ARGUMENT: "SUFFERING IS BAD BUT THINKING IT HAS NO MEANING IS WORSE"

The debate between God and those who say that the doctrine implies disrespect to terrible suffering is a toxic and raging one.

The heart of the matter is the religious argument that you must not let your suffering break your faith for the alternative, holding that your suffering and your life as a suffering person has no ultimate importance or value is worse. Since when did somebody with gout or a toothache that is the worst of sufferings, think that its having no meaning is more agonising?  It has no meaning for suffering that is warning you that you are seriously ill is usually weaker in comparison.  Nobody talks about how the toothache changed them into a better person forever.  Where are the people looking for treatment for feeling their suffering has no meaning? See the argument for what it is. It's religious ideology.  It is an insult for me to preach it for others suffer in ways that are personal to them and if I suffer forever I will never know how much suffering others faced and endured.

The argument is also a threat.  It blackmails atheists to keep quiet and implies they harm.

It blackmails people to say their suffering has value when it does not.  It forces them to think it has.

You could argue that your suffering makes others be more helpful and aware of what can happen and that is ultimate meaning.  100,000,000 billion years from now the good happened and it is in the past and remains good.  It is not turned into nothing just because it didn't last. Religion says that this is part of ultimate value and meaning but not enough.  They are not saying it but they think ultimate value means that God does something to keep the good from your suffering lasting forever and offers consolation and a reward for all eternity.  Eternal meaning and ultimate meaning are not the same thing.  This means that good does not really matter for itself.  It's duration does.  This is as insane as saying what when you desperately need water what matters is that you drink it slowly and not gulp it.

The idea of suffering having the value the religionists want can only make sense if there is a God who is totally in control and who is creator of all.

If some suffering really robs your life of value the doctrine is suggesting that it is possibly your own fault for letting it.

We have uncovered a covert toxicity in the God doctrine.

It seems unfair for harmful evil people to be in a fortunate position when you are not. You may start to develop a “Why me?” This is a sense of being a victim. The worse off you are the more likely this is to happen.  Every person has a breaking point.  You start to see the misfortune as aimed at you. It doesn’t have to be aimed by a person to be aimed.  But you are hinting that if there is a God then he is bullying you.  You can feel the car that keeps breaking down is doing it to spite you even though you know it is not. Resentment and jealously then appear. You make your victimhood a significant part of your identity, a large part of what you are about.  Religionists may go along with the meaningful suffering narrative but they are unlikely to be authentic about it.

You can, so to speak, make your victimhood more than part of you but the whole you.  You identify as a victim.  Again, you are implicitly, if you believe in God, blaming God.  And strongly blaming.  This is not good for you for it is painful anyway and you have enough pain.  Also God by definition is stronger than you so you are going to feel more threatened and endangered as time goes on.

We conclude that religions talk about needing faith and God for your totally unjustified suffering to have meaning and ultimate worth is not in line with how human nature is and is based on lies that are more about religious ideology than compassion.  You cannot give a convincing unassailable answer to the person who not only says that suffering has ultimate worth but says that deliberately hurting others has as much if not more.  You are part of the problem if that person goes out and shoots abortion providers convinced he is saving unborn lives.