were humanity stands like a child at the skirt of his mother. We want to know and the more we know the more we anguish by what we still don’t know and the more suceptible we become to give in to our desire to be without want and deficiency. It is the meaningful encounter with God that kinda leads to the excess which become apparent when we encounter evil. Job was not pondering the problem of his own suffering out of arrogance but out of the innocent idea that He knew God. His answer comes from himself in realizing that he didn’t know everything about God and Creation and still reaffirming God and life in all it’s indomitable character.
It takes time, but the answer to the problem lies in our comming to terms with what we don’t know while moving ahead without resentment, that is, the desire that God be what we say He ought to be (or the insistence that God stick with the boundaries of His own Revealed Moral Law) rather than what He is to Himself. It is to exchange a closed system with an open system.
Thank you for your reply, I really appreciate someone taking the time to explain such things to me. I have a few points I want to clarify a little!
Hmm, I’m not quite sure I agree. I see the word ‘innocent’ as a word, much like any other word used to describe people, ‘angry’, ‘bad’, ‘good’, and it’s true, without a belief in the standards of what is good and bad, as set by God, it is a lot more subjective for a person to decide who they believe is good and bad, and what those definitions even mean -it can never be as black and white as that, no one is either good or bad – but I think when it comes to children, whether they’ve done bad things or not, they are innocent, because they haven’t fully realised, up until a certain age, the world and all that’s in it. They’re innocent in the sense of being oblivious, as Bob said. What I mean to say is that if, hypothetically, no one in the world had ever believed in God, and a higher being of any sort was unheard of… I think terms such as innocent would still be around, because societies set their own standards on such things.
That’s a very interesting way of putting it, and I hadn’t thought of it like that before. But, I still wonder what people, who believe in a God helping them through the devastating time (of a child having passed away) think of the child’s death in the first place? If God is there to help them through the hard time with a warm heart, why put them through it at all? Unless it was for the good of the child, that it was moved on to a higher place… in which case… does that not make the parents or carers feel guilty? That they somehow weren’t providing a good enough life for it on earth? I mean, is whatever God’s plan is something that no one has any idea of, and if so, isn’t it unsatisfying for parents to feel their child has died, but they’re not given a reason (a higher purpose?) as to why?
But there are always the people who knew the person to judge their innocence or guilt, aren’t there? When a baby dies it will undoubtedly be seen as a cruel death of an innocent amongst those who hear about it, whether or not the people who think this believe that a higher power ultimately decides upon who is innocent and who is not.
This does make sense to me, and thank you for explaining, I hadn’t thought of the child going somewhere else, to a heaven or otherwise, and you’re right, in the knowledge that s/he had gone somewhere peaceful like that is undoubtedly more comforting – although I disagree that life after death is something no atheist can believe, I do have an atheist friend who believes in the ghosts of the dead, possible life afterwards, and such.
But even with God, different cultures and religions differ in their opinion of right and wrong, good and bad – some religions or branches of a religion believe homosexuality is wrong and will result in not getting into heaven, just like some nonbelievers in society believe that it is wrong – others, like myself, completely accept gay relationships as equal to straight ones. With all these religions claiming contradictory points, isn’t that just as confusing and relativized as contradictory opinions within a nonbelieving society?
I agree that religion and belief in God does set many moral standards in society, but I don’t think those would evaporate if belief or subscription to religion were to disappear. Society creates its own moral standards, often separate from religious ones, and yes, this means there is more to note in terms of the circumstances, who is good and who is bad often ‘depends’ a lot more than what it would if judged by a God, but it means it takes into account all reasons and accepts that sometimes bad actions don’t always equate to a bad person.
— Hmm, I’m not quite sure I agree. I see the word ‘innocent’ as a word, much like any other word used to describe people, ‘angry’, ‘bad’, ‘good’, and it’s true, without a belief in the standards of what is good and bad, as set by God, it is a lot more subjective for a person to decide who they believe is good and bad, and what those definitions even mean -it can never be as black and white as that, no one is either good or bad – but I think when it comes to children, whether they’ve done bad things or not, they are innocent, because they haven’t fully realised, up until a certain age, the world and all that’s in it. They’re innocent in the sense of being oblivious, as Bob said. What I mean to say is that if, hypothetically, no one in the world had ever believed in God, and a higher being of any sort was unheard of… I think terms such as innocent would still be around, because societies set their own standards on such things.
O- “Angry” is a human emotion, not a quality like “innocent”. “bad” and “good” are qualifications, but outside of God there is no standard other than the individual’s, therefore a child’s death need not be a “bad” thing and could even be a “good” thing depending of the eye of the beholder (notice the abortion divide). It is like beauty. Life becomes an spectacle in the absence of God. The use of innocent is not mandatory and it would indicate, at least to me, a moral coil that the user, if atheist, has not despoil him/herself of. The opposite of “innocense” is not the “achievement of our potential”, but guilt, if I can summarize it in this way. The innocense of the child is not his unfulfilled potential and though there might still be standards of behaviour for human societies, just as in other social animals, the word innocence would be less adequate than the word “ingenuous”, which is less prone to bring the theist’s sense of purity, of something unspoiled by sin and guilt.
— But there are always the people who knew the person to judge their innocence or guilt, aren’t there? When a baby dies it will undoubtedly be seen as a cruel death of an innocent amongst those who hear about it, whether or not the people who think this believe that a higher power ultimately decides upon who is innocent and who is not.
O- In every abortion an unborn baby does die, yet it is not necessarly seen as a cruel death. The atheist in any case should account only for the passing of the baby and not qualify the passing as cruel because there is nothing that could be held to a moral judgement. Cruelty implies a moral judgment. A person who possessess freewill may be cruel, but not a hurricane. If there is no God then the death of any organism cannot be seen as cruel but as necessary and beyond such qualification because there is not moral agent, no freedom of will, only causality.
— This does make sense to me, and thank you for explaining, I hadn’t thought of the child going somewhere else, to a heaven or otherwise, and you’re right, in the knowledge that s/he had gone somewhere peaceful like that is undoubtedly more comforting – although I disagree that life after death is something no atheist can believe, I do have an atheist friend who believes in the ghosts of the dead, possible life afterwards, and such.
O- Tell your friend that his “atheism” might just be due to his own ignorance of the proper use of the term. Belief in ghost, spirits…these are in fact the earliest forms of religion, the prerequisites for the evolution of the concept God, which is in the final analysis, the inflated belief in ghosts or spirits.
— But even with God, different cultures and religions differ in their opinion of right and wrong, good and bad – some religions or branches of a religion believe homosexuality is wrong and will result in not getting into heaven, just like some nonbelievers in society believe that it is wrong – others, like myself, completely accept gay relationships as equal to straight ones. With all these religions claiming contradictory points, isn’t that just as confusing and relativized as contradictory opinions within a nonbelieving society?
O- While they disagree, each claims that what they believe is based on the standard of God and explain everyone’s elses beliefs as either precipitated by ignorance or wickedness, something that would be absent in a straight atheist. With over 2000 religions I can see how you are confused but the point here is not that belief in God or gods makes life objectively simpler, but psychologically so. Like I said, the religious already has explained the reasons why he holds his standard above all the possible alternatives: It is the objective truth. The atheist has no reason for holding on to any particular standard other than him/herself. It is a choice and we admit of fallibility. The theist and atheist might agree on any given thing: There are many religions that claim to be the word of God. But they disagree as to why this is so, and the origin of their explanation.
— I agree that religion and belief in God does set many moral standards in society, but I don’t think those would evaporate if belief or subscription to religion were to disappear. Society creates its own moral standards, often separate from religious ones, and yes, this means there is more to note in terms of the circumstances, who is good and who is bad often ‘depends’ a lot more than what it would if judged by a God, but it means it takes into account all reasons and accepts that sometimes bad actions don’t always equate to a bad person.
O- Standards would not evaporate but would be held solely by force, or would last solely by force. With a theistic standard there is God, the ultimate Superman, and because of His inherent quality as superior to human, His standard gains power and respect. Without God then there is only human and the all too human and so there is no inherent respect for a subjective standard that has as much value as any other man’s or woman’s.
We are human and all too human and so whether theistic or atheistic we do generqalize from the particular to a universal just like that. We have as much chance in either opinion to judge the tree by it’s fruit. Our justice system likes to see itself as free of prejudice, including religion, but in it’s scales a person is what he does. As for society, there is a price for a reputation.
Morality is established independent of society or belief in God, partly because religion adopts as dogma those behaviors that sustain the religion even though they do not deal in morality. E.g. the commandment to honor the sabbath and keep it holy.
Oh absolutely! Politics has its articles of blind faith as much as most religions.
For me, morality is second best because it causes duality. Morality is needed because we have lost God, once God is present, morality becomes irrelevant. But long as morality is all humanity has, we are caught up in judgement and we miss the whole story. The morality that children are taught robs them of the childhood and makes them dependent upon what other people think is good. They become tightly conditioned into not being able to be happy unless they are praised or have certain things, not being able to see the whole truth because of prejudice and so on.
I understand what you are saying, but innocence means harmless and suggests that someone cannot or will not do harm to others, or that harm does not go out from them. Not knowing that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil exists isn’t part of the equation – only not knowing what is good or evil. You see, we don’t really need to know, we could live on oblivious of what good and evil are – but it seems to be our destiny to gain such knowledge and still return to the state of nor knowing.
I think that Jesus was unique in his situation and surroundings, being the only one who could see what was in the midst of everybody. His perspective was “pre-fall”, although he also knew good and evil. The Kingdom of God is that perspective that is to be held above all else – and the rest will come. The point was, he was no danger for anyone – he just showed each person the danger he was putting himself and others in. The harm came from those who shouted crucify and those who crucified him. Therefore, they were not harmless and not innocent. So I think there is a difference – except perhaps, when we are all equally dangerous to ourselves and others.
I think that my first problem is that you assume that if there are necessities that one could understand, there are also unnecessary deaths, which you can understand. What if there are neither? What if one life lasts fifty years, another only fifty months, or weeks, or days – but there is no rule for what could be deemed necessary? Especially death by disease seems to me to be out of any moral necessity or the opposite. I don’t know where the Bible says that life must have a certain duration.
Yes, that is probably the truest part of what you have said. But think of it, why can’t we be happy all the same? Because we refuse to be, until my conditions are fulfilled, and bring unhappiness upon ourselves – like cutting the nose of to spite the face.
But what if it is the proverbial butterfly in the east that causes the hurricane in the west? OK, you have a cause, but you still don’t have a reason!
And still, God only puts Job in his place and teaches him humility. Job then puts what has been behind him and concentrates on now, and suddenly he is blessed more that before. Job teaches me that the whole rage and ranting is vanity and helps nothing but a release of tension. But why become tense?
The story of the three men and Sodom and Gomorrah is a very wise legend that plays out a scenario. It reflects truth, but it remains mystical episodes that are set within a historical story.
I believe that compassion is the great lesson to be learned, but free from ego and from desire. Then it becomes divine ….
