You may read it allegorically if you wish. Eden stands for a happy world, but which later slided into our present world, fully of pain and suffering, due to our own actions.
Did you read the part where I talk on nonclassical logics?
Why? God created Eden/heaven. There’s no suffering in heaven or Eden.
I showed you how life and God are related.
It is a myth since it has many logical problems. God knew in advance that Adam and Eve would commit the sin and eat from the tree, yet He insisted on creating such a reality. Why bother with creating the tree of good and evil? Remove the tree from the creation, and all problems in the creation are resolved. Why let’s Snake/Satan tempt Eve?..
No, the thread is very long.
I am talking about life in which we learn, grow, mature, get wise, etc., and for that, you need pleasure and suffering. Whatever the state of being is in Heaven is not life. You are in the presence of God, you are happy eternally,… so what? That Heaven is eternal Hell for an intelligent and curious creature, so-called human!
What did you show?
My general observation from the OP title was to wonder how there could be a problem of happiness. That seemed a problem only a philosophy forum could identify.
You’ve not read my dissolution of the inconsistencies in the Bible. Contradictions are allowed in certain logics, like paraconsistent logic or dialetheism.
God created Eden, A&E, the animals which includes the serpent. Eden is a place of happiness. A&E were emotional beings and so they were happy in Eden because Eden = Jannat (Heaven). A&E fell from grace with prodding from the serpent.
My point is that God and Eden is proof that happiness comes from God. Suffering arose from A&E disobeying God and eating the forbidden fruit. The serpent was the catalyst.
That’s a good point, but doesn’t undermine my contention that happiness flows from God. Whence cometh happiness? It can’t be from humans or the world. Consider how humans and happiness don’t mesh that well (homo homini lupus) but God and happiness seem to dovetail into each other (recall Eden).
I think you’re talking out of your hat. 
I just came back to this thread and have found that I have missed little since I visited it.
One thing I do have to comment on, though, that someone else did allude to is that suffering is necessary for life. And why you might ask — isn’t suffering a bad thing?
Well, the matter is that people who are congenitally incapable of feeling pain do not live long lives — they don’t learn to protect themselves, so they inevitably end up doing something that results in their early death.
I clarify in the OP and elsewhere that happiness is a problem for atheism. Happiness and humans (homo homini lupus) don’t go together as well as God and humans do.
Theism (OOO-God) is perfectly interlocked with happiness.
It seems that there are 2 kinds of suffering
I acknowledge all of the above but they don’t tell us anything about happiness, specifically whence cometh it? Vide supra for the answer.
I don’t see how paraconsistent logic or dialetheism could help here. God wants us to be happy? Then create a Heaven where we can live happily. A Heaven without the tree of good and evil, no Satan trying to fool us that we won’t die if we eat from the tree, no seduction, etc. Needless to say, I wouldn’t want to be in a place where I would just be happy.
Happiness is a psychological condition that arises from the interaction of man and the world. The same applies to suffering.
I don’t think so.
Yes God wants us to be happy. He created Eden didn’t He? Also, didn’t He place A&E in Eden? If A&E had been sent to hell that’d mean something, but He didn’t. This immediately demonstrates that God and happiness go together; in my language we have the dyad (God, happiness).
Why were A&E banished to earth? For disobeying God. Earth is a place with a mix of suffering and happiness, unlike Eden. We can see from this that suffering, not happiness, goes with humans and earth; we have the dyads, (earth, suffering) and (human, suffering).
What do you mean by paraconsistent logic and dialetheism don’t help? These logics permit contradictions, which is what you refer to by “logical problems”.
Chinese logic is compatible with Christianity, if inconsistency makes you uncomfortable.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Adored by little statesmen, philosophers and divines.
How do you know? How could you possibly know the real God’s intention? He set Adam and Eve up for failure, knowing in advance they would fail. He mentioned clearly in the Old Testament that He does all sorts of Evil. People have been suffering on Earth for ages. Why should they be kept here for the sin their parents committed?..
Correct! I’ll expand and elaborate for you.
“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."
The NT is better - preaches the message of love, the golden rule.
Like I tried to point out, the A&E story is a record of the fall of man, kind courtesy of the fork-tongued one. Read the Bible if you want some of those questions you asked answered. It’ll be better than me trying to cobble together a coherent response. My hunch is that you’ll have to read Genesis.
I’ve already acknowledged suffering. Read the OP and other posts of mine on the PoS (the problem of suffering). What I want to show you is that there’s a PoH (problem of happiness) for atheism; the shortest version of which is Happiness \implies God. GregW crafts a superb argument off of the good and the beautiful.
Whence cometh happiness? is Hume’s whence cometh suffering? flipped on its head. People have answered in different ways - evolution, interaction with the world, animal psychology, oneself, others - but they are all defective one way or another (read the preceding posts for a lively back and forth between members).
P.S. It seems you haven’t read the part where I introduce Chinese logic/paraconsistent logic/dialetheism and 
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Adored by little statesmen, philosophers and divines.
Why do you pick the New Testament? Because it aligns with your argument!? I would say that the Old Testament explains God better than the New Testament when you reflect on reality. Don’t you agree? So, what is your argument now? Life requires both pleasure and suffering. This is the brute fact. You pick up happiness trying to prove a benevolent God. How about picking up suffering, trying to prove a malevolent God?
I already and clearly stated my position on the PoS (read the quote in my last post) and responded appropriately to it. My argument from happiness for God is the answer to whence cometh happiness? Happiness can’t be something that just hangs in the aether and randomly plops into our laps.
I am not talking about the problem of suffering here and its threat to any argument in favor of a Benevolent God. I am saying that one can argue in favor of a malevolent God, given that suffering exists.
I don’t know. Could we? There’s a lot of suffering in the world.
Well, why not? It is the same type of reasoning!
Only if you completely ignore biological and evolutionary theory.
As Edward O. Wilson wrote in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge -
Philosophy, the contemplation of the unknown, is a shrinking dominion. We have the common goal of turning as much philosophy as possible into science.
You mean the 6 or so billion theists in the world have the wrong end of the stick? 
Furthermore, Newton was a devout Christian, many Nobel laureates are theists, but Einstein wasn’t. There’s St. Anselm’s argument from “that than which nothing greater can be conceived”, which Godel polished into a solid argument that has been computer-verified.
Evolution is a theory, not a fact. Science is a fundamental logical error, affirming the consequent. I’m not ignoring scientific theories, but I am saying they’re not truths. Moreover, the origin of life is a complete mystery and calculations show that the inorganic to organic transition is so improbable to be virtually impossible.
Plus would you trust your computer if it were a product of mindless, unguided processes?
