The Problem of Suffering

Let us again begin with the argument about the existence of free will. You say rightly that the observations of science and the study of our brain is not a prove that an immaterial mind doesn"t exist. The problem here is that philosophy about whether or not a mind is possible won"t bring us any further which is why it is important to use the scientific method and look at what the evidence shows us. I have argued with the field of particle physics and I may explain it a little further. What we have right now is the standard model of particle physics and this model is scientifically proven to the extent that we have observed all the predictions in experimented mostly at the LHC. Now this model includes the four physical forces and those too have been shown to be true. The thing we are doing now is still searching for particles and even forces we have missed, but we know with absolute certainty that those forces and particles will be very insignificant to our daily lives as it requires extreme conditions to produce them. Therefore we can safely conclude that we know all the particles that make up our daily life and that we know all the forces they act by. This also is true for the brain as we know that the brain is made up of exactly those particles. Now we have to use Occam"s razor. We can account with our model which is conclusively proven for all the actions of all particles in our daily lives. We haven"t found any reason to believe that there would be an additional force needed in our daily lives and we are searching for exactly those fervently all the time. Now this is the simplest and complete explanation which is why to invoke now an immaterial mind that itself has to exert a force is just an additional axiom that doesn"t increase the explanatory power at all. Therefore it can be reasonable dismissed. If one were to think that there where such a thing as an immaterial mind the person would have to show some evidence that there is something missing or something more needed which doesn"t happen. Without this the believe that there is some additional immaterial mind is similar to most of your argument just an assertion that can"t be disproven and can"t be opposed directly by philosophy, because most of those questions are not questions about philosophical thought and can"t be answered by it, but needs scientific inquiry. Now to the point that our actions are decided by our brain. This is again not a philosophical question and isn"t helped by armchair philosophizing about whether or not it could be logically possible, but again a scientific question about what it is we see if we look at the data. And again the science is absolutely unambiguous. We know the mechanism by which our actions are controlled by the brain which is namely our neuronal network and while we do not fully understand how this net of neurons decides our actions we can again be absolutely certain that it does so because of my first point that there is nothing there that could do it but the brain and its circuits of neurons. We know that if we manipulate the brain in a certain way we have a direct impact on the actions. All this again doesn"t prove that it is impossible, but as it is clearly a scientific and not philosophical question this is not surprising and again I would ask you to if you wish to convince someone that free will is possible, provide evidence. So far you only make a claim that in general can"t be disproven but this is something else then to say that it is actually true. Quiet on the contrary you have all of science in opposition to you because your claim would entail that all of science is wrong, while only your assertion is right. Now to the question whether if the thoughts we have are provided by our brain we can still choose between them. Firstly if you take the first part as true as you have done, the thing you are describing isn"t free will anymore as the maybe most important thing to decide, namely what you think is already taken from you. It also then doesn"t make sense for god then later to punish in his commandment that one shouldn"t desire another ones wife, as desire is as well just a thought we can"t prevent. This therefore also contradicts your explanation for suffering because surely hell and eternal punishment should be then classified as suffering and is not inflicted by any free choice but by the by god designed workings of our brain. But to get back to the point about choice in what your actions are after you where provided by a certain thought, it doesn"t seem to square with our observation that brain scans show a later action before the person has even realized that he is going to make this action. Some easy actions we can even predict from a brain scan before the person knew it. All of this does strongly contradict the thought that we can decide about our actions. Additionally there doesn"t seem to be that much of a difference between thought and action because you can ask the same questions for actions that you can ask for thoughts and will come to the conclusion that again there is a clear chain of thoughts leading to an action. The assumption of free will is that you can chose at any moment whatever you want. For example if you go right or left. And it is not decided before the action what your choice will be, to say that it wasn"t already certain that you did chose for example right. An omniscient being can"t be wrong about what he knows because else he wouldn"t have been omniscient and he has to know everything as it is literally in the word. And also to say that he just would have known a different thing if you would have chosen differently doesn"t work as you choose in the moment and omniscience implies that he knew it before the choice was made. That means if he knew for all eternity that you would chose right and he can"t be wrong about it you can"t choose left. Meaning you do not have free will in your actions. I think it is perfectly clear that omniscience and free will are mutually exclusive. It is not important whether or not it is divine command theory or natural law theory (it is true that theism allows both), because both take as the basis a god prescribed morality. It is still god who prescribes the morality as a law and doesn"t just act as enforcing agent but is the standard of the morality itself. This means that he decides what is morally good or bad. If this weren"t the case he wouldn"t as explained above be omnipotent. And all of it is exactly your point that he can decide what is right and therefore to assume that suffering doesn"t contradict his ability to decide you need in both divine command theory and natural law theory the assumption that he accepts the suffering as good as we observe it. If he didn"t accept it that would go against his omnipotence as he could have just changed the way he made us or the world as I have explained to prevent needless suffering even without cutting short of your explanation by free will. Therefore as he didn"t build the world differently, it shows that if he is omnipotent and issues the moral laws, his omnibenevolence doesn"t work with our observation of needless suffering and the other way around. Again your argument about how angels could explain the obvious discrepancies between the expectation in a perfect loving god and the one we observe, shows that also you see the problem, but you do instead of going by the evidence just search for some ex post facto explanation for the observables which can"t be philosophically disproven but again doesn"t have any evidence on its side. Both creating imperfect cruel angels and creating suffering humans doesn"t fit with omnibenevolence, which is why we should again use Occam"s razor and just take the easy explanation that god just didn"t create humans instead of piling on wild claims that can"t be tested about him. Also the thought that it is human will instead of the will of angels doesn"t help as needless suffering isn"t a human wish.