Discussion I used to love God, until I started wondering why wild animals suffer from a theological standpoint.

[BerryCakes]

Everyone's favorite user with another controversial post here!

No, but seriously. I'd be more than happy to hear out any religious or deistic individuals that can help me change my viewpoint here, because this has been a huge source of sorrow for me.

I grew up irreligious, so I was never really given any easy answers in terms of theology and the existence of God. However, for whatever reason, I had a strong faith in his existence since an early age. I used to pray all the time as a child. I still do pray when I'm caught in a bind, ironically enough.

I was always curious to know what was the "right" path to follow... What can be discerned about God and the supernatural from as close as an objective sense as possible. I never cared much for the concept of Omnism, or that all religions are worthy of respect (see: cults). I find perennialism, or the thought that all religions carry a single, universal truth, to also be flawed (see: Creativity, the religion/cult, and compare it to Christianity). The argument that objective truth doesn't exist is also nonsensical to me (see: 2+2=?, any basic math problem).

If you've ever been caught up in analysis paralysis when it comes to religion like I have, one thing you'll eventually notice is how speciest a lot of religions are. After all, if you ask almost any religious person why suffering exists, they'll most likely tell you that it has to do with the imperfection of man. Either we sinned and are now living through punishment, we are too attached to the physical world, what have you... It's always some sort of fault attached to our psyche, our "free will." What they don't tell you is that there are more living beings on this planet that lack the ability to philosophize and think than the opposite. Why do those animals suffer? Why does sexual coercion exist among non-human animals? Why do some animals eat their own offspring? It's not like these things only happen through human intervention. In most cases, animals do these things on their own.

To put it simply, here's an excerpt from the Wikipedia page focused on the problem of evil.
"1. God is omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good.
2. The evil of extensive animal suffering exists.
3. Necessarily, God can actualize an evolutionary perfect world.
4. Necessarily, God can actualize an evolutionary perfect world only if God does actualize an evolutionary perfect world.
5. Necessarily, God actualized an evolutionary perfect world.
6. If #1 is true then either #2 or #5 is true, but not both. This is a contradiction, so #1 is not true."

If this line of thinking is reasonable, then there is no reason to love God, or dedicate your life to Him. After all, either He isn't worth veneration, isn't powerful enough to save you/anyone else, and/or simply doesn't even know you exist.

I've been able to only find two ways of being able to conserve a love of a god or God while also maintaining intellectual honesty.
1. Abandon the idea that there's one "all-powerful" god and acknowledge instead that there are many gods, spirits, what have you, that all have contradictory wills and values. Some may or may not be worthy of veneration/respect.
2. Become a pandeist, or basically someone who believes that God literally died in order to create the universe. Perhaps life and pain are an unintentional byproduct of His creation.

Some may say that Gnosticism helps to solve this issue, but I personally disagree. After all, the god above the Demiurge, the Absolute or supreme being, has not saved us from the evils of physical existence, either because He's unknowing of our suffering or simply can't/won't do anything about it. It's pointless to direct any energy or veneration towards such an entity, but perhaps I'm misguided.

It has gotten to the point that, despite my clear love of theology and religion, I've been trying my best to suppress interest in it altogether and accept apatheism. This conclusion I've come to is rather dreary and actively sabotages my quality of life.

inb4: God doesn't exist.

The philosophical argument I'm presenting necessitates that God or a god exists in some conceivable way. Whether this is true or not is a completely different conversation.

 

[Xocoyotziin]

I'm not good at formal logic so I hope I don't come off too nonsensical lol. I don't believe that's it's necessarily a legitimate train of thought but in gnosticism the default, original state is one of perfect unity, perception, bliss, etc, and it's only through the conscious choice to abandon these things that any one "spiritual entity" becomes a wild animal in the first place. Basically no one is born, in the cosmic sense, a wild animal but becomes one, and that wild animal is suffering the consequences of their true "spiritual self's" choices. This gradually devolves into a tangle of consequence and karma that blots out recollection of the "spiritual self", consequence and cause and effect have reached a critical mass that binds the entity to suffering yet in a manner of speaking it was all one long twisting choice.

Basically wild animals in such a model suffer because they chose not to avoid suffering when they supposedly had the ability necessary to do so, and because all things that suffer at one point or another had that ability, the universe is still "just" because it is only through free will that free will was lost. The reason the god-god doesn't intervene is because that would be a violation of the initial act of free will that brought about the condition of inescapable suffering, and as a benevolent entity it can't do that.

Obviously that in and of itself assumes a lot about the nature of reality and I also can't fathom why such an initially perfect entity would even be capable of making an imperfect choice, and it does not explain the existence of an imperfect reality to choose to inhabit in the first place. It still has a victim blaming sting to it, because it presupposes an unverifiable previous state of being where one could have chosen what they don't have the freedom to choose now.

 

[Choronzon]

Theodicy is the universal acid of religion. The only faiths that survive it are ones that accept that their gods are either not omnipotent or not omnibenevolent.

I don't think that leaves only nihilism, though. I personally take a lot of inspiration from Stoicism, though without the providence that the ancient philosophers of it believed in.

You're looking for more theist (or at least deist) setups, though. You might look into Spinoza. His thought is pretty difficult to wrap your head around, but quite lovely, and it lacks the sort of hostility that is baked into (at least some) Gnosticism.

 

[BerryCakes]

I'm not good at formal logic so I hope I don't come off too nonsensical lol. I don't believe that's it's necessarily a legitimate train of thought but in gnosticism the default, original state is one of perfect unity, perception, bliss, etc, and it's only through the conscious choice to abandon these things that any one "spiritual entity" becomes a wild animal in the first place. Basically no one is born, in the cosmic sense, a wild animal but becomes one, and that wild animal is suffering the consequences of their true "spiritual self's" choices. This gradually devolves into a tangle of consequence and karma that blots out recollection of the "spiritual self", consequence and cause and effect have reached a critical mass that binds the entity to suffering yet in a manner of speaking it was all one long twisting choice.

Basically wild animals in such a model suffer because they chose not to avoid suffering when they supposedly had the ability necessary to do so, and because all things that suffer at one point or another had that ability, the universe is still "just" because it is only through free will that free will was lost. The reason the god-god doesn't intervene is because that would be a violation of the initial act of free will that brought about the condition of inescapable suffering, and as a benevolent entity it can't do that.

Obviously that in and of itself assumes a lot about the nature of reality and I also can't fathom why such an initially perfect entity would even be capable of making an imperfect choice, and it does not explain the existence of an imperfect reality to choose to inhabit in the first place. It still has a victim blaming sting to it, because it presupposes an unverifiable previous state of being where one could have chosen what they don't have the freedom to choose now.

That is one of the most interesting takes on this issue I've ever seen. Thank you for your input.

 

[Xocoyotziin]

That is one of the most interesting takes on this issue I've ever seen. Thank you for your input.

Ahh really? I was so afraid I sounded completely stupid. Thank you