If God is a loving God, then why is there so much suffering in this world?
Simple…
Because of men and their desire for power and material things.
Ask yourself, if there was no evil inside our hearts, would we be suffering? Will your neighbor envy you to the point of wishing you bad? Will your partner be so jealous he/she threatens your life?
This life is a test from God.
We have all these bad feelings inside (jealousy, envy, greediness etc.), we all come to life with it.
The test is: what are we doing with these feelings? How are we responding to situations whether we control them or not?
Those who successfully master these feelings and dominate them, pass the test. Those who do not succeed, they fail (yet they have the option to succeed if they sincerely repent).
The prize? Jannah (Paradise).
Or Jahannam (Hell).
Either way, we end up choosing where we want to go, not God.
So, suffering in this world is caused by men only. Unfortunately.
I feel that you title was misleading. You gave zero reasons why you think the god you believe in is loving. If he is willing to send you to hell for your choices is he loving, or vengeful?
Yes. We suffer not only because of evil, we suffer from diseases, disasters, freak accidents and so on and so on.
Not true for the reasons above. There are so many causes of suffering that come from the world around us, not ourselves as men. For instance, why would a loving god allow a baby to die on the first day of her life?
Part of the answer has been answered above, but regarding why I think God is loving:
I would say that He takes care of us. The air that you and I breathe, if we were to pay for it... you get the point. That makes us live. The food that we eat, the water, the weather. If God had to bring the sun closer to the earth, we would all die. Same if there was no sun at all.
So God created all this environment for us to feel good. The rest is only a test. Anything other than that, only God knows. It happens for reasons beyond our understanding.
I guess the more important question is, how do you know this god of yours exists at all. We can breathe air without anybody allowing it. The sun would easily exist in the exact same way without any god at all.
How do you know god created this environment at all?
Your point is interesting, but what makes you think that the sun would easily exist without any god? Big bang?
An explosion that nobody triggered and after which all the stars and planets would appear at their exact place? I would believe it when science will prove that (which will never happen since science itself is recognising that a superior being might be at the origin of the creation of the world).
We have measurable objective evidence for the existence of the sun. We even know how it works.
We have zero measurable evidence for the existence of god. Unless you have some evidence god exists?
I take it you don't have any good reason to believe then?
This short video might clarify few points:
That video was clearly made by a person that doesn't know much about genetics and biology.
This video doesn't explain in any way all the junk DNA. The fact that the video's maker seems ignorant about is that a great deal of our DNA is actually junk that doesn't serve any real function. That goes against the idea of intelligent design. Nothing intelligent about junk, right?
But if there is random mutation and slow imperfect evolution, these strands of junk DNA would be exactly what you would expect. On top of this, DNA actually shows us exactly how species evolved from a common ancestor and helps us understand very clearly who evolved from whom and how we are related to all the other life on the planet.
Additionally, the person that edited the video and tried to point out that Dawkins admitted to intelligent design has been either 100% dishonest and puposfully misleading or 100% of the meaning of the words "might" and "context".
Dawkins here explained that IF another species that evolved naturally throught the means of evolution was advanced enough to create artificial life to seed on the planet only THEN you MIGHT find evidence of intelligent design. Evidence that has not been found yet...
You shouldn't post videos that ignore so many facts and purposefully try to misrepresent what somebody had said.
You should check this out instead:
What about all the suffering that is completely unrelated to men and men's desires?
e.g. Cancer in children? Genetic birth defects? Mosquitoes and everything that come with them like malaria?
These are not consequences of men's greed, or lust, or envy. These are the natural world acting independently and indifferent to humanity.
I agree, those are completely out of our control... to some extent.
Why? GMOs (genetically modified organism).
Most of our food today contains GMOs which are bad for our body. Who created it? Human beings
Even if we take GMOs as the root of all evil (which remains an unsubstantiated claim), how is a little baby that dies on the first day of her life responsible for that and therefore deserving of suffering?
The baby is certainly not responsible for that. However, the death may also result from parents having bad eating habits or bad life habits which may affect the foetus during pregnancy.
But, with regards to natural deaths, we do not control. It's in the hands of God. Being a muslim, I will refer to Islam saying that we are told that Allah will test us all. Through loss of health, money, and family relatives. I will obviously not question Allah's love for us since He created us.
All in all this is a test, and this life is just an exam. Think of it as a dream when you're sleeping. The suffering that you might experience in a dream is not real. Once you wake up it's all gone right?
Same for the life on earth. Once we die and we wake up on Reckoning Day, it will be similar to waking up from a dream.
Are the parents always responsible for the death of a baby? Keep in mind a lot of babies are dying every single day. If a god exists, then in your opinion he is killing babies on daily basis to test their parents. And you call that god good?
Also, is the god character in Islam good to all people? As far as I know, not really.
How do you know that the god character in Islam is not good to all people? I would like to read your comment on this point.
He is not good to apostates, he is not good to homosexuals, he is not good to infidels, he is not good to women.
He is not good to all the babies he kills that you said nothing about.
I would like to hear your thoughts on my comment, too ;)
Childhood Cancer existed before GMOs.