Why innocent children are allowed to suffer? e.g. Hamzah Kham, his siblings and much more thorough the world.

[Hopemore]

I just find it so hard to keep my faith strong when I see innocent people suffering so badly.
I try to be good, helpful, generous.
I try to cause no harm, etc
But that is not enough for me, I need to have faith.
But it is hard to keep strong, it really is.
I don't want to be an hypocrite, I really want to have a solid faith but sometimes I think I just can't have it.
Not because of my life, I am grateful for everything I have, but I feel 'angry' for so much suffering in the world.
Sorry if I don't make any sense.

very selective in what he cures though very true! He has never replaced a missing limb at lourdes for example. It's as if......

Well said, curlew, headinhands and Annie.

I'm not sure how the fossil record can show that humans are less likely to die at the hands of another human now the fossil record (as I think Darwin said) is like a library of which 90% of the volumes have been destroyed, and the rest have been defaced. And I am still not clear how, even if this was the case, it is evidence of progress. Humans have got much better at killing each other using other methods such as, to take one example only, Zyklon gas. Human ingenuity in the production of suffering is almost limitless.

Regarding free will, we as a society work hard to prevent people from causing harm, it is true. But we set limits on the power to prevent people from doing things. Liberty is a key value of our society. And, sadly, loving parents cannot stop their children hurting themselves and others can you stop your child from taking drugs, or self-harming, or refusing to eat? Can you accompany your child everywhere, making sure she never hits or hurts anyone? Of course you cannot. The truth is that parents can try to influence their children, but they cannot control their actions and, in fact, that would be a form of abuse in itself.

And how would God intervene in a situation of domestic violence, say? Where would he decide to start the intervention after the first blow, or before it? Or before that, at the first humiliating tirade? Or before that, at the first belittling comment? Or before that, at the point where the couple move in together? Or before that, before they meet? At any of those points, the violence could be always going to happen, or it could be not going to happen. At every point the people involved have free will about what they do. If God sorts it out for them they don't do the suffering but they don't have the possibility that the situation might not involve suffering. And they don't have the possibility of changing, or deciding to do something differently. They are simply toys, subject to God's whims.

I think God works from below, through us, rather than from above. He's not like a celestial puppet-master. I think much of God's action in the world is unrecognized as such. However, the most important intervention God has made is the incarnation -- becoming human, suffering and dying. And I think God continues to act in the world because where people reach out to others in love and compassion, God acts through them.

I still am wondering how it helps you (plural you) to believe in a pitiless, pointless, merciless universe: in the darkest of nights, in despair, and unendurable suffering, in the bleakest of lonely abandonment, where do get the resources you need to carry on?

Why are you assuming that non-believers are in despair, hopeless, suffering or feel 'lonely abandonment' because they don't share your belief system? Plenty of people have the 'strength to carry on' because it is enough for them to be decent, good people in a world where more people are good than bad.

link to the Pinker research on the history of violence

I get my resources from myself and those around me. I draw comfort and meaning from my relationships with the people in my life. I draw comfort from knowing we're learning all the time and am immensely grateful for being in 2013.

As a human when would you intervene in DV by way of calling the police etc? I'm guessing it would be a lot sooner than god.

What would be abusive would be to give birth to a child then hand it over to a group of people you know/believe to be depraved.

It's not that it helps me to believe in this universe. This just happens to be the universe we have. Belief has no bearing on it.

If you were short of money I could say "But.. how it does it help you to believe you only have £20. Why don't you believe you have £20,000". But believing that wouldn't change anything would it.

And as I think someone may have said I don't expect the universe to have a purpose anymore than I expect a teapot to have a purpose. A teapot has a 'use'. I can use it to make tea or maybe as a doorstop, but it has no purpose of it's own. Purpose is like looking at the night sky and seeing a Great Bear made up by half a dozen stars. The bear isn't really there and those stars are not connected to each other.

I think in a way though that asking how non-believers cope IS a good question. Because if we really did live in a constant state of despair at not having god it would show. We're often quite happy and content. So maybe, just maybe, there's more to this not-believing than believers think.

Perhaps I was unclear: I meant, in situations where you are in despair, what are your resources?

I've looked at the Steven Pinker article. It's an unreferenced talk, which draws largely on people Pinker agrees with, and ignores the research of professional historians and archaeologists. Furthermore, it is tendentious, in the sense that it starts with a premise (that violence has declined) that it then adduces evidence to prove. Pinker is a renowned expert in the field of evolutionary psychology; he is not a historian. I don't doubt he would give my thoughts on evolutionary psychology short shrift: and I can repay the compliment.

I think you are not understanding what my question was getting at.

So I give an example (I've borrowed it from Francis Spufford's book Unapologetic). You arrive home to find that your demented (as in senile dementia) partner has smeared her own shit over the walls, and when you get cross with her, she weeps pathetically and tries to hit you. Your only respite would be to talk to the wittiest, most intelligent, wisest person you know -- but that person has just smeared shit over the walls. In that situation, as an atheist, what are your resources? Is believing that there are more good people than bad people a comfort? Would living in 2013 and knowing more all the time console you? Would it?

Sorry, I gave credit to the wrong person, I meant expatinscotland, not scottishmummy. Sorry, wrong Scot!!

When I am in niminypiminy, firstly I draw strength from myself, because ultimately, I have only myself to rely on. Secondly, I draw on those around me. But I certainly don't rely on any celestial being's goodwill to make it better.

I used to be an evangelical Christian. I went to church, I sang, I prayed, I spoke in tongues. But I still felt empty. I sought god with all my heart, my soul and my mind. I wanted, with every cell of my being, to know him, to serve him, to feel his hand in my life. I cried out to him to fill me with that comfort, that warmth, that sense of purpose that the other members of my church seemed to feel. They cried with happiness at the joy god apparently brought them.

All I felt was the uncaring coldness of a universe in which I mattered not one jot.

Then I gave up on god, and the second I took control of my own life, that I accepted there was nothing but me, that I had complete control over my own destiny... that was the moment when I knew true peace and joy.

In the example you give, where the partner has dementia, well, even as a Christian, unless you have dementia too, there is still no witty intelligent person to talk to. In my experience, god doesn't have witty intelligent conversations with people. It's just you talking things through with yourself in your head. How is a belief in god remotely helpful apart from letting you believe there's a purpose in the horrible thing that's happening to you?

Christians may draw strength from there being some imagined purpose. I draw strength from the simple knowledge that life has ups and downs. So while right now may be a down, statistically speaking, an up is bound to follow sooner rather than later. And since I take responsibility for my own destiny, I will work at improving my situation in any way I can rather than wailing to god to fix it for me.

Things just are. Why does there need to be more?

Tim Minchin says it very well in his :

Isn't THIS enough?
Just.. this.. world?
Just this.. beautiful, complex
Wonderfully unfathomable.. natural.. world?
How does it so fail to hold our attention
That we have to diminish it with the invention
Of cheap, man-made myths and monsters?
If you're so into your Shakespeare
Lend me your ear:
"To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw perfume on the violet, is just fucking silly"
Or something like that.
Or what about Satchmo?!
"I see trees of green,
Red roses too",
And fine, if you wish to
Glorify Krishna and Vishnu
In a post-colonial, condescending
Bottled-up and labeled kind of way
Then whatever, that's ok.
But here's what gives me a hard-on:
I am a tiny, insignificant, ignorant bit of carbon.
I have one life, and it is short
And unimportant
But thanks to recent scientific advances
I get to live twice as long as my great great great uncle-es and aunt-es.
Twice as long to live this life of mine
Twice as long to love this wife of mine
Twice as many years of friends and wine
Of sharing curries and getting shitty
At good-looking hippies
With fairies on their spines
And butterflies on their titties.

"When I am in despair, niminypiminy", obviously. Because being in niminypiminy would be wildly inappropriate!

niminy, your resources are within yourself. You pull it all out of yourself. That's how 'faith' heals - it's nothing to do with a god, but it comes from within. You've heard it said, I'm sure, that the mind is an incredibly powerful thing. Well that's what they mean. Believe that you can swim, for example, and you probably will swim. Some people work the power of their own minds by praying to a god - 'dear god, let me able to swim' and because they have this huge faith in their god, sure enough, they can swim. But it's the same thing as the person who believes/has faith in themselves. It's just the method of harnessing their own potential.

Don't know if any of that is making sense, but an example would be this scientific study where some chicks were taught that a robot was their mother and somehow, it would appear, that they subtly managed to make the robot stay near them just out of the strength of their belief.

Speaking for myself, my 'external' resources would be the same as for a religious person. In that I could get help, sympathy, advice from friends, family, GP etc.

I wouldn't have the option to kneel and ask god for help, but even if he existed and I did, he wouldn't be clearing it up would he, and he wouldn't answer as such. If I believed in him I 'might' get a feeling that he had listened, but that would be the extent of it. It can be comforting if friends listen to your woes, but they at least nod now and then so you know they are truly listening.

Internal resources are harder to define. Because I'm atheist I don't have any kind of exhausting internal struggle over why this is happening. It's happening because we are organic beings who wear out and break down. There's no deep mystery. Just facts that have to be dealt with. The very idea that there should be a source of comfort - as though we are owed or were promised that - is meaningless so doesn't even arise.

Tim Minchin may be a funny man when you see him on stage, and I appreciate the sentiments behind his poem are heartfelt, but goodness, it's a bunch of crap as a poem.

Ok, that's fine, I think if you feel that the consciousness of your own will, and the idea that life has its ups and downs is sufficient to console you. That is really fine. I don't think it would get me through though. I think I need more than re-hashed stoicism. But it is horses for courses, isn't it?

I wonder how many of the atheists in this debate are ex-evangelical Christians?

And hope? Can you have hope if you don't believe in comfort or consolation? In a hopeless situation in which there will be no ups, where does your hope come from?

Why does it trouble you so much, those with faith, that those of us who lack faith can stare into the void, into our souls, into the darkest time and find fulfilment in ourselves? Is it easier for you to think we're deeply unhappy and feel we're "lacking" in some way? Or that we just avoid any kind of internal refection because we'll see the empty hole where god should be?

We're happy and we know peace precisely because we know how insignificant we are, how amazingly small the statistical probability that caused us to be. We know we're a miracle of nature, but then so is each and every microbe and ant. Everyone is practically a statistical impossibility. But here we are anyway, giving the universe a big V-sign and existing anyway.

I will not waste this miracle that is my life waiting on the whim of some jealous, petty, childish and deeply unfair god. I will not waste time worrying about what lies beyond this life but instead savour the joy, the pain, the boredom, the contentment, the shame, the exhaustion, the elation of this life.... every second is a miracle and it's mine to sculpt, to use, to make the most of. Mine alone. That's just so exciting to me, and I'm grateful to be alive. Just not grateful to a god.

Which bits constitute the "bunch of crap"?

I don't know about evangelical Christians, but I would describe myself has having had a Christian faith at some point. And then I lost a child. I can assure you that I looked for a god, but he/she was not there. Is that what you mean?

you lot don't like it when I ask you to explain yourselves, do you?

I guess I was asking about when it's not exciting to be you, when being insignificant and unloved is your entire experience of life, when you can't do any life-sculpting because you are utterly dependent on others, when our miraculous selves are simply an experience of pain?

Where does your hope come from? When you hope and pray that god will save you from your hopeless situation, but he doesn't (as is usually the case), how do you keep your faith? Do you twist yourself into knots to work out how the horrible thing that god failed to save you from was all in your own or someone else's best interests?

Bad stuff happens. But it's very rarely permanent. "This too shall pass", is where I draw my comfort.

No: my hope is founded on the resurrection.

And when the bad stuff doesn't pass?

"And hope? Can you have hope if you don't believe in comfort or consolation? In a hopeless situation in which there will be no ups, where does your hope come from?"

Why do you need a god to find comfort and consolation? In fact, in a hopeless situation, isn't it better to face the hopelessness, rather than trust in a god who does nothing, even though he could if he wanted to?