Playing God

[Silent3]

How would you change the world if you were God?

Consider the Epicurean paradox. Rather than rehash the pros and cons of this argument, I'd rather discuss a question that the Epicurean paradox brings to mind for me: How exactly would a "good" and "loving" God run the universe? What differences would there be, if any, in the resulting world that appears to us?

It seems unlikely to me that the stewardship of a "good" God would result in the world we live in today. This is not to say I'm terribly unhappy with my own life. However, while I might have a few complaints of my own, they pale in comparison to the suffering many others experience, suffering that goes well beyond anything I think can be reasonably explained away as necessary for "free will" to exist, or as serving a "greater good" or as "learning experiences".

The trouble for me is imagining exactly how I'd want things changed to make them better. I don't think what I see in the world as it is speaks well to the likelihood of a good God, but at the same time I'm not sure what differences would make a good God seem more likely.

Would all suffering be gone, or just some? If some suffering were allowed, would there be some sort of "cap" on how much suffering any one individual has to endure?

Further, suffering could be eliminated or reduced in two different ways: preventing the occurrence of events which cause suffering, or changing the perception of those events, so that no matter what happens, people are happy about it anyway.

I find the concept of being happy no matter what a bit offensive actually, and certainly very weird. This would mean you could be burning to death or watching your children eaten by wolves and you'd still have a smile on your face.

On the other hand, if we were to remain capable of suffering in a theoretical sense, but everything which might cause suffering was prevented, that would also be very strange. Would loose rocks on mountains wait for people and animals to get out of the way before falling? Would geology be changed so there was no such thing as loose rocks?

If I went to punch you in the face, would a nice, soft, padded force field pop-up to absorb my punch? Or would my mind be manipulated so that I never felt a desire to punch you at all? Would your free will be stifled so that you never did anything to anger me in the first place?

Although it might seem cruel to want there to be any suffering at all, I can't help but think that at least a little suffering is good. Life would seem pretty dull and pointless to me if everything were bliss no matter what, as if life were a very dull children's story, written by an author so afraid of upsetting the children that all drama has been sacrificed.

Is my appreciation for a modicum of suffering a good thing? Or is my desire for some drama and intrigue and suspense in life merely the end result of having lived in a world where suffering occurs, a defensive adaptation perhaps, or some kind of Stockholm syndrome?

It's not that there aren't plenty of things I'd change right now if I had the power to do so. I'd get all of the crazy teabaggers out of Washington and give quite a few Democrats spine implants. I'd repair the global climate, clean up pollution, heal sick people, feed the hungry.

None of that, however, is changing the world as viewed from a perspective worthy of being called divine or "Godly". It's fixing bad things after much suffering has already occured. It's not a plan to stop suffering from other causes in the future. And even if I simply kept going down my very human wish list for a better world, fixing one thing after another to a condition I'd consider to be an improvement, I'd have to worry about unintended consequences. I'd have to wonder if there would come a point where I'd feel a need to stop interfering with the world even when suffering remained, or if I'd look back at some point and decide I'd already gone too far.

By the way... All of this musing of mine doesn't make me think the existence of God is any more likely. While these thoughts make me more sympathetic to the possibility of a God which could permit quite a bit of suffering, the end result is still a world indistinguisable from a world with no God at all. My conclusion remains that the absense of God is a much more economical explanation for the condition of the world than the presence of a deity with excuses for hanging back like it's not there at all.

[johnroshan]

1. Why not just remove the sensation of pain??

When the children are being eaten by wolves, let them experience pleasure. Of course, lets all have the memory of a goldfish, that we might not remember that we had children so we don't really miss them.

However, such a life does seem empty.

John.

[trotsky]

2. "Life would seem pretty dull and pointless to me if everything were bliss no matter what"

Of course that is just the world most Christians envision in heaven or just "the afterlife." They believe that an existence without suffering, without pain, but instead eternal bliss is not only possible but in fact one which we will all (unless they believe in an eternal hell too) inhabit. So rather than worry about how we might make this world better, I think the question instead should be answered by Christians: why is this world even necessary?

[Speck Tater]

3. I would make people smart enough to understand the issues before they vote. nt

[dmallind]

4. An interesting question deserving far more time than I have, but bullet points:

1. Design nervous system so that pain ONLY serves as a warning signal for serious damage. The absence of pain is a very bad idea. Fire should hurt you, because if it doesn't you can leave your fingers in there and have them burned off. But with an omnibenevolent designer, it should stop hurting when no longer in the fire.

2. Limit free will. Doubtless Xians will smugly rejoice that an atheist is suggesting automata but I am doing no such thing. We have many limits to free will now. I cannot choose to be an Einstein or a Mozart. I cannot even choose to believe in a god, or choose to find anorexic 85lb models sexually attractive - both of which are not only possible but unavoidable for others. Why would it be a problem for omnipotence to limit our free will to commit genocide or torture when it is limited in less useful ways already? Why not simply hardwire ALL our brains for logical objective thought rather than leave the lizard-brain there after millions of years?

3. Death is inevitable, and necessary to avoid overpopulation. Couldn't a god have made it less horrifically painful and undignified for so many? Pain that serves no purpose for our survival? Why would a god design so many to get agonizing cancers and protracted debilitation, and so few to die peacefully in their sleep while in full possession of mental and physical faculties? I'd design a human that wore out, yes. But one that simply stopped functioning, not one that metastasized against its own cells for years of screaming agony.

4. God supposedly gave shark teeth that continuously grow back to replace lost ones. Why did he keep that one back from the pinnacle of creation made in his image? I wouldn't have. Why make tooth decay - inevitable for approximately 119,930 of our 120,000 years existence as a species - in the first place? Why not simply solid bone teeth strong enough to last? Same for our poorly designed pelvic setup that made childbirth painful and potentially fatal, our spinal alignment due to an upright stance that our skeletons have not even yet completely adapted to.

5. It's certainly possible to design a world with no earthquakes, tsunamis etc. No tectonic plates would do the trick. If your pet creation needs fresh water it might be an idea to make the water covering 70% of this "omnisciently designed" planet NOT saltwater. Plenty of fish can already live in fresh water and designing more should hardly stress a creator of all life.

Damn right the question, or the answer, doesn't make anybody more likely to believe in a god who is even VERY powerful or wise, let alone all-powerful and omniscient. It makes such a god utterly impossible - unless of course it's an evil bastard of a god. If I - a fair to middling example of humanity, can easily in minutes come up with five ways that would make creation nearly infinitely better, without resorting to magic intervention or unthinking robot creations, but rather just better design, how much better could a triple-omni creator have done? How much better MUST one have done to deserve the title "god" of anything but mischief and torment?

[trotsky]

5. Good points, all of them.

#5 has a possible counterpoint: tectonic plates are the direct result of having a molten core in motion. Without that dynamic core, Earth doesn't have a magnetic field protecting us from the worst of the sun's radiation.

However, that has a counter-counterpoint: simply design organisms to withstand the increased radiation if Earth lacked a magnetic field. DNA can already repair itself to a limited extent, or at least our immune systems can often identify cells "gone wild" - so just make those failsafe systems more reliable and effective.

[skepticscott]

6. Or just design the sun

Not to give off harmful radiation in the first place. We're talking omnipotence here, after all.

[ZombieHorde]

7. Life forms would not need to eat each other for survival.

Disease wouldn't exist.

We would know what happened when we died.

Country music wouldn't exist.

There is a start.

"Or is my desire for some drama and intrigue and suspense in life merely the end result of having lived in a world where suffering occurs, a defensive adaptation perhaps, or some kind of Stockholm syndrome?"

There is a difference between a bad day and children starving to death.

[Silent3]

8. Would humans as-is, placed in a much better world...

...automatically feel as bad about the worst of whatever problems remained as we feel about the worst of our problems?

After children no longer starve to death, where would you draw the line on the degree of suffering an tragedy allowed? I'd make the world better than it is now by far, but I wouldn't want to end up with a world so safe and trouble-free than when someone breaks a fingernail the story makes the evening news.

Where's the best place in between, and can we be happier without being designed to be happier?

[ZombieHorde]

9. I don't know the best in between.

What horrors would God have to deal with to keep himself/herself/itself occupied? What keeps God from killing himself/herself/itself out of boredom?

If there is a God, maybe he/she/it invented suffering to keep himself/herself/itself entertained.

[Silent3]

10. Of course, maybe there isn't as much suffering...

...as there appears to be.

Maybe the world you see is just a simulation, and there's no more suffering other than your own suffering, the rest is just an illusion.

Or perhaps there are more "real" people in the simulation other than yourself, but many of them, especially the ones who seem to suffer the most, are just "extras" with no self-awareness.

While it's fun to consider such possibilities, anyone who decided to take these ideas seriously could become dangerously antisocial.

[ZombieHorde]

11. "anyone who decided to take these ideas seriously could become dangerously antisocial"

If video game characters are real, I am a monster who should be put down. ;)