As an agnostic, I find enough evidence in the physical universe to leave a reasonable doubt that some force may exist somewhere out there that fits some definition of the word, God. This leaves me in a position to wonder why a God, even a vaguely defined, theoretical one, would allow so much suffering in the world it created.
I’ve heard high school aged anti-theists say they don’t believe in God because no God would be as cruel as the one in the Bible. This is a logical fallacy. I’m convinced that all the religions invented by our ancestors are mythologies that have stayed on the shelf past their expiration date. Any stories of God murdering “His” chosen people’s enemies are just more evidence religion is mythology.
It could be true that God exists and religion is mythology. It could also be true that God is just cruel. The existence of pain and suffering in the real world doesn’t mean there is no God. Whether or not you like something has no bearing on whether or not it’s true. If God is cruel though, it brings us back to the question, why does God allow child cancer, abject poverty, and war crimes to exist?
Personally, I find it hard to resent the theoretical creator of the universe for all the suffering in the world, because if God is truly omnipotent and omniscient, then that means God knows and experiences everything that happens. If that’s true, then God has experienced every drop of pain that has ever happened: every shooting, every beating, every disease, every tear.
If that’s true, then God hasn’t just experienced every instance of human pain. God has experienced it for every other living thing to ever exist. If God was looking through the eyes of every animal that ever got torn to shreds, then the question, “Why does God let bad things happen?” becomes, “Why would God go through all the pain in the universe to bring us here in the first place?”
The same concept might also be a little bit true even if there is no God. If the universe is all that exists, then life is the universe incarnate. Our blood and tears are the universe’s. So why would the universe sublimate life, if it meant damning itself to every ounce of pain that has or will ever exist?
The thing about questions is, God doesn’t answer them. The only way humans have ever gotten any answers to any questions is by studying the data they have and asking themselves the questions.
I don’t know how or why the universe was created the way it was. All I can do is look at what’s here and try to connect some dots. I know in this universe, there exists elegance in nature, consciousness, pain, and happiness. I know I value my life, and I was born with the ability to hope, love, want, cry, play, create, and above all, be.
So immediately, I have to give credit where credit is due. I couldn’t say any of that without existing in God’s Matrix in the first place. So any whining I do is from an ivory tower. Even though humans have experienced unspeakable misery on this planet, we were given the tools to make life better. We were given hands, eyes, bi-pedal legs, opposable thumbs, and most importantly, brains more powerful than any supercomputer. We were not left alone to die in the rain. We were given everything we need to create a world where joy eclipses sorrow. We’ve just chosen to use our gifts to hurt each other. So when I see pictures of corpses of children riddled with bullets, I feel ashamed to blame the same higher power that gave us everything we need to end those atrocities.
It doesn’t take a psychologist to figure out joy is relative to pain, or a poet to observe that “the summer would not be so sweet were it not for the winter.” The bigger question is, is the cumulative pain of every living creature in history worth the joy of existence? If the math didn’t add up, I couldn’t imagine life would exist in a universe as mathematical as ours.
There’s nothing illogical about how this universe operates. If things like death, suffering and quantum physics seem illogical to us, it’s just because the universe is smarter than us. We can’t answer the question, “Why would God be so cruel?” because we don’t know shit about shit. One thing we do know about the universe is it operates according to brilliantly logical mathematical equations that create perfectly operating universe’s, planets, atoms and subatomic particles. So, if all that stuff is working so brilliantly, and suffering is part of that design, then maybe suffering is as necessary as gravity.
If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:
Agnosticism
- Why do people believe life is meaningless, and what do you do with your life if that’s true?
- How can the universe and life exist without God? What’s the purpose?
- Do agnostics fear death?
- An agnostic take on God
- An agnostic take on Pascal’s Wager
- An agnostic take on intelligent design
- This Was Your Life: The Agnostic (Comic)
- An Old Man From Jersey Explains The Chicken And the Egg (Comic)
Atheism
- Predictions on the New Atheist movement
- Are you a meta Atheists or pop Atheists
- This Was Your Life: The Atheist (Comic)
Secular Living
- So you don’t believe in God. What do you do now
- Should science be legally recognized as a religion?
- The non-believers’ 7 deadly sins
- The non-believers’ 10 “commandments”
- 9 reasons to be kind outside of religion
- You already have ethics without religion
- My secular theory on ethics
- Karma ghosts (My secular theory on Karma)
- An Old Man From Jersey Explains The Difference Between Right and Wrong (Comic)
Islam
The Bible is mythology
- How I became a Christian and then lost my faith
- You need to consider the possibility your religion is mythology
- The mythology test
- A short summary of the Bible
- 10 scriptures that show the Bible is mythology
- 3 Signs the Bible is mythology
- 46 Questions Christians have to struggle with that non-believers can answer in 4 words
- 4 questions every Christian needs to answer about Exodus 21
- A more realistic take on the 10 commandments
- What I think about Satan
- This Was Your Life: The Satanist (Comic)
- This Was Your Life: The Jew (Comic)
- And Old Man From Jersey Explains Religion (Comic)
Christianity is Harmful to Society
- Why you should not respect religious beliefs
- 11 ways the Bible ruins society
- 10 ways the Bible will drive you insane
- 7 ways the Bible will make you an immoral person
- 12 things Christians have to worry about the nonbelievers don’t
- 10 benefits of Christianity you can achieve without believing in mythology
- 3 Reasons Christianity was largely responsible for The Holocaust
- It’s time to stop mutilating baby boys’ genitals
- It’s time to stop celebrating Easter
- It’s time to stop celebrating Christmas
- Never Forget Chick-Fil-A’s Inequality Appreciation Day
- The power of prayer
- The Island of Mana: A Story About Colonialization (Comic)
Preaching, witnessing and arguing with Christians
- 21 reasons it’s impossible to argue with Christians
- 15 mind control techniques both churches and cults use
- Christian billboards I wish Atheists would make
- 10 ways to be a better Christian witness on the internet
Christian Culture
- 10 signs you should stop pretending to be Christian
- Believing in Christianity is always absurd, but more so for certain ethnic groups
- American Christians, you don’t believe or practice what the Bible says about marriage
- Traditional Christian values are neither Christian or traditional
- Christians, you believe in science
- This Was Your Life: A Christian Woman (Comic)
- This Was Your Life: A Christian Man (Comic)
- This Was Your Life: The Puritan (Comic)
- This Was Your Life: Santa (Comic)
My Tweets About Religion
The Wise Sloth 
February 8th, 2018 at 5:56 am
Forget the children riddled with bullets … what about the children riddled with chemo?…the children with cancer in africa…no human being hurt them…the only “THING” that hurted them is the THING that control the universe…
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December 12th, 2017 at 6:24 am
I like it so much the way you have come up with a brilliant explanation. I think the same way but in the last part of it is rather new to me that I think it’s the best answer of all. Thank you for sharing.
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