To ask, if you believe in a 'God'/Higher Being, how do you rationalise the death of an innocent child? **Contains graphic content - Thread titled edited by MNHQ**

[DM1209]

Good morning MN. I have been raised within a faith, Sikhism, and for the most part it brings me comfort and inner peace. My faith believes in equality for all mankind, standing up for those that cannot stand up for themselves and in doing good for the world which is why, in our places of worship we offer free hot meals all day to ANYONE that walks through our doors, regardless of their faith, gender, or colour.

Over time though I am finding myself asking 'that' question. If there is a higher power, why does 'it' not stop some senseless acts of evil from happening? I know it's not as clear cut as that and I know life is about balance, you have good and bad. But how do you rationalise this in your head if you follow a faith? And if you don't follow a faith, is it easier to understand the cruelty of mankind?

I know acts and deeds committed are the result of a person and their actions, they are responsible, I get that too....but why? Where is the intervention? Where is that 'angel' or that divine power that steps in?

I've just read about a 22 month old little girl who in her short life was neglected and abused and as a result of which, she died, no was murdered with a massive overdose of codeine.

She was also found with multiple head fractures, rib fractures, broken bones and a split liver. These injuries were consistent with those of a car crash victim. This little baby lay suffering and dying in her bed, over the course of about 4 days, while her 'mother' and her boyfriend played games and spent time on Facebook. I cannot imagine her pain and distress, the confusion in her mind and the acceptance that this was her life. Why? How is this ok if you are 'God'?

When her mother finally called for help, she was already dead and rigor mortis had set in which takes several hours. She was just left. No love, no warmth and no comfort. Then people say 'she's in a better place now.' No she isn't, she's dead and has only know suffering while alive.

Why? Just, why?

I'm not expecting answers as just, I simply cannot understand. Call it a crisis of sorts I suppose.

There is no context for the terrible, terrible suffering visited on millions of innocents.
But why not blame those responsible. For instance the holocaust, I blame Hitler not God.

savanna22

I understand it, in as much as a change happened in your life, that whether or not you had prayed for help would have taken place anyway. But you attributed that change in circumstances to God.

I don't think that's a bad way to live, it gives you comfort. But I feel that it encourages passivity, whereby if God is responsible for everything, what's the point in even trying to change things yourself?

That's where I feel damage occurs, the removal of responsibility of people's own lives due to their belief in a higher power.

Also, regarding the Holocaust..... For me there was never a stronger indication of God not existing. Millions of people dying because of their faith, and God was nowhere to be seen. Surely even with freewill he has a override button??

That's not a God I'd want to worship.

My view of the Universe:

Sometimes, shit happens.

I have read many books on the holocaust. Many stories from survivors. I used to think the same way, that no loving god could stand back and watch it happen.

Yet amazingly, many of the survivor stories I have read, they never lost their faith in the camps or afterward. It is often the case that the actual victims of suffering are the ones whose faith is strengthened by their experiences, not taken away.

Hitler liked to call himself a christian. Because jewish people did not believe in Jesus, it was easy to use that to bolster his case that the Jewish people were an inferior race.

There have been many terrible things committed in the name of religion. Blaming that religion as a result, is passive in itself.

I have read accounts of nuns and priests being sent to their deaths in the camps. The author of the Five Chimneys, and survivor of auschwitz, Olga Lengyel, talks of this and their dignity in her book.

The idea of freewill being a cop out, is a cop out in itself. Free will is what leads some people to live a life of morals as much as it leads others to live an immoral life. It is fundamental to what makes us human.

I would suggest, if there was no free will, there would be no morals. If there was no God that we will one day be answerable to, then there would be no morals. For all the murders, rapes and other acts of evil in the world, there are many more that never happen because of our deep sense of what is right or wrong. Moral people dont go around murdering people and so on because we have a profound belief, faith if you like, that it is wrong.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=-suvkwNYSQo

Stephen Fry perfectly sums up my feelings on the matter.

I have always believed in God although I must admit my faith gets rattled when I read about the horrific things people do to each other.

I absolutely believe there is a higher form of intelligence and understanding in the universe, I cannot believe humanity is as good as it gets.

Surely the beauty of the earth and the perfect symmetry of creation indicates a divine architect at work, there's no way all life came to be just by accident.

I was a 20+ year alcoholic quickly approaching the end stage at age 41. I binge drank almost every night for over 20 years, 7 to 15 drinks a night.

One particularly hellish morning almost three years ago, completely at the end of my rope I prayed for Jesus to either let me die or remove from me this burden.

I completely quit drinking days later, no AA no rehab or pills. The urge was completely gone and I have not had one drink since.

To me this is a miracle though everyone might not agree. I don't know why Jesus answered my prayers and not so many others, I can only testify about my own experience.

It's not that life has been perfect. Far from it. But a lifetime obsession with drink was removed. The rest I think, is up to me.

I pray for peace, Love and understanding for everyone regardless of your own beliefs I pray for healing and an end to suffering, if not in this life than hopefully the next.

Lots of excellent responses in this thread!

PurpleThistles

I would suggest, if there was no free will, there would be no morals. If there was no God that we will one day be answerable to, then there would be no morals. For all the murders, rapes and other acts of evil in the world, there are many more that never happen because of our deep sense of what is right or wrong. Moral people dont go around murdering people and so on because we have a profound belief, faith if you like, that it is wrong.

Having morals isn't a thing unique to people who believe in God.

I have morals, I don't rape or murder or steal. Why? Because I don't want to cause other people suffering. Because when other people hurt, it registers as an unpleasant feeling in my brain. That's physiology, a wiring process in my nervous system. Nothing to do with being answerable to 'God' when I die.

I've learned over time, that people who believe in religion tend to have a confirmation bias. They have an answer to everything, even if it contradicts itself.

That's OK though, as long as religion doesn't cause harm people can believe what they want.

Unfortunately however, all too often, atrocities are committed in the name of religion and that's where I have a problem with it.

SweetRosie92

Surely the beauty of the earth and the perfect symmetry of creation indicates a divine architect at work, there's no way all life came to be just by accident.

That's exactly what it is, proven by science. A perfect set of environmental circumstances which lead to the development of life. There is evidence to back this up. There is no evidence showing it was a divine architect.

It’s called “cognitive dissonance”.

OP like yourself I am also Sikh.
There are no clear cut answers for me, in fact higher being is higher because it is beyond our understanding, and I have often thought some questions will never have a definitive answer because its so far beyond our understanding.
Much like love - it's many forms and the power it holds, how can one logically explain it? We can't. It's such a powerful emotion that thousands of languages, millions of poems and billions of words cannot ever define that feeling.
I feel this way about the higher power. I dont believe it is male or female but i believe there is something outside the human parameters of understanding that has a hand in our creation.

Free will, for me, exists in more than just human beings. Free will exists in the tectonic plates covering the earth, every droplet of water in the ocean, each cell in the body, every cloud in the sky, every micron of nature. That one cell in our body can either produce another bead of sweat, or it can divide erraticaĺly and becomer a cancerous tumour. Everything has its own life as such, and attributes and contributes to cause and effect.

Unfortunately, free will can and will mean that these horrible cases of neglect and abuse happen. I hate that it happens and more often than not, the sentences the perpetrators get given make the feeling worse.

I know this probably doesn't help, but that's the way i understand it.

It is much the same for athiests, having been one for so many years i had as much confirmation bias for there not being a God as I may have now.

Morals is a little more than not wanting other people to suffer. For example, lets suppose that someone came along and in the most unimaginable ways, killed one of my DC. I doubt many people would say, I dont want to cause this murderer suffering. In fact, if I went on to murder the murderer, there would likely be many people that would think that it was acceptable to do so. Yet we live in a world where for the most, people dont go about revenge killing though i doubt their reasoning for not doing that is because they dont want the murderer to suffer.

Religion, i believe, over many many hundreds of years has created the morals that so many of us choose to live by. At some point there had to be the faith that there was someone or something our actions would be held accountable to, for morals to have come about. If not, then I cannot fathom why people would ever have developed morals and cared about living a good, humanistic life.

ILoveBray, belief in religion or belief on God? Two very different things.

Religion is "man made" and as such is destined to have many problems just like everything else people have created.

I freely admit not to have all the answers, all I really have is faith. Religion is too often used as a tool to corrupt, control and damage other people.

Totally agree that a person can be good and have morals and not believe in God. I have seen many people proclaim the opposite while having very few morals at all.

I try to keep "religion" and God separate in my beliefs. There is no way that any one religion is the "right" one, I think we are judged by our faith and what is truly in our hearts. But I really don't have all the answers, I don't think we were meant to.

I believe in God because it is just a feeling i have inside me, that's faith I guess! I believe that we (humans) are God's only way of intervening in this world. I believe we have everything we need to rid this world of everything horrible, we just need to listen to the voice that's inside of us and work together to find the way to a better world. It will take humanity a long time but I believe we will get there eventually. And I believe death is not the end. So as truly awful as this case and every other instance of anyone dying is, it's not actually the end for that person and it's up to everyone left living to learn from it and put another piece into the puzzle of working out how to make the world a better place. Don't ask my why I believe this or what my religion is because I have no idea!

SweetRosie92

That should have said belief in God, not religion.

On a separate note, I'm glad you have found a way to beat alcoholism, it's an awful disease. It's times like that where a belief in God can be helpful, regardless of whether anyone else believes or not.

I was brought up a Christain, but am not sure I ever truly believed.

I was very young when my father died. It destroyed the family. My mother because depressed (naturally enough) and has remained so ever since. I have two memories in the last 30 years of her laughing, that is all.

My much older sibling because very jealous of me, because I had 10 years of just me and my mother after she left to university. It has affected her behaviour towards me to this day and we do not have a relationship, and haven't for nearly 30 years.

I never saw my mother in a relationship again, and that, together with other stuff made me very wary about getting into a relationship myself. I have someone in my life I refer to here as DP, but it's not nearly as simple as that.

Basically, my life would be very very different now had my father not died when he did, yet my mother expects me to believe in a loving god who cares from me. How can he, when he basically ruined my life when I was so young? I concluded at a young age that either he hated me (for what, what could I have done by the age of 5 to make me hate him so much?) or else he doesn't exist. I decided the latter choice was the less painful.

We choose to come back and learn, so before we return our life path is predestined, how ever we do have free will too.
Karma was returned to us in a future life, however now, karma is returned in this life.

I grew up in a faith. I started questioning it at a young age. God chucked out his most beautiful angel from heaven as this angel disagreed with God's plan to basically live omnipresent and without intervention in our lives. I remember thinking who we now refer to as Lucifer as the logical Angel.

Us sentient beings are born to question and challenge our world. Any God's governing the universe aren't bothered about us. We are just crap in a pitri dish to them. If they are there at all. I'm very much agnostic. Atheist at times.

There is no god. Human beings are subject to the same cruelties and bad luck that other animals are.

Google Mouse Utopia experiment to find out why humans go off the rails and fail to parent their children properly.

ILoveBray there is evidence everywhere if you choose to look. A person cannot make a flower or an ocean or a mountain. You can grow a flower but we as humans certainly did not create them.

There's no way I could look at the beauty of the world and the miracle of our bodies and minds and not believe something much more advanced than humanity was at work in its creation.

Some people just credit it all to science as if everything just randomly came to be but that isn't accurate. Call it science or a divine creator or whatever you choose for yourself if that is what suits you. I believe there is much, much more to the universe than what we might see in this life. There is absolutely something greater than ourselves out there, I don't need what you might consider rock solid evidence to believe this is true.

The existence of one thing, such as science, does not disprove the presence of God, one does not render the other non existent.

@sweetrosie92

I often struggle to find the words to express how amazing i think an alcoholic is that is in recovery and spends their life doing their best to stay that way. My DH is currently in rehab and has began to talk to me about his belief in 'something more'. He doesn't quite know what and its all very new for him, but i remain hopeful this emerging faith in something will help him stay on his path. Much respect to you.

And to add........I do equate having a belief in religion to having a belief in God, because you can't have religion without God. However, it doesn't necessarily go the other way....you can have a belief in God but without the religion aspect.

This is exactly why I don't believe in God. And if he does exist he can fuck right off. I'd rather go to hell than go to his heaven with him. According to the Bible he's a vindictive, murdourous, narcissistic psychopath.

No thanks.

Not that I believe in him.

of course you don't need religion to have morals, but I've found it helps to have a reminder to be less selfish, and think of others, to reflect on mistakes. It doesn't require a deity but you do have to hold yourself to account from time to time. Religious attendance does provide reminders and a framework for that.

My feeling is that most people want to be good, but a lot of people can't delay self gratification because it will do them long run harm. Cheating on spouses is the perfect example - you know in the long run it'll likely cause more pain than anything else to many, but often people can't stop themselves from putting their short term wants first.

Same with greed - I know that over consuming is bad for the environment and selfish, but it's hard to resist that temptation in the moment.

The question of why a God would've made it so against our gratification drives for us to be good is an interesting one.

purplethistles I've also read this about camp survivors, it's a really interesting paradox. Same for loss, that can also show a split between people that are strengthened in atheism, and those that hope that they'll be reunited.

One of my misguided beliefs as an athiest, was that no scientist would be a christian. After all, if their particular field of work proves so completely that science is behind all creation, they would not be christians. And yet many scientists are. These respected people that we believe to be highly intelligent, logical beings with much more ability to find answers than us non science folk, still call themselves christians. Science and a belief in God can and does exist side by side.

I can not believe in god.
I'd like to, but it just isn't believable.

Humanism is the closest thing to 'religion' that I could follow.