Alan Watts said that people are unhappy because they take seriously what the gods created just for fun. I enjoy the idea that if there is something like a consciousness that was before life and continues to be after life then life might be just a vacation place for some kind of eternal consciousness, like a game. of course to make the game interesting we would have to voluntarily give up our memory of eternity before incarnating into some life form. then once we are born all we know is what we are living. pain and pleasure are pressures to make the experience intense. its the video game analogy basically. since we started being able to create virtual worlds where we can have adventures we could create a game where nothing bad ever happens and you always win, but it woulod be teribly boring. so we create video games where dying, hurting, disease, dangers all exist and its exciting to try to survive in those circumstances. we don't question why the video game producer invented danger and possibility of death, we know its just a game and we take it seriously while we play and laugh about it when we are not playing. what if life was like that? what if we simply, temporarely, forgot we are eternal and now all these obstacles and horrors of life seem like the creation of some evil god while really , once we die, we will laugh about it. just a fully immersive video game. it does leave us with a moral void because there would be no after-life consequence to immoral behavior, only the immediate consequences like jail or being disliked. so this is one possible explanation to that eternal question of why god created suffering.
@Pikachu I beg to differ. The very reason bacterial resistance is becoming more common is the overuse of antibiotics and the resultant ability of bacteria to adapt so it's harder to kill them. No brain then no suffering is actually in the grey area because microorganisms can be stimulated like the sensory nervous system and then there's also the stress responses to adverse stimuli.
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SW-User
@FaithfulDamagedSoul They don't experience it the same way as humans and you may be right but recent research has found that that they're capable of 'feeling' the world around them and are capable of complex decision making. Suffering involves thoughts and judgement so evidence suggests primitive creatures evolved from them.
Oh i understand stimulus response but that's not the same as suffering. A bacteria has stimulus response. But what does suffering add to that? Feeling pain and not only reacting to it as a stimulus to be avoided but also finding that stimulus traumatic, upsetting, terrifying? These are not necessary. A simple algorithm of if x stimulus then y response would suffice to meet the same end. So why Biblically speaking, do animals have the capacity to suffer?
Oh, it's all part of the plan. Animals getting eaten, animals starving to death, humans getting eaten and starving to death, brain eating bacteria, the Holocaust, it's all part of God's glorious plan. Just trust me.
@Pikachu yes it's confusing because God in the equation doesn't make sense. Which I'm sure is what you're getting at. Suffering is part of existence and humans are part of the animal kingdom.
