That's a "nice" if not very convincing argument for a god who created suffering in the first place. — Vera Mont

Well, we must acknowledge that suffering here is human suffering. Its inherently biased towards "our" wellbeing. For example, the climate changing may lead to detriment for humanity, decreased productivity, more human suffering, but those same dynamics may be protective for other aspects of nature by making it ever harder for us to contribute to toxic or harmful environmental activities.

Just as a fever makes the body less hospitable to a virus (humans in this analogy) , in service to the health of the holistic organism (the planet).

For example rising CO2 and temperature may be detrimental to oxygen breathing organisms that are causing deforestation. And at the same time making conditions ripe for trees (which "eat" CO2 and may enjoy the accelerated metabolism/growth conferred by rising temps).

Checks and balances. If a universal god has a duty to all things' "suffering", as in if the prime directive is to establish equilibrium, and humans persistently push equilibrium into disequilibrium, then of course we are going to see more human suffering as counter measures arise to oppose us.

This natural tendency for equilibrium can be seen in dozens of counts. For example, if a self indulgent government, or powerful wealthy class oppresses too much the majority of the population in favour of self interest, we can ask why would a god cause us to suffer while others live the lux life? But in doing so, people are brought together and united in gross dissatisfaction and desire for revolution, and eventually the government is overthrown and equilibrium is re-established.

In this way, suffering leads to karma (the ré establishment of balance).
Balance being that we suffer a little, and enjoy a little, in equal portion, both very tolerable. If we suffer too much the system begins to operate against that, if we enjoy too much the system also begins to work against that.

Though ideally everyone wants to live in pure bliss all the time, a god or universal principle that demands/enforces balance is still one I can get behind, as I don't see any reason for one cohort of things to be prized any more than another: be it people, animals, plants, the planet itself. A God that works to protect everything from one another will practice scorn when needed.

Well, in fact, all organized religious arguments are circular, since they want it both ways: a big enough god to have created everything, but only takes credit for the good half, while shoving blame for the bad half onto its creatures. — Vera Mont

I agree. I don't think any God would be "all good". But I do think such a gods concept of good is not human-centric. And sometimes we fall into the bad books because of our lack of consideration for the non human existants that also deserve life and protection.

That, plus the suffering of all the experimental animals, and the collateral damage of the toxic waste I'm responsible for. Selfish enough to accept the good; not quite hypocritical enough to ignore the bad. (At least I didn't hedge my bets by paying anyone to pray for me.) — Vera Mont

Well, we are human. We are flawed and that is what unites us in the human condition. We look out for eachother because we relate most with one another. That is certainly to the detriment of animals and other things in our quest to practice empathy for one another. I don't think any individual is to blame for this.

All we can do is be grateful that we were spared from whatever struggle we've faced and do our best to do right by our home - earth and everything on it.

People can be the purest, most humble and beautiful beings in known existence. We can also be the worst thing to befall the planet. But we always have choice. And we all make them.

Well, we must acknowledge that suffering here is human suffering. — Benj96

Not when you're talking about a god that is supposed to have created all the galaxies and everything therein. The one who made up all the rules. If you're going to posit a universal god, you can's sequester the suffering of one species and pretend it's all in/on our heads.

For example, the climate changing may lead to detriment for humanity, decreased productivity, more human suffering, but those same dynamics may be protective for other aspects of nature by making it ever harder for us to contribute to toxic or harmful environmental activities. — Benj96

Because by then, there won't be any nature left to harm.

If a universal god has a duty to all things' "suffering", as in if the prime directive is to establish equilibrium, and humans persistently push equilibrium into disequilibrium, then of course we are going to see more human suffering as counter measures arise to oppose us. — Benj96

Gods don't have duties; gods have prerogatives. No, the suffering humans cause to one another and all the other life forms on this planet, added to the natural suffering that already befell living things before a great ape reinvented itself, won't ever establish any kind of balance. OTOH, the demise of one little planet, with all its nutrients and pathogens, will disturb the balance of the universe less than the collision of galaxies does.

In this way, suffering leads to karma (the ré establishment of balance). — Benj96

Hit your thumb with a hammer. There, now, aren't you happy that sometime next century, a baby turtle won't be eaten by a seagull?
I believe specific, individual, personal pain when I experience or witness it. I don't believe in karma.

Gods don't have duties — Vera Mont

Are you sure? If a god is universal and all aspects of existence are parts of itself, why would it not have a duty to itself?

Hit your thumb with a hammer. There, now, aren't you happy that sometime next century, a baby turtle won't be eaten by a seagull?
I believe specific, individual, personal pain when I experience or witness it. I don't believe in karma. — Vera Mont

Not sure its as obvious and transactional as that. I don't think actively causing oneself pain/suffering neccesarily diminishes the pain of another.

Self contained acts lead to self contained consequences. Non self contained acts lead to non self contained consequences.

Basically if you harm yourself, you experience suffering.
If you nurture the environment, the environment nurtures you. If you destroy the environment. The now toxic environment destroys you.

Science doesn't really begin with concepts but with observations. These observations produce descriptions which fuel our concepts. Energy is nothing more than a descriptive concept of a phenomenon we can observe and quantify in nature!

Energy as something that cannot be created or destroyed is a huge assumption to make — Benj96

This is an observation that we have verified. First of all we must clarify that energy is NOT a substance or an entity or an agent. ITs a label of a process observed in nature where this quantitative property (ability to do work) is transferred to physical elements or systems . The conservative quality of this property allows it to be dispersed in different forms but the total sum of them will be equal to the initial "load" of work of the system.

As it allows not to establish where it originates from, why it occurs at all. — Benj96

-Those (why questions) are irrelevant questions which are not addressed by the Descriptive Nature of Science. Asking why energy exists is like asking why the Universe exists. "Why" questions are fallacious, teleological questions. Intentions and purposes are not intrinsic qualities of Nature but qualities projected by beings with goals and needs. We tend to see agents in nature so we tend to ask why a natural phenomenon occurs. Science doesn't allow such assumptions in our hypotheses.
Existence is the product of the ability of matter to produce work. Why it is able to do that....the answer is always "Because it can".
Cosmology attempts to learn where it originated,but since it lies outside our observable Universe (predates the BIg Bang) Its safe to say that we can not answer that yet. So there is no way to philosophize(in a meaningful way) about it.

And it being basically the fundamental constituent of all material as well as all interactions, is virtually indefinable. Something that is fundamentally everything cannot really be further defined/restricted in character/properties beyond this vague generalisation. — Benj96

-Again "Energy" is not the name of an entity or a substance or an agent. Its the label of an observable, quantifiable phenomenon caused by a process. ITs not a "vague generalization" for the existence of an invisible "cosmic battery" but a Law like Generalization of the ability of Quantum Glitches(fundamental particles) to produce work and form structures which in turn produce different forms of work and structures.

And yet we do manage to subdivide it and characterise specific types of energy, despite the fact that they can convert from one form to the next. But only because of its presupposed eternality and ability to create anything (sensations/objects/happenings) in existence. — Benj96

We don't presuppose those properties. Our observations reveal them to us. There is a huge difference there. The "eternal" nature of energy can only be verified within the local representation of our universe. We can assume that a preexisting unknown type of cosmic field preexisted which gave rise to the energetic field that we call universe. Since we don't have any observations available outside our universe there is no way to put such assumptions to the test or to justify an answer.

For me, energy is as about as close to magic as science gets. It's both invisible and visible, can be felt and also not felt at all, can take any form whatsoever, we have no idea where it comes from initially or why, and yet we gloss over that so that we may use it as a basic principle of science. — Benj96

-I think your understanding of what energy is.. is based on our common "bad language mode". As I already explained the term "energy" in science is not an ontological claim of a substance or an entity in existence. Its just an observable phenomena where fundamental particles in fields have the ability to "carry" work resulting to the creation of structures and evolving processes.
This misconception of "energy" being an entity is a common thing. Its the result of our idealistic thinking meeting our empirical world. Abstract concepts describing processes have always being mistaken to be ontological claims of entities. They are responsible for most ancient gods, new age ideologies and failed idealistic doctrines.

When i search for meaning in a concept of God I'm not referring to some big bearded fellow floating in the clouds. Of course not. It's more nuanced than that. I'm simply suggesting that we don't yet have verification of whether consciousness is a fundamental force that began with the universe or why it is possible for it to emerge from substance (the hard problem). — Benj96

-I understand. In Philosophy gods are represented by far more vague concepts. Natural process like Energy, Consciousness , Mind,etc are often used to satisfy our need to answer our "why" questions (why we exist, why things are the way they are). This is done by converting the label of a process (i.e. Consciousness/the ability of a biological brain to direct its attention to environmental/organic stimuli and to reflect upon them by using the rest of its mental abilities like symbolic language, memory, previous experience, reasoning, pattern recognition, etc) to an entity and then declaring to be a powerful one.
I personally don't think this way of thinking has a place in Philosophy.

Chalmers "hard Problem' is nothing more than a set of fallacious ''why questions". Anil Seth has criticized Chalmers fallacy and explained which are the real Hard problems we face in understanding how mind properties arise through brain function. I can share material on the subject.

Many people leave the door open to a god theory to explain such a profound dynamic as this. The fact that us, as parts of the universe, are a direct example of the universe being aware of itself. — Benj96

That is a fallacy of composition. The label Universe includes many more things that do not have the property of awareness. We can only be a direct example of a system being able to display this specific property within the universe. The universe is not an entity, but its a process, the total sum of different processes giving rise to systems and entities. Only a fraction of those systems and entities (us) have this ability.(awareness).

I think if philosophy can question its own tenets: epistemology, physika and metaphysics as you pointed out - as in how to define them, what falls within each definition, why they exist as components, are there more components we haven't considered, where they come from, how they may overlap, I'm not so sure everything needs to satisfy all three to be considered worthy of philosophical endeavour. — Benj96

-Well those three steps should be included only if we demand our conclusions(or questions) to be wise.IF not then by definition our conclusions can not be wise...hence they can not be part of our philosophy.
The problem with all god claims is that there is no data to investigate. We only have claims that are compatible with what we should expect from a social species with shared ideas and beliefs and wishes.
There is nothing there to philosophize on except doing Anthropology and Sociology .etc.

If one is to consider the universe itself as a "God" and then figure out how to caracterise/understand or explain that, surely philosophy which is not external to the universe, must be applicable to the universe? — Benj96

- First of all we shouldn't start by accepting the assumption we are trying to demonstrate. Second equally important is....in order to equate the Universe with god we should demonstrate their shared properties. Most people claim that god is a thinking agent. If you accept that claim you will need to demonstrate that this property is shared by the process we identify as a universe.
Since these claim is not based on facts, our metaphysics are doomed to be part of pseudo philosophical speculation.

In the end it is still a love of knowledge. Is the particular subject of said knowledge so important? — Benj96

Sure, but there is a difference between declaring claims as knowledge without any objective evidence and verifying actual knowledge!

Perhaps you're totally right and there is such cases as pseudo philosophy. Subjects that ought not be broached by the subject. But I have not yet encountered a major topic that hasn't be brought to the attention of this forum to seek insight, or just for general speculation. — Benj96

-I don't know if I am right. I am only pointing out that we can do the same "philosophical" discussions on fairies, Leprechauns, ghosts etc etc I am not saying that their cultural weight and social impact is equal,but they all stand on the same unfounded claims without any objective facts to reflect upon their ontology..

Are you sure? If a god is universal and all aspects of existence are parts of itself, why would it not have a duty to itself? — Benj96

By divine choice. Again, you are trying to stuff an enormous concept into a little wee bag. Also, you have a fractal standing in for the entire picture.
A 'universal' god may mean, as you suggested in the opening post, simply a god accepted by all humans. Which would be a very tiny, almost certainly negligible, portion of the intelligent life in the universe. If it's a concept accepted by all of the intelligent life forms in the all the galaxies of all the universe, we humans wouldn't begin to be able to form the tiniest iota of a clue as to what that god-concept was like, what characteristics and attributes it would have. It certainly would not be constrained by our very limited moral vocabulary. Well, in fact I'll go out on a limb to say, impossible to imagine.
But why even try? We have enough trouble trying to focus on an image of just one of the gods we ourselves have brought into conceptual existence.

Not sure its as obvious and transactional as that. I don't think actively causing oneself pain/suffering neccesarily diminishes the pain of another. — Benj96

"That's what Jesus said, sir," But his dad wasn't persuaded.

If you destroy the environment. The now toxic environment destroys you. — Benj96

More accurately, by destrying the environment, you also destroy yourself, as virus may kill its own host. Well, it's true that a cycle is completed. But I don't see it either balancing or unbalancing the universe: I don't see that mutual destruction causing an equal quantity of creation.

But I don't see it either balancing or unbalancing the universe: I don't see that mutual destruction causing an equal quantity of creation. — Vera Mont

Well every act of destruction of a state leads to creation of a new state. In essence creation and destruction are just positively/negatively connotated synonyms for "change/transformation".

So I do believe that destruction leads to an equal quantity of creation. For example, when a wild fire burns down a forest, the heat activates dormant seeds in the soil which then germinate - the next generation of trees.

Or closer to home, when you knock down an old building you create ripe conditions for a new construction.

In essence creation and destruction are just positively/negatively connotated synonyms for "change/transformation". — Benj96

Right. So: balance in the universe means: everything that changes changes and everything that happens happens. 'kay...