The Problem of Pain.
First of all, for the rest of the entry please assume every time that I use the word “pain” that I’m talking specifically “suffering physical pain.”
I don’t understand how people think that an all-goood God can be reconciled with physical pain.
Why do we have pain? From an evolutionary standpoint it’s easy to offer at least one plausible reason – it tends to discourage us from doing the painful thing again, usually because it’s injurous.
From a Christian theistic perspective the question is tougher.
Let’s take an example: a person with chronic pain in a “phantom limb” (pain in a limb that’s been lost).
Naturalistic account – the suffering is a byproduct of poor design with that respect.
Theistic account – the suffering is what? Poor design? Careful, He might hear you…
Here is some information from http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/body/factfiles/touch/touch.shtml
Combined senses: Your sense of touch combines your response to touch, pressure, pain and temperature
Function: To inform you about what’s happening on the surface of your body
Receptors in your skin
Your skin and deeper tissues contain millions of sensory receptors. Without them, you wouldn’t be able to sense and respond to your environment. They register what’s happening on your body’s surface and then send signals to your spinal cord and brain.
Light touch and deep pressure
Other receptors are more complex. The Meissner’s corpuscles, for example, are enclosed in a capsule of connective tissue. They react to light touch and are located in the skin of your palms, soles, lips, eyelids, external genitals and nipples. It’s because of the Meissner’s corpuscles that these areas of your body are particularly sensitive.
Most of your touch receptors sit close to your skin’s surface. Some of them, however, are located further down. Receptors such as your Paccinian corpuscules sense pressure and vibration changes deep in your skin.
Pain and temperature
Your skin receptors don’t only respond to touch. They also register pain as well as warmth and cold. Your pain receptors are the most numerous. Every square centimetre of your skin contains around 200 pain receptors but only 15 receptors for pressure, 6 for cold and 1 for warmth.
and
http://www.scientia.org/cadonline/Biology/nervous/skintouch.ASP
The sensory receptors of the skin are concerned with at least five different senses: pain, heat, cold, touch, and pressure. The five are usually grouped together as the single sense of touch in the classification of the five senses of the whole human body. The sensory receptors vary greatly in terms of structure.
So you could experience every form of feeling in your body with the existing nerves, and when “they register what’s happening on your body’s surface and then send signals to your spinal cord and brain” – your brain interprets the information (which it could do in a number of ways…)
A god that uses suffering to convey information is taking more steps than he needs – and is using pain to do a job that could be done without.
God could have made us have a “console” in your mind that relayed damage or nearing damage information. Your brain could interpret the signals on a body map in your mind.
So here is an adapted Epicurus’ argument.
Is God willing to prevent suffering from physical pain, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then why does suffering from physical pain exist?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?
ryn, from what I’ve read, Aramaic manuscripts have been uncovered over the years which provide us with original source documents that can be fairly well authenticated. Beginning with Constantine around 325 AD, dramatic changes began to be infused into interpretations as texts were translated from Aramaic into Greek and then into Latin.
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In later years there was then translations into old English, and later, more translations into modern English.
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I understand where you’re coming from… The thing is I have no issues whether or not ancient Romans think I’m an Athiest. Don’t get me wrong, I love getting into religious debates, I believe that they strengthen my own beliefs. BUT…I’m not out to sabatoge your ideas, or care as to whether another doesn’t agree with mine. I love what I believe, and I definitely tend to stick with it.
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What do you believe though, because you MUST believe in something, even if that something is nothing… How do you live without a motive? But anyways, just because I stick with my beliefs, doesn’t mean that I can’t be open-minded…
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It goes back to the beginning with Adam and Eve. There was no pain until Eve and Adam ate of the apple and I’m sure you know the story. Because they committed a sin God punished them with physical suffering. That is why we suffer physical pain. God is able to take away physical pain and he does. You must ask. God doesn’t guarantee us anything. I’ve seen first hand how God can take away pain.
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You almost had me until I read three chapters into my Bible. Shucks.
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XianTheist, like most Christians, pins the blame for pain and suffering on Adam and Eve. Aside from the fact that Genesis 3 never historically happened – if God is all-powerful, then nothing can go against His will. That means that we must assume that the world is exactly how He wants it to be, pain, suffering, and all. Otherwise, He could easily change it.
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Thus, if God is all-powerful then He wants there to be pain and suffering, otherwise He would change it. Mankind cannot bring sin into the world without God allowing it to happen. Even if mankind is responsible for the pain and suffering, this doesn’t remove the blame from an all-powerful God who could easily change it. We are His creation, therefore we are His responsibility.
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RYN: Did watch a again..still didn’t like it. I was confused, really. Like I WANTED to like this movie because it was really great until the end. I read some other reviews as well and Roger Ebert didn’t like it either. So I figured, what the heck, we all like some things and we all hate them. So it’s all about connection and I didn’t connect. But thanks for the note and your opinion. Gladly taken.
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hehehehe, i wrote out C.S. Luises argunemt to this affect. it is really good, but i feel that pain is Good, if fire tickled we would not jerk our hand out. with out pain there is no fear, no fear no causion, no warryness, no wisdom, no learning, no knowledge, no reason, no debates, so pain leads to good things.
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But not all pain leads to good things. For example, why do you feel pain for WEEKS after a particulary harsh injury? Why do women get cramps for up to two months after childbirth? Why does childbirth even hurt in the first place? The answer is simple, these pains happen due to mental and physical stimulus. There’s no greater power involved, giveth and taketh away. It’s all basic biological
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stimulus. I’ve seen a lot of incredible things, “energy work”, etc. It’s not something that God is a part of. Beyond that, God guarrentees nothing? Well, if that’s the case, then why should I go to him when I need help? It gets to the point where if you aren’t sure you’re going to get what you need when you most need it, why bother? I’ve turned to God when I most needed it, and was left
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wanting. God is not the answer to everything. I agree with the autor here, God cannot be held responsible for everything, because he is either irresponsible, cruel, or incapable.
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Why pain? Very simply—pleasure. I don’t think you can talk about an extreme like physical pain without addressing it’s opposite. Basically, if God were to eliminate pain, He would have to eliminate pleasure as well, thus is it really in our best interests for God to eliminate pain?
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Our perceptions are based on comparison—a cut on the ankle is not painful if you have a broken arm. Similarly, if we had no physical pain, only pleasure or feeling nothing, feeling nothing would become ‘pain’ in comparison to pleasure. Only by eliminating both could God eliminate pain.
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IÂ’ve elaborated on this quite a bit and posted it in my journal if you want the full argument; unfortunately these response boxes donÂ’t make it plausible to respond fully here. However, I think youÂ’ve simplified a concept (pain) to support your argument, but that that concept cannot be fairly simplified.
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“…if God is all-powerful, then nothing can go against His will.” -An Atheist No, if God is all-sovereign over everything nothing can go against His will. I don’t believe He is, and the Bible certainly doesn’t seem to teach so either. “We are His creation, therefore we are His responsibility.” -An Atheist Not if the “creaion” is an inherently responsible one.
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Certainly we have human experience in the progression from childhood to adulthood where a parent is no longer held responsible for the actions of their offspring. To say all responsibility would fall on God simply doesn’t follow the premises given.
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^^^ “creation” not “creaion”
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“No, if God is all-sovereign over everything nothing can go against His will.” That doesn’t follow. If God is soverign over everything, that just means that He has authority over everything – it doesn’t mean that He has complete control over everything. A King may be soverign over his country, but his people may go against his will.
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Going against the will of an all-powerful deity, however, is a contradiction in terms. If the all-powerful deity alows it to happen, then it’s not outside his will. If he didn’t allow it to happen, and it happened anyway, he isn’t all-powerful.
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