The value of suffering

[Plane]

"How many American hospitals have Atheists built?" is "All of them.".http://liberalslikechrist.org/+Believable/HospitalOrigins.html

Hahaha!


This is leading to some interesting places.


But back on topic, I see it established here that Mother Teresa did not produce the only leper sanctuary, not the only hospital, not the only orphanage in any of these areas.

   So how did she fill her hospital?

     If there was adequate alternative, how did she get customers enough to keep her sisters busy?

[Xavier_Onassis]

Atheism is not a religion, it is not a cult. Atheists do not band together to win brownie points with God,m because they do not believe in God. In this country it is unwise to admit to being an atheist, and there are no advantages to admitting it anyway. But atheists do good works just like believers, they just do not put their name on them as atheists.

Atheists are rarely evangelical, They have no desire to convert anyone.
I find the cartoon The Atheist Pig amusing, as well as philosophical.

Many doctors are atheists and many hospitals are built by doctors.

[Plane]

  If Atheism were a cult , and they built a hospital or a sanctuary for lepers ...


... I could gripe that they were keeping people out of better hospitals and sending their surplus to the central office.

[Xavier_Onassis]

That doesn't make sense.
No one is inspired by atheism to do good works. Atheists who do good works do them because they simply want to benefit their fellow men or the zoo, or whatever cause it is.

The Medical profession, by the way, has all but eliminated leprosy. Scientifically, not miraculously. They easily outdid Jesus in curing leprosy.

Atheism is not a cult and will never be a cult, or a religion. It is simply a statement of a lack of belief.
Just like there is no cult for people who dislike asparagus or like anchovies on their pizzas. There are no rituals, no initiations, no baptisms, no marriages, none of that stuff. There are no atheist priests to support. The closest you get to that are atheist writers like Christoper Hitchins who state their beliefs and then perhaps discuss or debate them in forums. There are a lot of such forums and discussions on youtube.

[Xavier_Onassis]

So, what is the value of suffering?

I don't see any.

These guys do.  http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/hundreds-afghan-shiite-muslims-perform-6680465
Self-torture seems to be a psychological mental problem of the Middle East.

[Plane]

So, what is the value of suffering?

I don't see any.

................

Have you ever suffered?

I know that is a silly question, if you are a Human you have experienced suffering.


But what did you learn of it?

Do people who are never frustrated patient?

Are people who have never been cheated more honest thereby?

Would someone without any experience of pain be a normal person?


Suffering is really unavoidable , but the learning and reaction to it involves a lot of choices and lost or gained wisdom.

[kimba1]

Well
Life lesson using pain as deterrent. My nephew the in karate finally learned to wear his cup when his sister kicked him in the balls. Niw he can adk his sister to never kick him there but he'll likely learn another life lesson if he tries that

[Plane]

Well
Life lesson using pain as deterrent. My nephew the in karate finally learned to wear his cup when his sister kicked him in the balls. Niw he can adk his sister to never kick him there but he'll likely learn another life lesson if he tries that

Oh yes , in a martial arts class there are many lessons like that.

In ordinary life the lesson might be even less subtle.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Pain teaches us to avoid dangerous results. But I am talking about DELIBERATE suffering, like monks and other religious nuts perform to demonstrate devotion. Like Mother Teresa thought was so great.

Such as enduring a headache rather than taking a pill to make it away.

The whole Jesus deliberately hanging on the cross to erase an incident of an ancestor heeding the advice of a talking snake, for example, is just silly.

[sirs]

Silly to you perhaps

[Xavier_Onassis]

Why not silly to everyone?
Why should a suffering deity be regarded with greater respect than one that is actually omnipotent?

This is related to the pagan rite of sacrifice, of course. Sacrificing vegetables somehow is unimpressive, but sacrificing things that bleed makes for a much more impressive ritual, and quite often for a better diet for the priests.

[sirs]

Because Christians view Christ's sacrifice for our eternal life is anything but "silly".  That's why

[Xavier_Onassis]

The idea that the entire human race is guilty because some distant ancestor was disobedient is absurd. I bet Donald Trump has LOTS of relatives who were the SS, Hitler Youth, served as guards at Auschwitz. So why don't we blame him for errors of his relatives' ways?

Because of course, condemning someone for the misdeeds of an ancestor is unjust and silly.

Why should it be in any way necessary for Jesus to submit to torture for his mother's human relatives to be forgiven?  If God is omnipotent all he really needed to do was simply say, okay, I forgive you. All of you.

This is all tied up in the absurdity of sacrificing animals and humans to deities. It is strictly emotional and make no fucking logical sense whatever,

The Christian religion is built on ancient tribal foolishness. Of course, we know what the REAL justification is: the priests need to be fed and revered. So we tell all the saps that they are evil sinners and must be redeemed on a regular basis so they will support a bunch of priests.

[sirs]

All your deflection efforts aside, we're not required to understand why God does what he does.  He just does.  And Christ's ultimate torture and sacrifice guaranteed Christians of an eternal life in heaven, that our human predilection towards sin, would have prevented.   That just is, and doesn't require any more explanation than that. 

[Plane]

Because of course, condemning someone for the misdeeds of an ancestor is unjust and silly.

That is not a really good understanding of how things work.

If your people ten generations ago scraped all the topsoil off of the fields where you need to raise corn right now , you will suffer for this bad choice that you were not consulted of.

If your people caught the last Stellar Sea Cow and ate it , you have no sea cows to eat now , nor even such a thing to look at.

If your generation spends every dime that the next three generations can earn , the generations that follow will have to bear this problem .


Suppose that a few of us contribute to Ducks Unlimited and therefore the ducks survive this present opportunity to become extinct, does it matter that there will still be ducks when all of our generation is dead?

   If there were never an Adam And never an Eve we did have at some point some small number of ancestors, who chose not only to survive their hard times , they chose to thrive and grow and spread and explore and dominate the Earth.

     They chose to exploit and learn and remember a heritage.

     They chose to separate themselves from nature.

      And we bear these consequences , good and bad.




      Can you imagine an elegant allegory for this?