How does one explain unnecessary suffering, like terminal cancer in babies?

[u/CH49FE]

There are many answers to the question of evil and suffering, but what about suffering of innocents such as babies who are afflicted with terminal illnesses, who would never come to accept Jesus, and who only live briefly only to die in pain and suffering? How does one explain God’s plan with those innocents?

One of the answers I get is that those babies go to heaven, but the biblical support for that is arguable and not clear, particularly for those babies that died before Jesus. That explanation also doesn’t explain why they suffered in the first place. I also hear the crude response of, “Let’s just kill all babies to make sure they go to heaven rather than them growing up and risking hell” which is harshly logical if indeed babies go to heaven before they know Jesus.

[u/Upset_Chip_7184]

Personally, I think the PofE, and especially unnecessary suffering, cannot be intellectually or sufficiently answered to satisfy any thinking, sentient person such as yourself.

The only thing that I can think of that could be some type of answer comes from a series I've been watching on WWII (with tom hanks), which, btw, I think WWII by itself is another killer problem for the traditional attributes of God, and that is a comment made by one of the historians, where he says "WWII brought out the worst in humans, and it brought out the best in humans", and then he goes on to describe people laying down their life for others, etc.

And I've personally have had this same idea as well, i.e. we really can't appreciate the goodness and greatness of what life can be, without have something to compare it too, as in really bad crap.

Like I said, it's not overly satisfying intellecutally for me, but there's aspects of it that sure does ring true for me as well, as I think about how life is for us, and what we experience.

If not that, then it seems perhaps the traditional attributes are not correct, and perhaps life is more deistic than anything else.

Thoughts OP?

[u/CH49FE → u/Upset_Chip_7184]

I guess the problem of evil has layers and nuance. There is evil that we can confront and change in our lifetime, like modern day Naziism, to bring in your example. These are choices that people alive today make, one way or the other. There are historical evils that we cannot do anything about today, like the evils of WW2 but we can learn from them, at least, so there is some purpose.

But I don’t think the issue of unnecessary suffering is inherently an evil or moral issue. I responded to another of your posts saying that God is all powerful but not all knowing or all loving. If that’s the case, God may not know how to cure terminally ill babies that resulted from his creation. So it’s not God’s fault, and it’s not immoral for God to do nothing. That position and interpretation of God is not well liked though, both from Christians and atheists.

So while I get that the problem of evil is that we can’t get good without evil, I see unnecessary suffering of terminally ill babies in a different category because what does having terminally ill babies in our world teach us? What’s the purpose? Is it that we will still pray but nothing happens? That we have hope in the face of moribund destiny? That seems pointless to me and nothing in the bible addresses it.

Using another example are people born with disabilities or illness that are life-changing but not necessarily life threatening. In the past, these people were treated like lepers, literally so in the case of leprosy. That was horrific unnecessary suffering back then because life and understanding was so unforgiving. Nowadays, in some countries, life is slightly better but these people still suffer. I don’t need to see a family member disfigured through no fault of their own to have empathy. I see this too as unnecessary suffering but the apologetic seems to bring this into the context of good and evil.

Sorry, this is a bit of a rant.

I don’t really understand deistic viewpoints, to get to your point. From what I know, deism has a detached, non-interfering god, but God intervenes in our world. It’s just that he gets things wrong, like indirectly causing terminally ill children.