This weighing of temporary suffering against eternal bliss is just another example of what a lousy game God is playing. He could have come up with something else - but he didn’t.

Wait, why is an asshole move? He figured out a way to figure out who ought to be rewarded for all eternity after a moment’s existence, that’s pretty amazing. Think how much of art etc is grappling with the concept of death or non-existence. God instead figured out, “hey, here’s a way to sift through a bunch of people with free will and temptation and reward the good ones for all eternity.” I’d be impressed!

a huge masochistic asshole.

I mean, I agree but only because I think you’re not using the word you mean. (Masochist enjoys harming themselves, you probably mean sociopath or somesuch.) And yeah, I think you’d have to be a masochist to create this potential for infinite reward and then have ungrateful snots running around bitching about a temporary inconvenience.

If one is incapable of doing evil in heaven does he have free will?

What evil could you do in an eternal paradise? And similarly, in a paradise, what sort of temptation to evil do you foresee?

what makes heaven different and why it wouldn’t be possible right here right now?

Again, if you want to reward people who are good, you need a proving ground. In a paradise, anyone can be good. When life is harder (or has more temptations) that’s when our character shines through.

EXCEPT your pimp can plausibly offer you literal eternal bliss.

This whole conversation has been done before.

Yup, just like the “oh you better have chosen the right God!” I think every ten year old has that thought and figured they’ve got religion on the ropes.

It’s probably one of those irreconcilable arguments. If a God exists etc, then yeah, you can absolutely see a system of infinite reward/punishment. If no God exists, yeah, you can easily see a system enacted to control the masses.

I know which I think is more likely but I also know that anyone completely dismissing the other side without qualification probably hasn’t thought it through with a mind willing to question their own beliefs.

Those are very different things, but I don’t see how or where they were conflated.

Because a moment’s or even human lifetime’s suffering is effectively nothing when compared to eternity. Show me someone who wouldn’t trade a hundred years of suffering for an eternity of bliss and I’ll show you a silly goof.

So, just like my friend’s kiddo getting jabbed, yeah, sucks in the moment but no reasonable person would really call it horrific suffering given that, while unpleasant, it lasted under a day compared to her (hopefully) ~ 35,600 days on Earth. Saying because suffering exists on a human time scale when you’re talking about infinity is similarly silly.

You keep coming back to this “why can’t God make free will without evil? If he can’t, he’s not all powerful!”

But it’s a basic definition problem. You’re effectively asking God to make 1 = 1 AND 1 = 2, which fine, could do but it eliminates the entire usefulness of 1 as a number.

Similarly, if the idea of free will is to find and reward good people and punish those who squander free will (by being jerks) free will probably necessitates the capacity for evil. (Otherwise, just stick with angels. Haven’t read the bible thoroughly but I’m pretty sure that’s basically the point of angels, perfect beings incapable of doing evil except for the one God made rebellious etc.)

Ehhhhhhh. You’re conflating this existence with all of eternity. Those are very different things.

Consider God as a parent. I used the example in an earlier response but my friend took her child to be vaccinated. For a baby, that’s a very unpleasant day. In a week, she won’t remember it.

Similarly, an all powerful, good God can be okay with someone suffering for a momentary blip because the end result is an eternity of paradise. (What is a lifetime of suffering against infinite years of happiness?)

“But wait!” you cry, “surely an all powerful God can skip the ANY suffering bit, right? He’s just choosing not to because he’s a prick!” Which misses the possibility of self imposed constraints on power. If I build a system and choose to work within that system, that’s still me being all powerful. And if, as an all knowing being, I know that a half moment of unpleasantness means an eternity of bliss (so I can reward free will, instead of just creating a bunch of automatons), that’s a tradeoff a good and all powerful God may make.

If there’s no God, then sure. If there is a God, there’s a life of infinite paradise for those who deserve it.

That’s the whole thing. The conclusion changes dramatically if there is or isn’t a God.

The best explanation I’ve heard, as an agnostic, is this is our misperception of this life vs an eternal (infinite) afterlife.

Sure, bad people might live really fun lives for maybe 100 years while good people might suffer for the same. But then, for millions and millions and gazillions of millennia after that, both are punished or rewarded for how they chose to live those 100 years.

My friend’s baby had a bunch of vaccinations the other day. Horrible day for the kid, unfun and stabby. But in a dozen years, will she remember it? Nope. But that day, that’s all she could comprehend. Similarly, for this brief go around, yeah, what we can see and experience is all we can really comprehend. But the promise of at least Christianity, but I think many other religions, is that the next life is infinite and all that matters.

Just a couple more tricks, then we’re on our island babe.

We’re cheering a bunch of rental properties being removed from the market?

Sure, some homes will enter the market for private buyers, so those doing quite well might have a slightly cheaper house but a lot are going to be sold to less scrupulous/more corporate landlords who feel they can extract more value, or in packages to developers.

I get it, we hate landlords hut this feels like cutting off one’s nose to spite the face.

I got one a few months ago that is my abslolute favourite, not sure if it counts. Important context, I’m 40 but still play soccer with folks as young as 20. So, one game I’m defending against a young fast kid and beat him to the ball (barely!) a few times in a row on long ball chases. After the third or fourth time he looks over after the race and says “You’re really fast for an… uhhh uh uh, you’re really fast!”

He meant so well and it was adorable watching him realize mid sentence that I probably didn’t want to be called an old man.