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.

[AnnieLobeseder]

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?

Sadly, this is what happens to some people. They have my every sympathy that the dice-roll of the universe was so crappy to them. But it's chance, that's all. Statistically speaking it has to happen to someone.

I would ask you how you can continue to have faith in and even worship a divine being who would heap all the crap on someone on purpose? How can someone whose entire life is misery and pain be expected to find comfort or consolation in the being who allowed this to happen to them. If anyone worshipped their human abuser this way we'd be horrified and urge them to LTB. Why on earth is it okay when god does it? What a bizarre notion.

[curlew]

"No: my hope is founded on the resurrection.

And when the bad stuff doesn't pass?"

If it doesn't pass- then I know that another human being, or nature, or the laws of science, or sheer bloody bad luck has got me. At least I don't think there is someone who could help me but chooses not to.

[niminypiminy]

I have to go to bed, and in any case we've got back to the point about 'why doesn't God intervene' which we've already been through. I've said what I have to say about that, and I don't think there's any use wearing out my eyes going over it again tonight. What I find interesting is that none of you has engaged with what I've said about Jesus -- about the suffering, human God, and about the resurrection.

I must say, the 'well it has to happen to someone' line probably sounds ok if it isn't you. So, if it's all bad luck and you're in despair, well, that's just the way the cookie crumbles. There's no hope, but don't let it bother you. Concentrate on progress and the wonderfulness of the universe.

[curlew]

I notice you haven't explained why you think the Tim Minchin poem is "crap"..

I'm happy to address whatever you said about Jesus......let me go back and look.

[curlew]

Niminy- I'm sorry, but I can't see a single point you've made that hasn't been addressed- could you point me to it? I am happy to answer any points you want answered.

[Nicknamegrief]

I think the major difference is that a belief in God leads us to a belief in the eternities and an understanding that mortality is only a chapter in our existence.

Therefore a mortality of suffering is not the only story in our life. I believe in good things to come, some may come soon, some may come late and some may not come to heaven.

I think we should feel anger at the bad things that happen in this world. Those of us who do (whether you believe in God or not) are likely to do something about it. Believing in God is not an excuse not to do things and leave it to him.

I can't say I completely comprehend the nature of God but then I don't completely understand my husband either.

[AnnieLobeseder]

niminypiminy, can I ask you what hope a belief in god would give you in a hopeless situation, such as a life-limiting disease or a severe disability? Hope that things will get better in this life, or that the next life will be better?

How do you reconcile your belief that god doesn't intervene with the claims of many other Christians that they have been healed by god?

[headinhands]

So what's behind this? Something along the lines of 'no atheists in foxholes'. (Although even if most people pray in the face of tragedy what would that even prove?)

As for the husband and senile wife, I imagine he would be doing/thinking what we would all be doing for the bulk I it. Cleaning, talking to friends, thinking about 24hr care, feeling very sad etc.

[AnnieLobeseder]

[niminypiminy]

The poem by Tim Minchin may express sentiments that people agree with. That's fine. But it just isn't a good poem. It depends on stale and hackneyed images, it plays for cheap laughs with swear words, the only metaphor he can think of to express wonder is getting an erection, and it ends with a jibe that is at once crude and silly. It doesn't read aloud well, he can't use the music of the English language, he can't use it to put his thoughts in a new or arresting way.

Compare this, which is the second stanza of a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins:

For all this, nature is never spent,
There lives the dearest freshness, deep down things;
Although the last lights off the black west went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs --
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast, and ah! bright wings.

You might not like this poem, you might not agree with it, you might not understand it -- but it's a great poem. It uses all the poetic resources of the English language (sound, imagery, metaphor, rhythm, rhyme) to make it's thought arresting and new.

[curlew]

Gerard Manly Hopkins is a fantastic poet. One of my all time favourites.

Tim Minchin would, I am sure, be the first to be horrified, or very amused, at having his performance "poetry" even thought of in the same breath.

[expatinscotland]

'There's no hope, but don't let it bother you. Concentrate on progress and the wonderfulness of the universe.'

Again, you keep assuming that people who are non-believers have no hope.

Why?

I have been in despair, blah blah blah. My young daughter died last year after suffering from cancer.

I feel plenty of hope and get a lot of comfort from other people, who are here now, they are real, have hope for my surviving children, and enjoy what is left of life because it is very precious. The universe is wonderful, and I think Minchin puts it perfectly: this is enough.

This is it, this is what is real. I make the most of it and of all normal human emotions.

I don't need a story about someone who died and came back to give me hope.

[BackOnlyBriefly]

I live in an immense - perhaps infinite - universe. Not designed, yet beautifully and amazingly intricate. From black holes to snowflakes there is always more to see.

I am part of a species that has gone from rooting in the mud for food to building space stations and electron microscopes.

When I am gone others will carry on. I am part of a chain with links going back millions of years and forward perhaps more millions. It's possible that one day our descendants will stand on other planets and look up at alien skies. That they will understand things beyond our comprehension today.

This is awe inspiring to me.

My kids do and say things they got from me. The people around me will also have been changed in some small way by knowing me. That influence will go forward in time and will be my small, but real, legacy - my immortality.

Since heaven doesn't exist I will miss out on an eternity of telling god how wonderful he is, but I am content.

[curlew]

I too don't understand the no God=no hope line.

[curlew]

Backonlybriefly- that is lovely.

[ApplesinmyPocket]

Backonlybriefly, your post really says it all for me. Brilliant.

[niminypiminy]

That is very nicely put, Backonlybriefly. I can't think of a more eloquent statement of belief in progress.

I'd love to believe in progress in that way. I'd love to believe that between rooting in the mud and electron microscopes was a continuous story of progress. I'd love to believe that knowledge will go on and on increasing, and that our benign influence will stretch on unceasingly into the future. I'd love to believe that the universe was all beauty and amazingness.

But, you see, I just can't. I can't believe it because the universe is also full of death, and pain and despair, and viruses and mutating cancer cells, and tsunamis and dying stars. I can't believe it because, although we can make electron microscopes we don't know enough not to slaughter each other in uncounted numbers. I can't believe it because people die in isolation, unremembered and unmourned. I can't believe it because this amazing world, our little corner of the cosmos, is being despoiled and plundered. I can't believe it because we may not have been as knowledgeable when we were rooting round in the mud, but we were not less wise.

It's not that I don't respond to the beauty and majesty your creed evokes. But I cannot believe that is all there is. It isn't all there is.

[BackOnlyBriefly]

Thanks all. I'm glad I got that across as many religious people I have spoken with do imagine my existence as barren.

niminypiminy, I know about the bad stuff too, but what is the alternative? If your god existed it would be the same world with the same suffering, but at some arbitrary point god would take the good ones to heaven, torture or kill the rest and destroy everything.

Isn't that pretty bleak?

[niminypiminy]

Well, it would be if that was what God was like. Happily, the God you don't believe in is the same as the one I don't believe in.

[niminypiminy]

And whose creed is it that means they have to edit out large parts of reality in order to maintain belief in it? The idea of progress is wonderful, as long as you keep your blinkers on.

[AnnieLobeseder]

I'm surprised, niminypiminy, that it's the bad stuff that keeps you believing in god, while for we atheists, that's what keeps us not believing in him.

Please don't think for a moment we're in denial about the piles of shit in the universe.... the awfulness of the dark side of human nature, the wasps that lay eggs in live caterpillars, floods and volcanoes.... "nature red in tooth and claw".

We draw strength in the beauty of the universe and the good that can come from man's soul. And we despair at the horror of both too. That they seem to come in equal balance makes it clear to me that there is no grand design, just chaos.

[curlew]

There is progress. There is bad stuff as well. In my godless
world the tools of perfectibility are in our hands. We may not always use them properly, but the potential is there. I cannot imagine anything bleaker than believing in a god who could help me but chooses not to.

[niminypiminy]

Ah, but God does help: look at the cross.

[curlew]

I'm looking at it.
Tell me what I am looking at.

[AnnieLobeseder]

But the cross means nothing to me. Why should it? It only means what you choose to read into it. So apparently god died to take our sins. Kind of him, really, but I'd rather take responsibility for myself, thanks. I'll make my own choices, try to get it right, but when it goes wrong I'll apologise and try to fix it.

The premise of Christianity is that we're all inherently flawed and require the grace of god and the sacrifice of Jesus to achieve eternal life.

I agree that we're inherently flawed because there is no perfection in this universe, and the primal side of human nature lets us all down here and there. But it's nothing to be ashamed of, you just pick yourself up and try to do better next time. Such is life.