Question for theists...

[ZombieHorde]

Why did God make animals that need to eat other animals? Why cause all of the suffering?

S/He could have made animals that need to eat less veggies to prevent starvation, or had more veggies on this planet.

[az chela]

1. It is called nature,Survival of the fittest.God is a myth

Nature is cruel but also gentle.It is a delicate balance.We have been out of balance for eons

[ZombieHorde]

2. I all ready know what sort of answer I will get from non-theists...

Which is why I asked the question to theists.

I wonder about the thoughts and feelings of believers on this subject.

[ben_meyers]

4. cruel but also gentle?

Have you ever watched a domesticated cat play with the lizards in your yard? Ask the lizard how gentle that is.

[az chela]

8. Sorry I am not a theist that was just my opinion and I should have stated that

[rawtribe]

3. All Things Dull and Ugly

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6umW4hnRX5g

[ZombieHorde]

5. Thank you, that video is perfect.

[Festivito]

10. I wonder why they picked on Sylvia Brown.

It just seemed a little personal.

I guess for the sake of humour.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

6. That which is All

wishes to experience life in all its forms. Behind all forms is the All, the Only Being. Nothing exists save the All.

[ZombieHorde]

9. That does not answer the question.

Why did God create animals that eat other animals?

Unless you are saying that God felt like being eaten one day, so now there is much suffering?

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

12. I did answer the question

I'm sorry you didn't understand my answer. God is the ONLY being, and wishes to experience EVERYTHING.

I do not understand your second sentence--about God felt like being eaten one day, so now there is much suffering. All is not a human, but Everything. As for suffering, is that not a human concept rather than a concept from God? After all, it is based upon an individual's perception, and each individual perceives things differently. The Buddha said that the cause of all suffering was desire--desire of humans for something. The Hindus talk of rising above the three states of being--tammas, rajas, and sattva--to become One with the All, which they call Brahmin (in the Upanishads). The Sufis don't talk, but seek direct experience with the All, though they recognize that suffering of an individual is something that can lead one to that experience.

[ZombieHorde]

19. God is the ONLY being, and wishes to experience EVERYTHING

So, your god is all life? All things?

[DeSwiss]

16. Very good!

- There is only: "All That Is."

[Viva_Daddy]

21. Quite right.

Unfortunately, this answer will not satisfy either atheists nor theists.

[DeSwiss]

22. This is true....

...but then, its only camouflage.

[Festivito]

7. Because S/He did.

However, I imagine that is not good enough.

I wonder of joy, if no joy accentuating suffering exits. What is consequence if there is no suffering. What is gain if there is no suffering.

Part of the god-mythology is that a god is beyond our reach of understanding. So, the question: "Why?" even if answered lacks use for us humans.

But, that does not mean I cannot try.

So, another part of the god-mythology might be that we should not take suffering and death so seriously, rather to consequently gain joy.

[ZombieHorde]

11. So god made animals eat each other so I would really enjoy video games.

I am flattered, but animals eating each other is not necessary for that.

Certainly a fight with a beloved partner is all of the suffering a person needs to appreciate the good times.

[Festivito]

13. You asked for a reason. I gave you one.

Your point seems to be that there is edgy-good and not edgy-good states in a world otherwise devoid of life-threatening consequence, and that should be enough to run a world.

Not by me.

Perhaps in your perfect world there would be no need for a perfect god.

Good luck finding such a perfect world.

[ZombieHorde]

20. You asked for a reason. I gave you one.

Your right, I am just trying to understand your statements. I tried to make a joke and I guess that it came off poorly. I am sorry.

edgy-good and not edgy-good states

I don't know what this means.

Perhaps in your perfect world there would be no need for a perfect god.

I was wondering why god would make some animals need to eat others.

[Festivito]

23. I think you could understand.

Sounds to me that you don't really have time to deal with what you have requested.

Sometimes people ask this kind of thing for a real reason, sometimes just to rile a response.

Have fun out there.

BTW, your jokes are just fine, they just did not seem to be meant to be answered in light of the topic.

[ZombieHorde]

38. don't really have time

Maybe, who know how long any of us will be around.

Did your god intentionally create some animals with the need to eat other animals?

[knitter4democracy]

14. I don't presume to know the mind of God, actually.

Given what we've learned from science, it seems like having more veggies would lead to the same overpopulation issues, so more animals would die from starvation. It takes a balance, and the food chain system seems to work decently.

Also, how do we know plants don't suffer? There are plants that obviously react to being touched, and some studies seem to show that plants like music and being talked to. If you cut a plant, it bleeds. I'm just saying, it's awfully humancentric to think that only animals feel pain or suffer.

[Speck Tater]

15. Why do people design video games where players kill monsters?

Because it's more fun that way.

Remember, this so-called "reality" is a just a computer simulation, a video game. You can't really be hurt or killed. G.O.D (the Giver Of Data) programmed the game that way because it makes it more interesting. We are all perfect, immortal beings. But life as a perfect, all-knowing, immortal being got to be just way too boring, so that's why we chose to play this particular game. As a perfect, immortal being, there are no threats, no suspense, no excitement, no surprises, no danger. What would YOU do if your eternal life was that boring? You'd play the game, of course.

Why suffering? Why do people watch horror movies? We all knew what we were getting into when we jumped into the game, and after the game is over, we'll look back on it and say, "Wow! That was really something! Let's do it again." Hence "reincarnation".

It's all so obvious when you know the truth.

[ZombieHorde]

39. Why do people watch horror movies?

Watching a make believe movie and intentionally creating animals who need to eat each other are very different.

[Occam Bandage]

17. Because without predation, populations would boom and bust, causing mass starvation.

Because He intended for there to be intelligence, and without predation there's no competitive advantage to intelligence, and so intelligence wouldn't have existed/survived.

Because He felt like seeing the world be slightly more interesting than endless masses of algae clumping all over the Earth.

Because somehow, be it as a cosmic balance or be it an inevitable byproduct of free will, suffering is necessary.

An interesting question, but not an unanswerable one.

[ZombieHorde]

40. They were designed that way, they could have been designed differently.

[Occam Bandage]

45. How, exactly? How would you create a large herbivorous creature that

would have an entirely stable population without predation? I mean, keep in mind we're keeping within the framework of evolution here.

[ZombieHorde]

46. How much power does your god have?

[Occam Bandage]

48. I've never asked.

I'm a Buddhist.

[zeemike]

18. You already have some good answers

So I will try another tack.
You remember the story of the garden of Edin?
How the lion laid down with the lamb?
Of good and evil was man forbidden
But he took it's fruit from her hand?

And he looked down and they were both naked
And they covered themselves for shame
for the knowledge of the good and the evil
put Adam squarely to blame.

Sorry about that I just had the need for rhyme
So the decent of man from the garden was what caused the problem that you see with the eating of our fellow creatures
But the good news is that you can escape from that and once again run naked in the garden without shame and see the lion snoozing with the Lamb. Would not that be Paradise?
But in the mean time we have a lot to learn and part of that learning is learning how to deal with pain and suffering and not hold a grudge against God for giving you the knowledge of good and evil.

[trotsky]

24. Why do lions have the teeth of a carnivore?

I guess if all the animals suffered when humans sinned (let me know when you've got a sensical explanation for that!), then before, everything was a vegetarian. Why then, did predators have teeth that were so unsuited for processing vegetation?

[zeemike]

25. Well the story goes;

That in the garden we ate of the fruit of the tree of life which would cure all ills and sustain us.
And being that time is linear and constantly moving if the lion had no teeth when man ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and missed things up, the lion would have starved and no longer been with us now would he.
So the only survivors from that age would be those that were Abie to survive it.

Now I know this will not be satisfactory for you because you think literally and analyze everything, which is not a bad thing at all, it probably makes you a good student and able to be easily educated.
But don't assume that it is the only way to look at things. Other people have ways of perceiving too and they may not be like the way you do it but it still gets the job done for them.

[trotsky]

26. Admit it - you're just making stuff up as you go.

That doesn't even make sense, "literal" thinking or no.

[zeemike]

28. Have you ever heard that there is noting new under the sun?

That if you can think about it, somewhere, at some time, in the vastness that is infinity it has happened before?
That doesn't make sense ether does it?

Now just assume that an intelligence is going to make a world, and this intelligence already knows the outcome of his creation because time and space does not limit him. Would he create something that did not work in the future that he already knows about?
Or you could even ask COULD he create something that did not work in in the time line unless it's porpoise was not to survive that time line.

[trotsky]

29. "unless it's porpoise was not to survive that time line"

I'm sorry your god's dolphin died but why does he have to take it out on us?

[zeemike]

32. why does he have to take it out on us?

You think it is personal don't you?

[trotsky]

33. Naw, I think it's all a crock.

But your theology is way too simplistic to have any kind of meaningful discussion about it. Have a good day!

[zeemike]

36. Tell me something I don't already know.

And as long as you consider it meaningless it will stay simplistic to you.

[uberllama42]

35. So God knew when he created Adam and Eve that they would Fall?

Where is free will in that scenario? You're saying God built the universe on the assumption that the Fall would happen? Doesn't that sort of load the dice and determine that humanity will eventually be damned?

In fact, isn't that precisely what you're saying, that God knew that, when He created Adam and Eve and the Garden in the way that he did, the inevitable result would be the damnation of the human race?

[zeemike]

37. The human race is not damned.

It is evolving. And it will eventually return to the source...the God conscious state...from whence it came.
Just like the matter in the universe will return to it's source the big bang when it has spent it's energy.

And your assumptions are all based in time and space, If you can imagine timelessness then what will be or what has been, are meaningless words.

[ZombieHorde]

41. The animals were designed that way before the fall. (except for the serpent)

[struggle4progress]

27. You seem to be asking a question that you yourself regard as meaningless, since

it contains a proper noun G you probably consider meaningless. If this is the case, of course, then you cannot regard any answer as meaningful. The same objection holds if you want to say that you are not sure whether or not the proper noun G has an actual referent -- since then you still asking a question which you might regard as meaningless

To make real progress, of course, must try to ask meaningful questions, rather than questions one regards as meaningless. But perhaps you are merely wasting everyone's time in a rhetorical game? There are some indications of a purely rhetorical intent. For example, the question apparently supposes you have some significant moral concern for the suffering of animals. But if you were really concerned for the suffering of animals, it seems unlikely that you would act on such a concern, by encouraging discussion of a question you probably regard as meaningless. On the other hand, if you do not really regard the suffering of animals as a matter for concern, then your implied argument make no sense whatsoever

[bananas]

30. Because they taste good.

[tinrobot]

31. Perhaps it was so we could have big brains.

We wouldn't have evolved into humans if we hadn't started eating meat. Vitamin B12 is essential for brain development and is only found in meat and dairy (and some bacteria.) Sorry vegans, but you can't get it from plants.

So, if it weren't for meat, our brains would not have evolved enough to ask that question.

[ZombieHorde]

42. According to most religious stories, god made people with the ability to think.

Or if he didn't, he could have.

[Marrah_G]

34. That is assuming all religions believe one god created the Earth and everything on it.

Not all of us view deities in the same manner.

[ZombieHorde]

43. Not all of us view deities in the same manner.

Very true.

Not everybody believes that their god intentionally made anything, though they still have a god.

[SidneyCarton]

44. Good question, the answer depends on sect and doctrine.

As I understand it, predation occurred in consequence of the fall, prior to that time the "lion lay with the lamb" and other such alliterative states of being. With the fall, it became necessary that there be opposition in all things, for now man (in the universal sense, obviously including women) could know the difference between good and evil, such opposition included carnivorous predators in order to balance out herbivores with a much higher reproduction rate.

The fall of Adam is in and of itself a complex topic, in falling to mortality, Adam (according to Genesis the designated steward and lord over the world) caused the world to echo his fallen state, therefore all nature became mortal, corruptible and susceptible to the needs of the physical.

As to the question of the cat eating the lizard, there are practical purposes for feline cruelty, most of the creatures a cat eats, such as mice, etc. have teeth (and sometimes claws) of their own. A wild cat relies on its ability to hunt in order to feed itself, therefore injury can seriously hamper the cats ability to feed itself. Therefore, "toying" with its prey is the way a cat ensures that the mouse, etc... is really dead, or at least no longer dangerous.

Well, that is my explanation, take is as you will...

[Zebedeo]

47. If God didn't want us to eat animals,

why did He make them out of meat?

For a serious answer to your question, please see the post immediately above regarding the lion and the lamb. Predation and suffering in this world came about as a result of the Fall.