no other species have conflicts too, the world as it is constituted creates problems because resources are limited

How can anyone believe in God with all the worlds suffering?

Complex question really. It seems like a lot of people actually turn to a belief in God because of exepriencing personal suffering or tragedy. Don't we often hear stories of people who end up in hospital with a serious illness, or scared soldiers on the battlefield, or people sent to prison, or even people that lose their life savings who suddenly "find God"? It is the people that live trouble-free lives that seem to see lose interst and have no need for "God".

Actually, this reminds me of something that I thought of recently. If life was peaceful and devoid of suffering, then people would assume this is the natural order of things. Since life is full of suffering, people are hard-pressed to find an answer and they turn to God. The universe creating suffering out of nothing is as big of a miracle as creating happyness and joy and it does point to the fact that there is more to it that meets the eye.

Baseless assertion.

Suffering is fully understandable and expected on an atheist view, it is only on a theist view which posits an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, interventionist deity that suffering needs explanation.

Lol.

And how is suffering explainable from a materialistic POV? How is even consciousness explainable?

I do expect of a purely materialistic universe to be completely peaceful. No dividing line between dead and live matter. Absense of feeling. Simply awareness. I can hardly see how any amount of complexity can give rise to any experiential phenomena let alone suffering. I even fail to see how suffering can even be adaptive.

If for some reason there is a form of pantheism and equality between matter and sentience, then I'd expect the universe to be simply awareness. Whence suffering is a very good question. I don't understand how any amount of complexity can give rise to suffering.

At any rate, if you believe in a universe in which sentience, experiental phenomena and fundamental human rights emerge from matter, then the difference between matter and God is simply semantics.

God is the world and we live in God's mind. God is in us and we are in God.

What do you mean? If an earthquake happens and kills and injures people it causes suffering. We have materialistic explanations for earthquakes and we have materialistic explanations for pain receptors. We understand how different organisms compete for resources. I can't think of a single example of suffering that doesn't make sense from a materialistic point of view.

Consciousness is not fully understood AFAIK, but that doesn't a) prove God or b) mean we won't fully understand it as the relatively new field of neuroscience develops

I mean, your thought is preposterous. I don't expect you to solve the problems of theodicy but to suggest that "suffering happens, science can't explain that!" just makes you sound like Bill O'Reilly

Well, now, don't be so agressive. What I'm saying is that suffering is not required for the operation of a simply materialistic universe. I guess suffering comes down to the creation of a self that is deeply involved in the preservation of its functions and the replication of its genes. But suffering is something that happens to sentience. A duality between sentience and non-sentience is the key to suffering. If there was no duality between sentience and the material world, then it wouldn't matter one bit whether a physical body was injured or its gene replication ability lessened so that I feel pain over it.I think no one in his right mind can reject the inherent duality of the human condition. It is the interjection of sentience and the material world that produces phenomena. I would agree that some form of pantheism is sufficient to explain these phenomena without strictly invoking God. But pure materialism fails.

It is also quite well known that suffering turns people to God more often than not, while I imagine that a universe devoid of suffering would not. Whether it is simply a coincidence I don't know.

I think I've been pretty charitable actually.

Again this is just baseless assertion.

This is an argument from ignorance and you can remedy it by reading up on evolution and neuroscience.

Again, this is just lack of knowledge. The mechanics of pain are well understood.

If god is matter then sure, I'm a believer.

Grease is the word, it's got groove, it's got feeling. Grease is the time, is the place, is the motion. Grease is the way we are feeling.

You should read up on congenital analgesia to see what problems lacking a sense of pain causes.

So no duality?


If science has explained so much, then it must have explained away duality in some terms. Funny, I can't seem to find an explanation anywhere.

There is nothing necessarily different in the materials of sentient versus non-sentient, if that's what you mean.

EDIT: They haven't "explained it away" because there's no need to. It would be like "explaining away" auras.

You're not really tackling the problems I presented.

At any rate, why a materialistic universe would want to inflict suffering upon itself is as big a mystery to me as why God would allow it. I don't understand your proposed solutions. "Read neuroscience" Umm, right. Top of my list for sure.

Suffering is a big problem and I haven't found a truly convincing solution for its existence up to now. The writings of David Pearce are as good take as any. I recommend reading hedweb.com. He's supposedly an atheist and is a very learned individual to say the least.