What Happened to Lee

Perhaps this is too philosophical, but for anyone who has dealt with someone with a long decline into dementia, it's very difficult for me to understand a belief in God after going through that (I certainly understand some people have the exact opposite reaction, so I'm in no way saying this belief is correct).

It's just difficult for me to envision a crueler God if that is indeed the case. A person who has died long before their body gives way, only to be a constant burden, with virtually no joy, and a constant reminder that your loved one is dead, yet still here.

In the worst cases I say unreservedly that it is a huge relief when the person's body finally joins their mind in death.

I'm sorry you had to watch that happen to someone on the long decline. Occuring alongside a number of other conditions, my mother's dementia only ran a brief course before she passed away. That brief window was terrifying and heartbreaking. I understand some of the relief you mentioned. It felt like a war had ended.

Great question. Lots of history on this topic, here is an interesting overview in regards to the Lisbon Earthquake[1]:

https://youtu.be/vx8ZMkWL8hw

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1755_Lisbon_earthquake

I have no wisdom to share, and certainly no opinion on higher power that I would consider profound. What you describe is an unbelievably trying experience.

If you are hoping to make some sense of it all, I found Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl really altered how I see suffering and my place in the world. It's a very concrete book, and outlines a way to live with meaning without needing God (though totally compatible with faith).

Stay strong friend, I believe in a tragic optimism[0] like that outlined in Frankl's 1984 postscript.

[0]: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6807951-i-speak-of-a-tragic...

edit: corrected the quote and added a link

Unproven. Maybe just not micro-managing. Maybe they enable life, and watch to see where it goes.

I truly feel for your loss. Two of my grandparents have gone or are going through dementia.

I don't think that this has any bearing on the existence of God, however. Humans are the ones who have created such an overwhelming and toxic physical environment and disconnected social one. For God to truly endow us with free will, He had to allow us to fail, even this miserably, and to cause our contemporaries and descendants to suffer for our failures. We have the hope of Christ's return and eternal life but only after everyone has been given the opportunity to turn to God for hope on earth.

I don't mean to prosthletize — this is how I understand the world and helps keep me hopeful in times of grief, and I hope it helps you too.

This is known as the "problem of evil" and has intrigued philosophers and theologians for centuries. There are quite a few responses to the problem[0] though it's up to you to decide if they're convincing or not.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil#Responses,_def...

> If God exists, they are cruel and uncaring.

I don't think anyone has the perspective to make a definitive judgement like that. The situation could be like a young child judging his parents to be cruel and uncaring for making him go to school, which he dislikes. There could be unknowns that would change the judgement if understood.

Not if suffering on earth is put in the context of an eternal afterlife of joy coming after. You cannot dissociate the two.

Not to be cruel, but the preexisting, running total of human suffering and tragedy in this world points to the fact that transcendent reality, the realm of God or a God, must have an alternative interpretation for human events, one which humans cannot fathom.

So for example, the tragedies which occur in your nightmares, after you wake, are given a different interpretation- the interpretation of "non-reality", i.e. it didn't really happen in some basic way that puts them into the category of "life non-tragedy".

From God's (or "a god's", for our dedicated atheists) POV, there is some enclosing context to the events of our lives that makes this mess we call reality "make sense". We don't have that perspective, so we think we suffer, pointlessly.

Along the chain from amoeba to goldfish to humans the understanding of events in our shared environment by each species changes. We think of that change as progressively achieving a "deeper understanding" of reality. The zinger in this recitation of prosaic facts is: your consciouness is not the last one in the chain.

This is what Christians experience (and think of) as "faith". Faith in the wisdom or sense-making of a transcendent God and His plans.

> Humans are the ones who have created such an overwhelming and toxic physical environment and disconnected social one

This argument isn't really theologically sound. If God exists, he's the one that created a biological system that allows for something as horrific as dementia. That literally has nothing to do with anything humans have done. It's pointless suffering.

> and to cause our contemporaries and descendants to suffer for our failures

Who's failures caused dementia? Certainly wasn't our ancestors fault.

Personally, I gain more comfort from the idea of an impartial universe, than a God who thinks this level of suffering is necessary.

It feels a little bit condescending to compare the amount of suffering caused by things like dementia to an unruly kid who doesn't want to go to school.

The universe exists to give us the opportunity to be selfless caregivers for our fellow human beings or be callous or even predatory towards those we deem "other" or "lesser". This why we each are born with a sense of morality, however molded from culture to culture and manifest from person to person, except in the rare cases of people, like Lee, that have physical pathologies that hinder it.

The non-pathological of us each have the free will to choose to self-evolve ourselves during our lives towards greater compassion for all those around ourselves, or to selfishly gather as much material pleasure as we can for ourselves regardless of the cost to others, be it monetary, emotional, or physical.

We are all actively evolving ourselves every day of our lives, for better or worse, even if all it amounts to is repetitively strengthening one's already accepted habits and attitudes. The exception being when disease or tragedy takes away our ability to rationally choose, as happens with people such as Lee. That is where compassion from our fellow human beings is part of the potential we must each welcome, for such is the moral requirement of being a human being.

We have been given what is both a great gift and a great responsibility with our free will and the mind required to learn and wield it justly and for the benefit of the whole and not just some preferred sub-group.

God is not a white man (full-disclosure: white guy here); It didn't give us free will only to then take it back from us because that means we can become, for example, callous, self-serving, corrupt, power-seeking, hypocritical fake-Christian deceivers of men.

No. The polarity of our morality extends to whichever direction the person can imagine. That is why we are both treasured above all creation and capable of the most brutal of atrocities.

We are free to be good or evil and that means we are also free to not give a fuck.

> It feels a little bit condescending to compare the amount of suffering caused by things like dementia to an unruly kid who doesn't want to go to school.

It wasn't a comparison, but an attempt to illustrate how things may look different based on your knowledge and understanding. Obviously such an illustration is going to be trivial compared to the real thing, since you have to substitute something simple that everyone knows for something no one does.

This is a question as old as religion, of course, with plenty of answers of all sorts: because He has a plan we cannot see, because He is punishing you/us/him, because He is testing you/us, because The Evil is really responsible, etc etc...

In the end, is it really that cruel, when compared to creating a universe that is effectively trying to kill us all every single day...? From animals and plants in the jungle, to solar flares and asteroids, everything in nature is to us what a garrison of armed Stormtroopers is to Han Solo: they might miss most of the time, but it’s not going to be for lack of cruelty or intent.

Shouldn’t have an expectation of god making everything well. Otherwise there’s be no war. If that is your requirement to believe in god, you will never

Every person is a door to your happiness, and you have the choice to serve their happiness or to treat them callously or even cruelly.

There is no religion without the person actively trying to be a better person to every single person around them. It doesn't matter what spiritual practices they do or don't do, we are each measured by our hearts with respect to how we treat every person we encounter.

Religion's only goal is to get us to work together cooperatively across all divisions of humanity (from form of religion, to gender identification or sexual preference, to ethnicity or culture) to create caring, accepting societies. Right now, our world's state is the result of our societies being based on competition. That is why there are so many destitute homeless people. The system itself doesn't give a shit about them because the system itself only cares about money.

And this is all the result of human making choices based upon their selfish desires, humans in their packs taking as much as they can for themselves while callously ignoring out-group members. That is not human, and is literally inhumane. For that same society to produce Jeff Bezos demonstrates its brokenness that is also its design.

The problem is that the vast majority of so-called religious folks are only doing so to be a member of the alpha group, instead of being interested in how they can be a better member of a better, all-inclusive society. We have mammalian bodies and those structures inform our potentials. To be human is to rise above that animal heredity and embrace the virtues of humanity: caring, active, effortful compassion being essential.

This is why a prominent Rabbi spoke at Muhammed Ali's funeral. They were both Men of God who spread love and unity amongst and between their different cultures. Anywhere you find universal love and respect for all others, you find God's Religion, whichever form it takes in its society.

And legion are those that selfishly deceive in the name of religion or even try to create their own religions. The child rapist Catholic Priest does not denigrate the Message of Love present in Jesus' form of God's Religion; he only proves his perfidy and that of the organization that hides his sins and felonies from his prey's society.

If freewill is so sacred why does the OT and NT have so many examples of freewill being removed? Like in 2 Kings 1:10 and other places, if God is fine with freewill being ignored, and God never changes, then he can act, and if he can act would he not be considered unjust by Jesus words in Luke 18:1-8? Not a gotcha or academic question, just something on my mind recently.

Not necessarily. He/she/it/they could be limited in their capabilities or working under unguessable design constraints.

The weirdest thing was when in one of Oliver Sacks' book (maybe The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat), after countless stories of people losing their personality, their mind, almost their humanity in some cases, he talked about his continued belief of the existence of an immortal soul, when I precisely myself find his stories vivid evidences that such a thing as a "soul" is a complete absurdity and an illusion.

I'm not positive that the 2 Kings example is exactly free will being removed, because Elijah asks God for what happens, and God does respond to prayer (praying with faith is another issue).

But I do see what you're asking — how God seems to step in more often in the OT. Thinking of all of human history from ~4000BC until now where Mankind "grows up" over time, the concept of God as Father works — parents put a lot of restrictions on their kids when they're young to keep them safe, and remove those restrictions over time. Even if the child does something unsafe at a certain point a parent just has to say "now that you know the consequences, you have to live with them."

> the preexisting, running total of human suffering and tragedy in this world points to the fact that transcendent reality, the realm of God or a God, must have an alternative interpretation for human events

You're begging the question. It doesn't point to that at all.

Furthermore, I'd feel terrible accepting that "fact" if I were faithful. It would reduce my faith to that in a demiurge who can't (ergo impotent) or won't (ergo ignorant or malicious) build/maintain a reality that (1) makes sense in the enclosing context and (2) doesn't require the depth of horror and pain for its components/participants that this one does.

I mean the people who got torched had their freewill removed without warning, death by direct action of God. The issue is not with boundary setting, the issue is with Jesus seemingly calling himself (God) unjust, since freewill doesn't seem like an inviolable issue, if God doesn't have a hard restriction on effecting freewill (which seems to be the case) then he is seemingly the same as the unjust judge? I understand the argument from Job that people aren't to question God because we are simple clay to him, or the argument that people are evil and deserve nothing less than eternal suffering, but since Jesus set the expectation and made the connection directly in Luke it seems like a non-upheld internal measure/standard of God's own?

If I start with God, any conclusion I will care to make will be true.

G-d is a human construct.

The True Scotsman, I know...

Exactly, unless one sees the suffering of others as suffering of NPCs or punishment for a former life, I cannot understand how one can believe in a benevolent omnipotent god. The cruelty that some have to endure is simply not explainable with a such a god. It cannot be benevolent AND omnipotent by definition. It becomes far far far more likely that there is simply no such a god. It's not like this dilemma is new so there should be a better explanation by now.

Not more than people. On the other hand, anything you write after that comma would evaluate to truth.

It's a very strange thing. For instance, the Bible is full of horrifying events, and the life of Jesus, a seemingly innocent, well intentioned man who is crucified in an excruciating death for no good reason, also seems to be in line with denying the existence of a good God. In fact, Jesus seems to agree with this in his last moments on the cross, saying "my God my God why have you forsaken me?" It is very mysterious why one of the world's largest religions has its foundation in such God denying aspects of reality.

It's a deep problem with a long history of attempts at answering it, some more satisfying than others. One answer that appeals to many faithful is the idea that all this suffering will be "redeemed", or made to be worth it at the end. Augustine, for example, would take the "NPC" prong of your dilemma by saying that our earthly existence "in time" is not a full experience of reality at all. Indeed, you can find this view, that our conscious experience of reality-in-time is somehow illusory, in many non-Christian sources anywhere from Buddhism to Daniel Dennet. In Augustine's view it's only outside of time, with God, that human beings can fully exist - thus earthly suffering is nothing compared to the joy of being in Heaven. Obviously this is not a foolproof argument, but HN deserves to know the best answers Christian thinkers have come up with.

It always seems to me that faithful people just don't confront themselves with the suffering that is happening and has happened. When you know about such events it seems to me to be either a lame escape or maliciously ignorant to claim there might be a god who sees the big plan and is still omnipotent. When there is not even a glimpse of a reason for certain acts against children I refuse to accept any far fetched esoteric excuse.

Aren't there more than two explanations for "won't" beyond (1) ignorance or (2) malice? Perhaps we are the ones who are ignorant for why things are this way.

All religions have a mystic branch which describes an awareness , usually transient, of a higher order to reality in which the suffering of people is "redeemed" or put into perspective or somehow negated.

One interesting thing is that the language and imagery used by the mystics of these different and separated religious traditions are often indistinguishable from each other- it's not clear if it was St. John of the Cross or Augustine or Zen Masters Ikkyu or Dogen who is saying them.

On thing they refer to in this transcendent reality is apprehension of "the coincidence of opposites". So for example, the obvious fact that a thing cannot both be and not be at the same time is itself contradicted or "resolved". In logic we say "not both A and not A" (or else a contradiction is permitted and from there literally anything can be proven).

If I were a goldfish, no matter how right the math you read to me was, I would not understand it, you or anything it referred to. Even as the atomic bomb it described exploded, I still would not understand the nature of reality which now quite literally impinged itself on my flesh.

What would it feel like to be confronted with that kind of knowledge? Would we recognize some formulation of it but reject it, as in: both A and not A?

Would it be something impossible, existing outside of what appears to us to be exhausted possibilities?

Not A Not not A Not both A and not A Not not both A and not A. etc?

We can feel the limits of our own thinking when we reach something which is logically impossible. We just can't get our thinking around these things; contraditions seem like an absolute dead end, leading everywhere and nowhere.

Are there things in our lives which we literally experience, like an atomic bomb disntegrating a goldfish, which even as they touch us and we feel them, we simply fail to comprehend the "real" meaning of them? The breeze? A look? A birth? Suffering?

Spirtual insight may be a thing like mathematicqal talent- some people have a talent for it and some people don't. Such a talent may be completely disconnected from normal intelligence. To people who don't have it, it seems like garbage, i.e. self-contradictory, self-pacifying wishful thinking.

Barring either of those, see "can't".

> earthly suffering is nothing compared to the joy of being in Heaven

Now the demiurge is a utility monster.

> this is not a foolproof argument

Argument? It's an admission.

Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but words have meaning and, as a father-to-son Scotsman, I'm pretty fucking sure that a Scotsman has to have some branch of their ancestry come from Scotland.

Also, a priest can't honestly say they love you and serve Jesus if they're raping your children in the back room.

There is truth and there are lies and falsehoods. Nuance is required to discern between them. Most people are just too intellectually lazy to even try. That ignorance leads to many of the systemic problems of our world, not the least of which are religious groups like ISIS/ISIL and the Catholic Church deceiving people with their lies, hypocrisies and oppressions.

Dunning & Kruger, dude. I know where you land on the chart, and I know that you don't know where you land yet think you do.

> Now the demiurge is a utility monster.

How is the demiurge taking utility from humans if humans ending up in heaven is the optimal outcome for both humans and diety?

> Argument?

It’s an argument that a diety can both be omnipotent and benevolent if humans don’t know true pain or pleasure in their earthly lives. After all, both earthly pleasure and pain are temporary, so if you can conceive of eternal happiness it might render earthly suffering negligible in comparison.

Thank you for taking the time to write such a beautiful comment

I always hear this back from people, but it's a failure in understanding what's being said. You can't conceive of any future "knowledge" or state of being or most broadly, "configuration of reality" which could retroactively justify or "make right" proven and real human suffering already suffered. That is just not possible to you.

That is what you're saying. It's isomorphic to your argument; it is your argument's essence.

Expressed that way, the issue becomes apparent. We cannot conceive of something; it is inconceivable. But that inconceivability is exactly what the original argument is asserting - it's a thing beyond human conceptualization. Exactly.

All parties to the argument find agreement on this point.