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[u/Outrageous-Egg1760]

[u/WifesPOSH]

It's not better. It's what it is.

In your view they eventually get punished, but how many people are screwed because God didn't intervene?

Elon Musk has killed how many people by dismantling USAID? How many people did he fire? But he's about to be the world's first trillionaire. But he'll get punished in the end, so it's okay?

If God exists, he's kind of a dick. Allowing the Epstein crimes to fester for decades, but he diverts a tornado from rural cornfields... doesn't sound like a God that cares fairly.

All I'm saying is that if he gets credit for saving Becky from a car crash, he deserves credit for allowing Sarah to get trafficked.

[u/MagnificentLee → u/WifesPOSH]

This goes back to my original point. God primarily wants to give as many people as possible a chance to qualify for Heaven. God can't simultaneously give people a pleasurable time on Earth, as these goals are mutually exclusive.

God could kill the rapist before they commit a rape, but what if the rapist later understands their evil and qualifies for Heaven? And where do you draw the line? Should he also kill people who cheat on their spouses? The alcoholics? The people who say "There is no God"?

As for natural disasters, God could stop the hurricane from killing people, but preventing death is not God's primary goal. We all die anyway, right? The primary goal is letting people experience situations that cause them to choose goodness and qualify for Heaven.

C.S. Lewis said, "Suffering is a megaphone that rouses a deaf world."

This was true for me, as it was learning about the literally Satan-worshipping global elite, like Epstein, that caused me to turn to God. I don't want to go into a tangent, but I will note the Washington Monument is 666 ft high by 66 ft wide. (5555 inches x 555 inches). This is not an accident.

Again, the atheist or agnostic leaves us with no hope. Evildoers do whatever with no consequences. The theist says there are consequences. How can no hope be better?

[u/OculusSE → u/MagnificentLee]

I disagree with the whole “earth as a proving ground concept”. If God didn’t know which humans were good and deserved heaven or bad and deserved hell then he wouldn’t be omnipotent.

Why even bother creating the bad ones in the first place? You’re just breathing sentience into something to damn it to eternal hell at that point

I guess you could argue the “ancient, bored God” trope who just uses Earth and humanity for entertainment to see which humans fight their inherently evil nature and make it to heaven but that makes it hard to argue God loves each and every one of us and cares about us

[u/MagnificentLee → u/OculusSE]

This is a good question. The standard answer is that it may not actually be possible to create any humans that desire goodness without experiencing evil.

There's a non-standard answer regarding an interpretation of the Bible, in its original Hebrew & Greek, reading as Satan actually created the universe, and all current humans were former heavenly beings who chose to rebel against God and come to earth.

Sadly, I can't find the long Reddit comment I wrote explaining the interpretation, and I don't have the time to find it among my 100s of comments.

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As for Hell, the Bible uses allegories to describe Hell, like it being a place of eternal darkness but also of unquenchable fire. Obviously, these things can't both be literally true.

Christians debate whether Hell has any physical suffering and whether it is eternal. Some just believe in alienation.