Justified vs. Unjustified Suffering

4. Justified vs. Unjustified Suffering Is suffering inherently “bad?” Is suffering ever justifiable? When is suffering unjustifiable?

5. Think of a time when you knowingly did something or entered into a situation that caused you (or someone you loved) to suffer. The suffering could be physical pain or emotional pain or some other kind of unpleasant experience. Your own or the other person’s suffering was not something you desired in itself. Nevertheless, you allowed this suffering to happen because you knew that in the end, something good would come from it. In what way do you think that making this suffering or allowing it to occur was justified and unpreventable?

6. The Greater Goods Defense Leibniz’s Principle of Sufficient reason & the “God’s-Eye view” of the universe. Some evil is necessary to achieving certain good ends. The good achieved outweighs the evil. The same or greater amount of good could not have been attained by any means that did not involve the presence of this evil.

7. Good without Suffering? Suppose that you could take different drugs that would instantly transform you into a moral saint, an accomplished piano player, a successful athlete in a sport of your choice, a straight A student, or a great artist. Undoubtedly, such results would gain you public admiration, fame, wealth, and other goods. But would you feel as though you were worthy of this admiration? Would you feel good about how you obtained your achievements? Is it only the results that count in life, or are the processes and the means for achieving those results important too? If you swallow a pill that makes you virtuous, are you really virtuous? Or do moral achievements necessarily involve effort and struggle? (372)

8. Is Suffering Necessary? In what sense are compassion, generosity, fairness, etc. contingent on the existence of suffering? Can a person be “good” in world without suffering?

9. The Freewill Defense The ability to make both good and bad choices—to produce both happiness and suffering—is a necessary element of freewill. God created humans with freewill, which is to say, God created humans with the ability to produce both happiness and suffering. The evil that exists is not caused by God but is caused by the actions of humans with freewill.

10. Some Questions Without God, is it possible for morality and moral judgments to have meaning and not be simply arbitrary declarations of taste/preference? If humans are just random collections of atoms impersonally coughed up by nature and not designed by God, do we have any rational basis for believing in the intrinsic worth, dignity, and quality of all persons?

11. Where We Began….. How can we decide whether God exists? Are there rational arguments that demonstrate that God exists, or at least that its existence is probable? Are questions about God’s existence questions that can/should be approached empirically? Evidentialism. Nonevidentialism. Theism, atheism, and agnosticism. Fideism.

12. Conversations about the Existence of God • How do we determine whether or not to believe? • Why do we want to determine whether or not to believe? • Why does the question about whether or not to believe remain and why do we believe we can find an answer?