JohnW wrote: ↑Tue Sep 27, 2022 5:33 am
dastardly stem wrote: ↑Mon Sep 26, 2022 2:20 pm
I've taken pain as part of the concept of evil on this question. Senseless suffering, as Gadianton points out, seems to be the loudest concern people have as it pertains the problem of evil. If there is a benevolent God why does he sit idly by and allow senseless suffering? If God sees suffering as a means to an end and necessary evil, then I see how that can kind of work in a believers mind. But I think there are added complications on that view.
The only thing I would add here is that there is senseless suffering and there is suffering that appears senseless to us with limited perspective. I know for most people that argument doesn't help, so it isn't often useful to bring up. It is just that sometimes we get upset about injustice or things that seem senseless only to learn down the road there actually was some sense or justice involved. I fully expect that could be the situation here. I can't think of an example off the top of my head, but something along the lines of thinking some rule was dumb as a kid and then as a parent realizing why your parents put that rule in place.
dastardly stem wrote: ↑Mon Sep 26, 2022 2:20 pm
I think that's about right. On LDS thought, God's hands must be tied. They call it God's plan but in reality He didn't author the plan or engineer it. It's the eternal plan--or the only way to get a few of the eternal spirits up to the level of godhood, and perhaps as a consequence, the only way to get billions of people, spirit people at least, to choose satan's path and maintain evil. That seems to be where LDS thought gets pretty ugly. Many people opt out because God appears high on power and lacking in concern, but in so doing they apparently choose eternal torment, and God's apparently cool with that. "i can't make them want more" or something. "they don't like the idea that people will suffer eternally? Well, then they must suffer eternally."
As a believer I wondered if I had made a big mistake going along with it. God set it up so many billions or one third of his people would suffer eternally? He also set it up so some of those who didn't follow after the one third would suffer eternally? I wondered what I was going to do for eternity. How could I enjoy some exaltation knowing billions of my siblings, if you will, were in eternal torment? That exaltation as I was taught was nothing more than eternal torment, to me, as I contemplated it. Apparently God needs to condemn many billions in order to exalt a few? And that was somehow good for Him? He would exalt Himself in the process--"look at all these I exalted peeps spending their eternity praising and exalting me". It was all too disturbing I admit.
I appreciate your responses and your engagement. I don't envy you. Those are some tough conundrums, as they say, to have in one's head and heart.
You keep using the term eternal suffering. That is probably on of the main differences between the way we are thinking about this. I like the scripture that says something along the lines of eternal punishment uses the word eternal because God's name is eternal. That just means it is God's punishment. Even though that scripture has always seemed a little cryptic to me, its intent appears to be to downplay the severity of the punishment. I've always considered the "punishment" reserved for the 1/3 of the spirits before this life and the people going to outer darkness as nothing more or less than giving them exactly what they want. They want God to leave them alone, so he leaves them alone. Any punishment comes from that extreme distance from God. When we are left on our own, we often punish ourselves. That could be considered eternal suffering. Yes, that is non-standard way to think about those going to outer darkness, but it seems like a reasonable position to take. It also makes God's character a whole lot more palatable.
Hey, do what you need to do to get by, I say. I use suffering because that is how it's typically been depicted. For instance, in the Book of Mormon Abinadi condemns:
The time shall come when all shall see the salvation of the Lord; when every nation, kindred, tongue, and people shall see eye to eye and shall confess before God that his judgments are just.
2 And then shall the wicked be cast out, and they shall have cause to howl, and weep, and wail, and gnash their teeth; and this because they would not hearken unto the voice of the Lord;
Sounds far more like suffering than just being left alone. King Benjamin (guess I guess I'm showing my preference for the Book of Mosiah):
there is a wo pronounced upon him who listeth to obey that spirit; for if he listeth to obey him, and remaineth and dieth in his sins, the same drinketh damnation to his own soul; for he receiveth for his wages an everlasting punishment, having transgressed the law of God contrary to his own knowledge.
(2:33)
And to clarify from the D&C when it says Eternal Punishment is God's punishment (19:11-15)
Therefore I command you to repent—repent, lest I smite you by the rod of my mouth, and by my wrath, and by my anger, and your sufferings be sore—how sore you know not, how exquisite you know not, yea, how hard to bear you know not.
It seems to me the message given was always saying the punishment God gives causes the worst kind of suffering imaginable given Mormonism. Interesting we have such different takes. From God inflicting the worst on people to, in your view, God just setting them aside and leaving them alone. Admittedly I never got the view you express.
On the devil and his angels, Nephi 9:
wherefore, they who are filthy are the devil and his angels; and they shall go away into everlasting fire, prepared for them; and their torment is as a lake of fire and brimstone, whose flame ascendeth up forever and ever and has no end.
It appears God has prepared for them a place of eternal punishment, or as termed in the D&C God's punishment. To me I get the impression he delights in punishing those who dare question HIs ways, or push against Him. I suppose it would be much nicer if there wasn't a torturous place where people go to be punished as if they are burning forever in fire. But that is what he teaches.
Anyway, I would say, if one believes in God, Mormonism and all of that, it'd be really really good to ignore most of scripture, ignore most of what the prophets say and imagine a much better God, a much better religion. I don't think you're alone among Mormons who do that (nor, to broaden the scope, alone among Christians who do that). Others do as well and it's encouraging. Hopefully that view spreads among the other believers and leaks into the hearts of the leaders, so they too can preach a new and improved religion. Of course, I'd still suggest it's much better to drop it all, completely. But, I also accept religion is here to stay. Take what you can and make the most of it.
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos