[madnak]

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Nature causes both pain and pleasure. I don't see how it is easier for man to spread awful pain than to alleviate the suffering he causes.

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Then you're ignorant, or have no imagination.

I can traumatize a person within minutes such that the very best professional help will take years to repair the damage. Damage from severe enough trauma causes irreparable damage, and while evidence on torture is lacking, anecdotal evidence and extrapolation from the effects of relatively "tame" experiences indicate that severe, sustained torture can destroy the mind.

And the body? Same deal. It's easy to shatter a bone. It can be done in minutes, probably seconds if you know how. Hey vhawk, how long does it take to put back together? 1 hour? 2 hours? Ooh, maybe 2 hours and 15 minutes? And it's easy, right? And the quality of the repair is excellent, ldo.

Thankfully the vast majority of people choose to do more good than harm - if it were the other way around... I don't want to think about it.

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If an atheist is convinced that life on the whole is much more painful than pleasurable, I don't see why he would not commit suicide. It would be the reasonable thing to do.

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My life isn't more painful than pleasurable. But it was. I was actively suicidal for over a decade, and it was rough. Suicide is hard, I doubt you understand how hard it is. We really aren't built to kill ourselves, or even to consider it as an option. From your beliefs, I suppose God's twisted sense of humor prevents him from allowing such an easy escape. And oh, because of religious poison most of the world believes that committing suicide will result in eternal torture. That's something of a disincentive.

But the more important issue - we're doing better. Most people in the developed world are never raped or tortured, they never suffer from plagues, they don't see loved ones killed on a regular basis, they never starve or go hungry for months at a time. We've persevered and conquered the brutal existence that we knew in nature and especially during early civilization. Chances are that, during most of human history, if you had suggested a pain/pleasure view of utility, people would have thought you were crazy. Only the wealthy ever thought that way, it just wasn't how the world was perceived. People had to find value in life beyond pleasure, because what pleasure they had was meager.

Of course, nature still has its way with us. Though we do what we can to support happiness, all of our efforts are eventually counteracted. Disease finds us, entropy takes everything (and everyone) we value away from us, our constant needs overwhelm us and the limited means to meet those needs frustrate us, and those who try to help us often do more harm than good... And occasionally (very rarely in areas where need isn't a major concern) a bad apple deliberately makes things worse.

But it's the nature of our existence that causes the vast majority of our suffering - and it's our personal power and our compassion that allow us to overcome it despite the odds. So I'm comfortable saying that if a God is responsible for the nature of our reality, then God is evil and humans are good. Thankfully I don't believe that - any gods that exist are probably in the same boat we are.