Suffering

Starter topic of conversation: Suffering

Why does God seem to hide himself, especially in times of great tragedy, pain and loss?

This question is one of the great motivators for why many conclude that God does not exist because of all the pain and suffering in the world. Either God is not able to do anything to remove suffering or he doesn’t care.

Do you have any thoughts as to why suffering exists, and do you think this shows that God is not there?

Why do you think suffering is bad/wrong?

It seems so clear to us that suffering is wrong, but is it really?

Here I need to apply a little thought process to think this through. To say that something is wrong means that something in the world is not where it is supposed to be or not how it is supposed to be. To say that something is right means that it is where it is supposed to be or how it is supposed to be.

If one understands the world just happened to come into existence by some naturalistic mechanism, then in such a world, there is no wrong or right, it just is. In other words, nothing is out of place because there is no place that anything should be.

If this view is the correct view, then the result is that our gut reactions to the wrongness of suffering in the world is not valid. One is placing one's subjective feeling onto the world.

But I imagine that each of us is saying something deeper than mere emotions when we experience suffering.

Do you think that one's emotion is all we are referring to when we say suffering is wrong? Do you think "right" and "wrong" are real things like matter and energy?