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This isn't a response to urquan, but to the commenter they were replying to. I took particular issue with this line:
If that's the answer a Christian would give in your friend's case, my response would be "then your God is an asshole, since his plan is apparently to cause a human being, and everybody who knows and loves them and has to watch, immense suffering as they waste away, for no good reason whatsoever."
I live with somebody who is slowly dying from a degenerative neurological condition. It is heartbreaking to see their life gradually, painfully and inevitably reduced to nothing. What's God's purpose in doing this? To teach me patience and compassion? Surely an omnipotent God could do that without destroying another human being in the process.
I know none of this is any new insight to the faithful, they've had to deal with arguments from unbelievers about why a just God would allow suffering to exists for as long as religion has existed.
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