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  • Atheism Due To The Problem Of Evil

    Posted by Muhammad Talha on October 3, 2022 at 12:45 pm

    There is one question that is of fundamental nature with respect to all this creation and everything and that is:

    Why did he chose this plan of examining everyone with pain and suffering and misery when he could have just created an ideal world since it doesn’t make no difference to him whether all believe or whether no one believes, why would he do this?

    Examination? Okay but there are 1000’s of possibilities of taking an exam and since God is all knowledgable, he could have come up with one that didn’t involve suffering. Why didn’t he? Why did he choose this one?

    I have saw all the videos of JAG on this and he says this is ‘limits of our knowledge’ we will ask this question when we will meet God.

    This approach doesn’t work for me; kindly share something that lies within the realm of human knowledge if available.

    So, at this point I am at the stage where I will have to take a leap with 100% faith and zero rationale/understanding. And I am finding that hard.

    When rest of the deen makes sense then this should too as it is of fundamental nature.

    Faisal Haroon replied 1 year, 5 months ago 2 Members · 5 Replies
  • 5 Replies
  • Atheism Due To The Problem Of Evil

  • Faisal Haroon

    Moderator October 3, 2022 at 2:00 pm

    No pain and suffering means that everyone lives a content life on earth. It implies that there is justice to a point that every person is always equal to the others in all aspects. It also implies that there’s no free will of any kind because free will can be abused to cause injustice. Such a world might be a great idea for robots, however, our world exists in order to test ‘human beings’.

    Such a criticism only stems from either not fully understanding God’s scheme (please see the link below) or not thinking through the criticism itself.

    Discussion 22229

    For reference: here’s how Ghamidi sahab has responded to this:

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  • Muhammad Talha

    Member October 3, 2022 at 2:16 pm

    You justify suffering because you view it from the perspective of a human with limitations. But God is free of any limitations and can come up with millions of schemes that DONT involve suffering and pain and still get the examination done.

    In an exam it’s all about setting up the criteria: Doing X will grant success, doing Y will grant failure. The whole point is that God could easily come up with such a criteria that didn’t involve suffering but he didn’t. Why?

    For instance: A simple criteria, A world where only Humans exist and some stones and nothing else. The criteria for success is making a building with them for each person using their hardwork and avoiding the temptation of laziness (this being the imtehaan ). This will get the exam done and no one would have to suffer.

    So why not this? And why make billions go through pain?

  • Faisal Haroon

    Moderator October 3, 2022 at 2:25 pm

    I’m sorry but are you suggesting that the exams in this world or laying bricks exclude pain and suffering? Please think it through. That is certainly not the case.

    Also this world is not a competition to build buildings or get good grades in social studies. One has to understand the domain of the examination (link above) and then suggest a way in which it could be conducted without pain an suffering. Simply asserting that God could have done it in a million ways is not enough.

    • Muhammad Talha

      Member October 3, 2022 at 2:32 pm

      Is the main idea of God’s plan to test who is on merit for his Paradise or is it to necessary make them go through suffering?

      And the suffering of laying bricks or setting stones would always be way less than having your child kidnapped, diagnosed with an illness that makes him suffers to an unimaginable extent, murder, natural disasters. All of this could be avoided?

      What is God trying to achieve with the current examination that is set? The criteria is to “Not to do what God has forbidden.” He could forbidden laziness and there you have a perfect criteria for achieving the same goal without all the destruction and everything.

  • Faisal Haroon

    Moderator October 3, 2022 at 3:12 pm

    God’s idea of test is explained in detail in the link shared above.

    Pain and suffering are not absolute quantities. They’re relative to how much one has the experience or the knowledge of. For some, just a toothache could be catastrophic while for others the threshold could be orders of magnitude higher.

    Please consider this:

    – Every person in this world is granted the ability to distinguish right from wrong.

    – The purpose of this world is to test people in many different dimensions and find out who amongst them are capable of sticking to the right path, regardless of the situations that they are placed under.

    Death is inevitable, but is not the end of life. It’s just an event that marks the end of the test for any given individual.

    The life in this world is for an extremely short span of time. The life after death is infinitely longer.

    Any amount of pain and suffering in this world is also minuscule as compared to the possible pain and suffering in the hereafter.

    – Similarly, any amount of joy or comfort in this world is infinitely smaller than the amount that one can achieve in the hereafter.

    – There’s an event after death where every person shall reap the rewards or punishment for their own doings, where no one shall be wronged, and complete justice shall be served.

    No one shall be held accountable for their circumstances (doings of others, poverty, disasters, etc.) but only their own actions.

    Once we really understand this narrative, are able to comprehend that a test can’t be conducted in the absence of pain and suffering, and that our experience of pain and suffering is a relative phenomenon (it’s not absolute), then I don’t think that rationally there can be any objections on the existence or the mercy of God. In fact, this narrative fully supports the argument for God’s mercy.

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