[kelseyfrog]

I left in my teens. Religion seemed, at that time and still does, appears to reinforce systems of power and conformity rather than do good.

Non-believers often ask themselves, "what god would have the ability to eliminate suffering and choose not to?" We should also ask, "What religious institution and followers, having amassed the riches of the world, would choose not to eliminate suffering when they could?"

The weight of these contradictions eventually breaks belief. There's one way to win back believers and it's to eliminate in-group/out-group dynamics and replace it with material acts of benevolence - akin to large scale public works projects to eliminate suffering.

[Filligree]

> There's one way to win back believers and it's to eliminate in-group/out-group dynamics and replace it with material acts of benevolence - akin to large scale public works projects to eliminate suffering.

That would make me think more of the organisations in question, but I don’t understand why it would affect belief. It has no bearing on the correctness of the claims they make.

[jqpabc123]

It has no bearing on the correctness of the claims they make.

It has bearing on the veracity of those making the claims.

Why *believe* claims from those whose actions prove they don't really believe it themselves? If they did truly *believe*, they would certainly be acting much differently.

"Do as I say, not as a I do" is not a convincing argument to most rational people.

[spwa4]

Almost all believers I have ever known were believers for social reasons, for belonging to a group. I've yet to meet the first one (that wasn't 6 years old) that had actual belief.

Christianity is falling apart because all groups are falling apart in traditional Christian countries, including other religions, including everything from Tennis clubs to Latin study groups.

[kelseyfrog]

It's difficult to imagine a religion that would be approve of having the ability to alleviate suffering and choose not to. It would seem to run contrary to the love and altruistic behavior that religions tend to profess as part of their belief system. Perhaps I'm mistaken that religions don't incorporate this as part of their belief systems?

[627467]

I don't think this is religious institution v non-religious institutions scenario where the first stopped caring and the second cares. I think it's: more comfortable/complacent societies don't care about eliminating suffering so established institutions (religious or not) just stopped caring too. Plenty less-established religious institution are (at least) convincing enough people they are focused on reducing suffering. (in Christianity look at the evangelical movement around the world)

[BJones12]

> I think it's: more comfortable/complacent societies don't care about eliminating suffering so established institutions (religious or not) just stopped caring too

This seems accurate to me. To wit: https://principiadiscordia.com/book/45.php

But instead of 'just stopped caring' I might substitute 'realize they don't have the resources or power to fix the root cause and are resigned to reducing suffering on a small scale'.

[kmeisthax]

It's also important to keep in mind how much power Christianity has lost over the past few decades, to the point where most religious authorities have firmly chucked the whole "actually helping people" thing out the window in favor of power maintenance. Don't worry, Billy, once we've made women barefoot and pregnant again and wiped the gays off the face of the planet we can totally have our faith-based socialist[0] utopia.

Of course, their kids saw this as immediately, obviously wrong and disassociated from their parents. Then they proceeded to join the Democratic Party, bringing all of their entirely ineffectual political tools along with them. This was, again, very useful for helping a certain subset of elites[1] retain position in the social hierarchy but not useful at achieving any of our stated goals. Don't worry, @jointheresistance2016, once we've cancelled enough old fogeys in Hollywood and found someone who can pass all of our purity tests, we can totally have our Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communist utopia.

The answer to "OH. WELL, THEN STOP." is "But if we do that, then the bad guys win!" We've been drowning ourselves in outrage, accelerated by new communications technologies[2], as the people who actually run the show are plotting to see how quickly they can get everyone else to kill each other. Everyone is vying to grab as much power as they can as quickly as they can to impose their ideas upon everyone.

Free societies are built on a bedrock of decentralization, trustworthiness, and humanity[3]. Whether the institutions have the word "government" or "religion" (or "union") written on them matters less than if they're able to meaningfully resist attempts to divide and conquer the public. The more an institution focuses on gaining power, the less they care about eliminating suffering. I mean, why would they? That suffering is the point. It both eliminates a group of people as potential competing powers as well as creates a justification for you continuing to centralize power.

[0] I am perfectly aware that using this adjective is going to make many a Marxist's heads spin. Bear with me.

[1] Us (as in, the average tech worker) and our bosses (who have fucked off to the Trump Train)

[2] Specifically, cable TV and social media. The relative political harmony of the 1950s was aided by a deep and pervasive government censorship regime, whose harms are unrelated to this rant but were arguably worse.

[3] Or if your particular political ideolect prefers, "diversity, equity, and inclusion".

[missedthecue]

It always seemed a logistical disconnect to me that people conclude god isn't good, therefore he doesn't exist. It's a non-sequitur.

[mrob]

It's not a non-sequitur. The usual reason people believe in a god is because some religious group says that the god exists. Those religious groups usually also claim that their god is good. If they're wrong about the goodness, why shouldn't they be wrong about the existence too?

[missedthecue]

Just because someone is wrong about one thing does not mean they're wrong about everything else too. That does not follow, rationally.

[mrob]

When both things are claimed based on the same evidence it follows to judge them together.

[surgical_fire]

That's not how it works.

"God exists and he is good" is mentioned as fact. The evidence of the existence of God would be his goodness - call it miracles if you will.

In a world where you perceive the absence of this goodness removes the only evidence provided. The logical consequence is not that god exists and is malevolent, the logical consequence is that the goodness is not there because God does not exist.

[missedthecue]

The 'miracles' can easily exist alongside his badness. I'm not sure why everyone makes it out to be either/or. There is no universal law that says being both can't logically be true. I mean, there's an easy way to prove this. If I said humans exist and humans are good, you could point out Hitler, and all it does is prove humans are good and bad, and doesn't test whether they exist. And in fact it doesn't even prove that they aren't good, just that they are also bad.

So if someone says "god exists and he is good" and all you end up doing is disputing the second statement... you didn't even touch the first.

[krapp]

When people say that "god isn't good, therefore he doesn't exist," they are very likely referring specifically to the Abrahamic God, and this is likely the only God they can conceive of as possibly existing.

Of course you're correct that, in the abstract, the set of potential divine deities is infinite. But most people in the Western world turning away from religion are turning away from some flavor of the Abrahamic religious complex.

[missedthecue]

It's interesting you bring up the Abrahamic God, because the old testament specifically describes Him as, among other things,

- Jealous

- "Full of wrath"

- Vengeful

- Willing to harden hearts (make people resistant to obedience)

- demanding and severe

- prone to tempting or testing people

These are not my pejorative statements, but the literal language used, at least in the English translations. It seems the idea that the Abrahamic God is just trying to make everyone's life better all the time is a more modern western invention. I don't think it was common even 150 years ago.

[surgical_fire]

Yeah, but this lore was retconned post Jesus. After that God was supposedly a lot merrier.

And I say supposedly because even this God of Love allowed merry events such as the Inquisition to happen.

Maybe He just liked a good barbecue.

[card_zero]

The Gnostic demiurge is fun. An antagonistic creator.

[cjfd]

That depends on how once conceives god. For instance, Anselm defined god as a being than which no greater can be conceived. If one accepts that definition, it is in fact a sequitur.

[TylerLives]

Without suffering everything would become meaningless instantly. It would be like playing a video game with cheats.

[dmd]

Glad to hear it. I could use more meaning in my life. Please sign over all your wealth to me, so you can suffer some more.

[balamatom]

"I could use more meaning in my life."

Telling. (Me, I could definitely use even less.)

I think GP has a point, but it kinda works the other way around. (Which is common among unexamined intuitions.)

Basically, you can't represent any data with just ones, or just zeros. And the most basic unit of meaningful sensory data is "suffering/not suffering".

As long as there's any difference between "more preferable" and "less preferable" states of being (and not a uniform homogeneous universe, or alternatively a universe free from subjects able to prefer -- neither of which would not be much of a universe anyway), there will exist suffering caused by being in the less preferable state; and, conversely, the striving towards the more preferable one will be experienced as meaningful.

(And once you're in the most preferable state available to you, "meaning" becomes somehow unimportant. It's why they say "struggle builds character" -- "character" is one name for the ability to discern personally relevant meaning. It's also why it's easy for "personal fulfillment" to make a person kinda dumb -- unless they keep challenging themselves in actually meaningful ways.)

The evident paradox of "why would God not prevent suffering" is therefore a bit nonsensical, like most Christian doctrine (if you look at the history of Christianity past the point of being made state religion of the very empire that persecuted it -- no mean feat! -- you can see how it's pretty much designed by committee). Among extant religions, Buddhism seems to have the most no-nonsense treatment of the question.

On a practical scale one can see something similar in the concept of the "first world problem". Someone cooked your food wrong? There are people starving somewhere, you are in a vastly more preferable position to those -- but the knowledge that someone else is suffering from starvation does not in any way diminish your experience of (admittedly tiny) suffering caused by the unpleasant food. (That one takes a basic degree of self-control -- the "character" again.)

(Someone's taking away some privilege of yours in order to ensure more equitable conditions for others who never had that privilege? Well, pretty much the same thing. Which is why you see people hanging on to ill-gotten gains for dear life...)

So, that's why suffering and meaning are so often juxtaposed. What do we say to people throwing a tantrum over a minor inconvenience? We tell them to "grow up", i.e. that their suffering is not meaningful to us, and they should learn to extinguish that suffering in themselves.

Is it just to tell someone who is experiencing any suffering at all (even that of the minor inconvenience) to just, like, not suffer? That question also has no practical bearing. Ending suffering in oneself is the only end to suffering there can ever be. (Other than death, I guess. In death one is free from all suffering, striving, and meaning. I've heard that the ancient Thracians used to celebrate passings and mourn births, which I find much more logical than the ritually prescribed emotions of our culture. On the other hand, maybe that's why they're gone now :D)

Doesn't mean we shouldn't improve the world and end poverty, injustice, disease, stupidity, and other pretty obviously fixable forms of suffering. We just deserve a more meaningful teleology for that than just "ending suffering". Because I don't think "ending suffering" is a thing that can ever be done in light of the above. Even by an omnipotent being, since "potent" assumes power to change stuff, and "change" assumes the existence of "more preferable" and "less preferable" states. Might as well ask why there's something instead of nothing...

[card_zero]

No, you're wrong. It took a while to parse all that. But suffering involves being upset. We routinely have preferences while accepting that they're out of reach, and feeling happy despite this. The equivalence you draw between "less preferable states" and suffering is incorrect.

Suffering has to involve being coerced (even if merely by physics). Something has to upset you, knock you off balance. If you're prepared for it, if it isn't an intrusion, it isn't suffering. We are always in a less than ideal state, but not always suffering - unless you want to make the term meaningless by stretching it.

But problems, which may be welcome and enjoyable, are endless. And it's true that suffering is relative, and people who seem to be having a tantrum are most likely suffering for real.

[mrob]

You're not working with just suffering and non-suffering, you also have death. The existence of death makes the concept of an absolute threshold of suffering meaningful. If, assuming an experience lasts an entire lifetime, you would rationally prefer to be dead, that experience is below the absolute threshold of suffering. In practice most experiences do not last entire lifetimes, but this isn't relevant to the definition. Something can still be below the absolute threshold of suffering even if you willingly and rationally endure it because you know it's temporary.

You could encode the same meaning using only experiences above the absolute threshold of suffering, i.e. as 1 and 2 instead of 0 and 1. I believe a world with no experiences below the threshold of absolute suffering would be strictly superior to our world. Relative suffering is sufficient for meaning.

[card_zero]

Huh, that's a good idea, to create a benchmark to rescue the concept of suffering from relativism. But it won't work for me. I'm very anti-death, I don't see death as an escape, or as an action at all: I'm here to live, however unpleasant it gets. Death would be no more pleasant, because being dead is not an experience. It can't logically be an improvement.

[mrob]

It logically can be an improvement if experiences can have negative value. I think most people would prefer non-existence to endless torture with no hope of escape.

[TylerLives]

I never claimed that all suffering is good, or that we should maximize suffering, only that eradicating all suffering would be highly undesirable, and even impossible, as lack of suffering would inevitably bring about new suffering.

[card_zero]

This is true of being wrong, and problems, and lacking rationality - those are all incidental necessities in a world where we have something to do: otherwise we'd be like Q from Star Trek, stuck in his heaven at the end of time, with no remaining purpose except to mess with Picard's head.

But is it true of suffering? That seems possible, but not obvious. I think it implies that suffering evolves with culture. Like I got cake crumbs on my silk sheets! Such discomfort! How I suffer! ... in this way "suffering" just means viscerally-felt problems that we didn't choose, and it's plausibly an eternal part of existing in a physical world with problems to solve - if we can't manipulate all upcoming problems to be always fun.

Ensuring all problems are always fun probably entails seeing into the future, and wouldn't be possible. So, OK, I'll buy it, suffering is a side effect of living well.

Kind of raises the question of how much we can reduce suffering, though - if at all. Is there a particular percentage of the time that an average human spends suffering, whether in ancient times or today or in the future?