The point of Job is precisely that “irrational [sic!] faith” is no guarantor of “true happiness”.
Isn’t that rather a consequence of the theory given by the third friend, Zophar? something like ‘Because God’s ‘good and evil’ is inscrutable to us, being just and pious with God won’t *really* make you happy.’
Kirk,
Ok so I did a quick re-reading of the story (KJ and NRS). I think your summary of the points the various characters make is pretty fair. As for authorship, I’m no biblical textual scholar so I don’t have any strong feelings about that. I think it’s fair to presume, given the story’s provenance, to assume the author was a beliver in the Yahweh that appears throughout the OT, so we can perhaps safely presume that he intended the story to offer some sort of lesson about the nature of Yahweh and his relationship to his people. Devout believers would probably go farther and say that God either authored the story indirectly or at least inspired the author, which adds a degree of legitimacy to whatever this lesson is in their eyes, but I don’t see you claiming that, so we’ll leave that part of Occam’s critique aside. As for the names, I think Yahweh=God, Adversary=Satan in the minds of almost all believers and in the words of most standard translations, so I think it’s a bit of sophistry to say that they are not equivalent, and I will use them interchangeably.
I do not agree, however, that one can say the author’s own opinions are only those expressed by the protagonist. An author may use different characters to represent different points of view, and in simple allegory these correlations may be fairly rigid, even formulaic, and whose point of view the author wishes the reader to agree with fairly clear. But I don’t see this as automatic in this case. Insofar as the author wants us to accept as absolute any character’s opinion, I would think it would be Yahweh’s since he is, after all, the ultimate authority in the story. Most of the theories Job’s friends and wife offer are those common among believers as answers to the question of evil, and the author appears to me to be rejecting them in favor of what God ultimately says, which isn’t itself very explicit. I can’t be certain of this, of course, but the statements coming from the figure most likely to represent the author’s message and coming at the end of the story (getting the “last word,” as it were) gives credance to this idea.
Damn! Had to split the post for being too long and lost a bunch of stuff. I think the missing part was my interpretation of what this “last word” was. Basically, God rebukes Job’s friends, then rebukes Job through a series of unanswerable rhetorical questions showing he’s bigger and smarter than humans. Job then rebukes himself, accepts that he knows less than God and repents, at which point God restores all his stuff and gives him a new family. The lesson, I think, is that we’d best not only avoid cursing God for injustice but not even protest our innocence or ask why we suffer because we aren’t able to udnerstand.
[ Edited: 05 January 2008 11:40 AM by mckenzievmd ]
(1)In the story - as a story - the author has put only one request in Job’s mouth. And that one request is the ONLY ACT performed by the character ‘Yahweh’, in the whole story. It is an amusing coda that Yahweh deals roughly with Job, not the point of the story; further proof that it’s not about God’s inscrutability is that Job’s happy even despite the tongue-lashing, and the author gives us ample reason to believe it by the end.
Well, God’s major act is to permit Satan to destroy Job’s life and then to restore it to him. He also speaks at length to Job, which I count as well. And is Job happy at the end? I don’t think so. Job is penetant and accepting in the face of greater power and knowledge than his own. He “fears” God in the sense that I think Satan means at the beginning. I think the ending is no coda but the focus of the whole parable, and I don’t find it amusing.
So what is the lesson? Well, Satan clearly implies that Job’s righteousness, which God is bragging about, is due to his good fortune in life. He suggests to that Job’s good conduct and specifically “fear” of God is not meaningful because it has not been tested by adversity. So God lets Satan torment Job to prove otherwise. One cannot simply say God was “involved” in Job’s suffering. Having the ability and authority to give or withold permission from Job’s tormentor, Satan, God is responsible in the same way that any authority is responsible for permitting or directing a subordinate to do evil. Even more so than among humans, since God’s authority is abssolute and unquestionable.
Job’s friends seem to be saying that either Job deserves the suffering for doing something wrong (because God must be just), or that God simply cannot be called to account for what he does. God does rebuke them at the end, which would seem to be a rejection of these perspectives. However, God also rebukes Job by asking him rhetorical questions which he clearly cannot answer. And Job himself expresses contrition for what he has said, which has been mostly protesting his innocence and the njustice of what he has suffered, without directly condemning God for allowing it. And what does God offer. Only that he has powers and knowledge Job does not. And Job accepts this saying “I know that thous canst do all things, and no thought is hidden from thee...Therefore I have spoken unwisely, and things that above measure exceeded my knowledge...Therefore I reprehend myself and do penance in dust and ashes.” So the final lesson appears to eb that God has wisdom and power so far beyond humans that even complaining of one’s suffering as unjust, without directly cursing God for it, is wrong. Good and evil are all part of a plan we cannot comprehend and must be accepted as such. This doesn’t sound all that different from what Bildad and Zophar had to say, so why they are wrong I’m not entirely sure.
(2) The author does not tell us that Yahweh gave powers to the character ‘Adversary’ that Adversary didn’t already possess. All the author puts into Yahweh’s mouth is something like ‘Look here, you have power over him’ not ‘Let you have power over him.’ That Yahweh somehow is visiting evils on Job because Adversary tempts him to do so is a common mistake in reading this story.
As I said before, sophistry. God permits the acts of Satan to prove a point when he clearly is in a position to control what happens. The whole monologue at the end is about how incomparably powerful he is, so it’s nonsense to say he is not ultimately responsible for everything that happens, including the acts of Satan.
(3) Yahweh threatens or warns Adversary each time: “Look there’s Job, and here you are -” Yahweh grabs Adversary by the collar and narrows his eyes a bit - ‘but don’t hurt him” he says in the first part, then ‘Dont’ kill him’ in the second. Adversary ends up hurting Job anyway, and in my opinion Job symbolically dies (recall that this is the about the 6th century BC: salvation for more than kings was much in the air. The wife is a good example of the older thought that once you’re dead, that’s it: ‘The dead don’t praise Thee/ Neither do they who go down below’, an early psalm says.) The Adversary is foiled exactly because suffering, and even death, are in fact just food for the just and pious man to become even more of what Adversary is so envious of. Or that is the Author’s thought, so it seems.
I don’t think so. I think God sets limits not to protect Job or threaten Satan but becuase he could hardly prove his point if Job were dead and unable to behave righteously in the face of adversity. The Adversary is “foiled” only in the sense that Job continues, more or less, to be worshipful of God despite his suffering. But remember God rebukes Job at the end and Job rebukes himself, so his faith is not perfect, just good enough. And we don’t get any “I toild you so, nyah nyah” from God to Satan at the end to suggest that God’s relationship with Satan is as you paint it. I think the conventional understanding that Satan is a tool by which God tests men is much more likely.
(4) The facts of the story are that Adversary keeps *tempting* God to do act against Job Himself, through a weird set of hypothetical negatives of the form: “If you were to be not like you are, Yahweh, then Job would not be like he is.” But Yahweh isn’t like that, and Job isn’t like that. So A’s whole ‘case’ is counterfactual. Adversary has two targets, not one. First, he wants Job to curse God just like he, Adversary does in his heart - that’s one fact slowly being revealed to the reader in the two scenes in Yahweh’s Court. Second, Adversary wants God to will suffering, again just like Adversary does in the story. All the knowledgeable characters n the story know that: Job, the Court, Yahweh; even Adversary, who never once dares to actually contradict Yahweh. Tres interesant.
Sure, Satan wants to prove that Job’s faith is just fair weather friendship, and he mostly fails. As for the “counterfactual” business, I’m not seeing that in any of the translations I have.
(5) Just in case the reader is attracted to Adversary’s rigged case, the author gets pretty tart with anyone in the story who might support Adversary’s case: Job’s wife is an ‘idiot’; the three friends are ridiculed by ‘not noticing’ him, looking at him ‘from afar’, and talking while looking up in the air ‘to the heavens’, like a bunch of academics - like an individual’s suffering is just a data-point for a theory. (The author would have no truck with evolutionary explanations of suffering, which make the individual’s suffering irrelevant to discuss.)
You read a lot of significance into a few subtle descriptions, and I don’t think you make the case here. I agree, the author isn’t likely to expect people to sympathise with Satan. That’s a much more modern phenomenon. Milton probaly wouldn’t have understood how people today can see his Satan as glamorous either.
(6) There IS a place in the story that an atheist might like. Probably the three friends section is the author’s indictment of traditional religious or cultural answers to Job’s suffering, all of which assume it’s Job’s fault wihout actually noticing that it can’t be Job’s fault, since the author already told us he’s the perfectly just and pious man.
Agreed.
(7) Another common mistake: every bad action isn’t just done by Adversary, he’s the cause of the whole contest. Even Yahweh’s disgusted with him: ‘You *used* Me against Job’ is Yahweh’s tart reply to Adversary at the beginning of the second test in chapter 2. God’s goodness gave Adversary the freedom to display his character, and Adversary is all too eager to oblige. It would be hard to imagine a world where we are free to decide and yet are stopped from carrying out every act of ill-will.
Again, Satan causes the contest, but God clearly controls what he does and allows or limikts it as he sees fit, which makes him the responsible party. All you seem to be saying is the old free-will cliche, that God has to let us do evil to innocents as part of are free will and that that is a sign of his goodness. Buffalo chips!
(8) Yahweh and Adversary make two claims: Y’s claim is that A is an envious SOB who’s ill-willed right to the core; A instead blames God for being a softie, and having unchallenged worshippers like Job. The author firmly shows that A’s case is utterly false; by extension, A’s own actions makes Y’s original charge obvious to the Court watching the events - and that Court is us, the readers. The whole thrust of the story is “Which story is the better, Yahweh’s or Adbersary’s?”
What you’re ignoring is that it’s not the 6th century BC and the “thrust of the story” may be that you’d better tow the line and not ask questions because God is bigger and smarter than you, but that is a message which no longer strikes us as healthy or just. The disagreement is not so much about what the author meant as what the story means. And what it means to many modern readers is that an all-powerful God who knowingly permits evil against the innocent is not a God to be respected or worshipped even if he is bigger and smarter than we are. It takes a bit of effort even for many of the faithful to overcome a reflex sense of outrage at what God permits Satan to do to Job. That is a reflection of shifts in values from the time of the writing of the story. So while you are often (though not always) correct IMHO about what the author intended, I think that somewhat misses the point. What does the story mean to us now is more important.
Basically, God rebukes Job’s friends, then rebukes Job through a series of unanswerable rhetorical questions showing he’s bigger and smarter than humans. Job then rebukes himself, accepts that he knows less than God and repents, at which point God restores all his stuff and gives him a new family. The lesson, I think, is that we’d best not only avoid cursing God for injustice but not even protest our innocence or ask why we suffer because we aren’t able to udnerstand.
Yup, as simple as it gets.
At least, I’ve shown that the statements you are so confident of are at least partly false, by the author’s own text. You happen not to care what the author of Job has to say. That’s cool, but then you’re not engaging with *that* story, but with some other story where a man is punished by God for no good reason. That just isn’t the story of Job.
How much simpler can *I* make it?
Since I do read condescension and irony in your lines, I think it is just fair to, after all these pages of discussions, expect from you a simple summary of your interpretation of this short story. Now, if you honestly believe the story is SO complicated that requires so many considerations for a correct interpretation, I would say the text is far from reaching any practical objective, including delivering a comprehensible message.
Since I do read condescension and irony in your lines . . .
Hi Zeis.
Yes. But what about Job? What about suffering?
You know, it would be a little too ironical if we got into a serious discussion on a book of the Bible. It just occurred to me suddenly, i swear.
But as a theist case explaning suffering? The actual story - versus the cartoon versions of it, and our own feelings when suffering - is psychologically real and understandable. And so maybe as a consequence, it makes belief in gods under suffering not irrational - not anti-genes, not bad for the group, not ultimately bad for the species or population. Maybe the feelign that religion is dangerous is not *the* Atheist delusion, but *maybe* fear that religious belief is a mere evolutionary mistake or even dangerous is one “delusion” (let’s find a weaker word, please!). So maybe we ought to turn this thread to discussing that. I don’t think atheism is dangerous, but i’m willing to play the part.
The rhetorical questions at the end of Job answer themselves: “Do you do that? No, I do that.” They appear to give attributes of Yahweh. The heavenly court and the reader are watching, and so is Adversary/Satan: so the test has come to the crunch. The demand for an accounting is just the excuse Yahweh needs to do several things at once: grant Job’s plea at last, show the court he has won, and make Job an independent witness against Adversary - not even Yahweh will just accuse a man on just his own divine account, it seems.
Btw, someone called calling God only the ‘source’ and not blameworthy a quibble. Not to the author, it seems. Through Job he’s already admitted God’s the ground of good and evil when Job blamed his wife for believing only good is ‘of’ God. This isn’t exactly blaming God, is it? Job only asks his pain to stop, and to bring his accuser to justice. And it all happens. As I pointed out, maybe this shows how a real divine hero helps his god out of a tough spot more than it give a theory of suffering.
I admit, this looks odd: what does Job get out of Yahweh’s ‘tirade’ as someone called it - i nice neutral word! Like I said, it seems just a short list of Yahweh’s more interesting points (the world-serpent is the foundations of the ever-moving Universe, for example). Job is rebuked I guess, but not directly; the tirade has an eye to the heavenly court, the ultimate shaming of Adversary, and the ultimate victory of Job’s god. And so Yahweh decides to play to the crowd. ”Who’s the king around here, as if we needed reminding?” This is the win, after all, and in front of the humbled court and especially Adversary. Maybe even we are supposed to imagine Job, after demanding a hearing was transported to the court so that he knows his full role as well; maybe not.
expect from you a simple summary of your interpretation of this short story.
Okay now, just a moment. My comments about the story have been called too complicated, too simple, post-modern, and maybe a couple of bad words that didn’t get it to print. All I’ve been doing is re-reading this along with you, and it’s not really, *really* THAT hard. I haven’t taken a bible-class on this, for pity’s sake. I’m just reading a book that’s a classic on suffering. If you care to hear gossip, I don’t read the bible much. All i really said at the very beginning of this little fest was ‘Job’s a good thing to read, what?’ And I knew one or two things from the last time i read it years ago. And then I started re-reading it about a few days ago.
And truly now, don’t you think at least some of those early comments you guys made were made in haste?
[quote Now, if you honestly believe the story is SO complicated that requires so many considerations for a correct interpretation, I would say the text is far from reaching any practical objective, including delivering a comprehensible message.
Comments like this. And reading sentences is not ‘so many considerations. Yes, yes, yes, i already know how you feel about me, and my writing. I know. But what about Job? What about suffering? Your feelings can’t be *that* hurt you have to stop so often just to kick me after you prove me wrong? Where’d I get the idea to be rude from? Sheesh.
Apologies, yes. But i’m not going to be *supine* about it. You know my writing sins, i know them. Who benefits if you continue? You do. But what about Job? What about suffering? What about the supposed atheist delusion, singular or plural?
Obviously, in the end, the complexity of an interpretation falls on a personal level. But we all know that there is a need for a more
universal, and hopefully practical, interpretation of this text for liturgical purposes. Well, with Occam’s permission, allow me to use his five point summary to interpret this as any ordinary theist should.
1. Job is good and honest man.
(and fears God, the way it’s supposed to be)
2. He has not done anything to warrant
punishment.
(but, since the adversary is in the mood to accuse someone, Job is out of luck. God also feels like proving a point and gives the go ahead)
3. He is put through a great deal of torture.
(See? God is so cool that He EVEN allows Job to choose his fate. How’s that for free will? Nevermind, God is omniscient and knows that Job is an obedient guy and his faith won’t break)
4. He asks why he is being tortured.
(well, people ask that all the time, particularly when things get though. Didn’t Jesus do the same thing a couple years later?
Sacrifice has its price)
5. God tells him that he has no justification for asking that question.
(Yup, don’t worry about all that suffering. God knows better, and rewards the man of UZ for not losing his faith. Job becomes a really happy old guy. Hey, gehenna can be a pain if you don’t take your fear seriously)
Now, aren’t those the messages theists are supposed to get? Am I missing anything *really relevant* to the comprehension of this text?
That’s cool, but then you’re not engaging with *that* story, but with some other story where a man is punished by God for no good reason. That just isn’t the story of Job. How much simpler can *I* make it?
There is no need, you were pretty clear. But I am glad I can interpret the story that *I* am reading.
For one reason, it’s consistent with my take, so the intersection of our takes is one hypothesis or theory about unjust suffering from a theist.
Hrm. The story is bad news for only one type of non-theism, “anti-theism” or whatever we choose to call it. Somehow - says the poet - it’s the opposite of success - it’s utter failure, ‘like’ the utter failure of a divine angel to overthrow the true gods.
What makes it an unsuccessful spring of action is the way it hates a neighbor just for having deluded beliefs, yet be happy with the warm (yet really deluded) feeling of being in some real chummy relation with ‘his’ god - who’s God.
That’s a *little* bit like Doug claiming that he’s become a devoted and intimate student of Socrates (dead lo, these thirty centuries). And then, damn his eyes, it actually shows in him. Even stranger, Socrates somehow is not interacting with me at all, who am rather interested in talking to Socrates also. That’s one helluva relationship and happiness to be claiming.
(1) So how about that provocative title for that Salon article, huh? It was a quote, and too late it looks like a poke in the eye of the forum. Aiee. But! The poet’s “adversary” is a not implausible ‘editorial cartoon’ of the attitude (not the content or actual ‘arguments’) of a subset of the “New Atheist” style of spreading knowledge.
Generalized atheists and naturalists would (naturally enough) desire to spread three very admirable things: the particular natural sciences, natural science as a whole, and naturalism generically, as a method and worldview over all else, the best and even only way to properly think about everything. I have a bone to pick with the last of the three; but let bloom a thousand think-tanks, endowments and quack exposures.
But suppose a man who like James Randi wants to stamp out pseudo-science, but has this doubt: “Yes,” he thinks, “I would indeed pony up a standing bet for verifiable, Mother Cleo type extra-sensory stuff - if only you could show me such an investment is effective. Is this tactic going to work, or will there be at least as many Cleos and Cleo-believers as before? For,” the cautious debunker thinks, “I might be “deluded” about that method’s effectiveness.”
(2) So another way to complain about the ‘New Atheist’ way of persuasion is that it’s not proven to be effective. In fact, it might even be provably ineffective or even counterproductive, and maybe even counterproductive to the other two things theists and naturalists can agree on, promoting general scientific method, and every natural fact and every natural science.
But let’s drop the “deluded.” That implies some sort of hardened, deep habit of being - too close to the cartoonishly mean-spirited character of the Job poet. That’s a warning first, and only second potential biography. Any man might become an SOB, occasionally, accidentally, ironically and in any context; it’s general methods and tactics for increasing natural science to the public that’s a more interesting problem.
I’m a fan of Socrates, particularly of the early dialogues, but he hasn’t been chatting to me.
We can perhaps find some common ground on the issue about what is the proper tack to take for the New Atheists—my own feeling, as I’ve said many times, is that this is a big tent and there is room for a number of quite different strategies. Yes, the “deluded” of Dawkins’s title was perhaps a bit overly provocative, OTOH one really can’t argue with the success he’s had in getting these topics on the international stage. (What? People actually talking about atheism in public?)
As for Job, ZeiS’s response makes quite clear that the God who tortured Job was not perfectly good. And the mention of Jesus as well is quite telling, as that story as well clinches the case. The God of both Old and New Testaments is something of a tyrannical and egotistical monster.
So let’s look at your interpretation:
So what is the lesson? . . . Job’s righteousness, which God is bragging about . . . God lets Satan torment Job to prove otherwise. . . God is responsible in the same way that any authority is responsible for permitting or directing a subordinate to do evil. . . .
‘Bragging’ is too sixth-century BC to retain, true. There’s an old but still widely-accepted argument: Free will in the world is better than no free will, and we typically think that typical free will has to allow for voluntary unjust evils and so unjust sufferings. (Remember, we’re deep in non-naturalist territory here. If you could get a good argument about unjust suffering, you’ve struck at a key point, since everyone whatsoever suffers, and it’s rather a stretch to think that atheism will one day just sweep the globe as science marches on. For the bulk of humankind still worship their ancestors, or like my pacific friends placate the local vu every time they drink a certain drink, or all the other humble peasants who are heartily skeptical of all this kind of ‘learning’. Everyone wants to know God, even to say to hell with him and his lousy world, or disinterestedly think ‘well, who knew? Happy life’. It’s good to have an argument anhyone can understand, not just people educated in certain sciences or in ‘science’ or in ‘critical thinking’ - it should be understandable to any jury-member.
So the final lesson appears to eb that God has wisdom and power so far beyond humans that even complaining of one’s suffering as unjust, without directly cursing God for it, is wrong. Good and evil are all part of a plan we cannot comprehend and must be accepted as such. This doesn’t sound all that different from what Bildad and Zophar had to say, so why they are wrong I’m not entirely sure.
Hm. Maybe because Job’s a perfect example - he’s got what it takes, and so gets to see God before death - come to think of it, God appears directly to precious few men in the Old Testament. That does limit its application. I’m no Job, and neither are you. But you’re lucky - you won’t get used like Job. You jus thave to worry about your ordinary neighbors. Maybe - just maybe - an atheist can transfer this to a ‘charitable feeling’ or Hume’s ‘limited benevolence’ that he thinks needs to be posited to support groups. So the story strictly is the testing of a convert, of the man both just ‘and’ pious. So maybe Job’s breached his special relationship. Job knows Who he’s dealing with. An atheist or say, Job’s weak wife, or his rather academic friends with the worthless indirect reasoning mixed with their friendly compassion - all of them wouldn’t have to suffer that way. Only those who dare to want to know God like that would be ‘honored’ with a little divine game of dice, even if the dice are always in the god’s favor.
. . .God permits the acts of Satan to prove a point when he clearly is in a position to control what happens.
For the standard argument about unjust suffering (not quite Job), Augustine thought it was rather obvious that: (1) A world where there’s free will is better and therefore more likely to be than a world that doesn’t have that, and (2) Free will entails that it must be permissible for anything with a free will to caus unjust suffering.
Those are the parts of an old and pretty standard way to explain unjust and unnecessary suffering. The ‘unnecessary’ part is the people suffering collaterally, by accident and natural disasters and such. It’s a typical philosopher’s move to give the theists a ‘pass’ on putting the blame on the gods for the terrorists and your neighbors. Otherwise, we’re acting just like the terrorist who says it’s ‘your fault’ if he kills the hostages.
The stronger move is to attack the various answers to wider, unnecessary suffering - which is often part of what people commonly mean when they say ‘unjust’. Some evolutionists like to play up the animal suffering too. The poet would have been less than moved by our modern feelings about animals.
The whole monologue at the end is about how incomparably powerful he is, so it’s nonsense to say he is not ultimately responsible for everything that happens, including the acts of Satan.
Well, no, not nonsense. Job at least is careful not to blame God directly. (The poet seems to want Job to be perfectly just, at least - thus one piec of evidence that his sin is a breach of his perfect piety. Remember, he’s perfect still when he calls his wife’s so-called knowledge worthless. Yes, he says, of course I’ll bless God and die - that’s not the important point.’
Yes, Job does complain a lot, and no wonder. But - well, if it’s sophistry, it’s the poet’s sophistry. It seems the right way to characterize the special relationship of a man with his personal god who’s also the great “omni-god” of the theist philosophers. The part about Job getting even better for the suffering is a test-point: does that seem right to you? Heh - maybe at times Flanders is a Job type to the writers of the Simpsons!
Again, Satan causes the contest, but God clearly controls what he does and allows or limikts it as he sees fit, which makes him the responsible party. All you seem to be saying is the old free-will cliche, that God has to let us do evil to innocents as part of are free will and that that is a sign of his goodness. Buffalo chips!
Not the smelliest of the philosophical buffalo chips, neither: the original argument of Augustine blamed the unnecessary kind of suffering on the fallen, demonic angels, powerful and malevolent. Sorry, I got a bit Tolkeinish there. There’s other fixes. The Job poet’s fix is to ignore it and go for something even the hardened religious nut must face - unlike Job, it is far more likely his ability to balance a checkbook is a measure of his success in this life than his piety. I guess if you could put up a rival theory to that specific point, that would be quite a trick against the ‘personalist’ theists. (The “thin” , impersonal philosophy-gods get a free pass here, since they don’t have to be benevolent at all, and it’s hard to see how some of them could be.)
Thanks for continuing this. I’m glad for the help to spot the ‘divine champion’ part of Job. That makes the argument implied in the story both interesting but not the whole story about suffering.
For the standard argument about unjust suffering (not quite Job), Augustine thought it was rather obvious that: (1) A world where there’s free will is better and therefore more likely to be than a world that doesn’t have that, and (2) Free will entails that it must be permissible for anything with a free will to caus unjust suffering.
Those are the parts of an old and pretty standard way to explain unjust and unnecessary suffering. The ‘unnecessary’ part is the people suffering collaterally, by accident and natural disasters and such. It’s a typical philosopher’s move to give the theists a ‘pass’ on putting the blame on the gods for the terrorists and your neighbors. Otherwise, we’re acting just like the terrorist who says it’s ‘your fault’ if he kills the hostages.
The stronger move is to attack the various answers to wider, unnecessary suffering - which is often part of what people commonly mean when they say ‘unjust’. Some evolutionists like to play up the animal suffering too. The poet would have been less than moved by our modern feelings about animals.
<snip>
Not the smelliest of the philosophical buffalo chips, neither: the original argument of Augustine blamed the unnecessary kind of suffering on the fallen, demonic angels, powerful and malevolent. Sorry, I got a bit Tolkeinish there. There’s other fixes. The Job poet’s fix is to ignore it and go for something even the hardened religious nut must face - unlike Job, it is far more likely his ability to balance a checkbook is a measure of his success in this life than his piety. I guess if you could put up a rival theory to that specific point, that would be quite a trick against the ‘personalist’ theists. (The “thin” , impersonal philosophy-gods get a free pass here, since they don’t have to be benevolent at all, and it’s hard to see how some of them could be.)
Yes, it’s a standard move at least since Augustine to blame the evil that humans do to one another on free will. Of course, that won’t do, first of all since the libertarian view of free will is incoherent. An action is free precisely because it is caused by one’s beliefs and desires, or the antecedent states of one’s mind; this is something which may well pertain to a naturalist vision, but it does go back at least to the ancient Greeks so it is nothing particularly newfangled.
So libertarian free will is a nonstarter.
And if we are going to deal with compatibilist free will instead, then God set things up a certain way and can well tell where they’re going. Just as we blame the person who left off the parking brake on his car, when his car torpedoed down the mountain and killed someone, so we must blame God for human evil on any sort of compatibilist metaphysics.
It is also, one should add, entirely a red herring for Augustine, since he also believes (quite separately in fact) that in order to be blessed we require God’s antecedent grace, and this grace is not given to us because of what we do in this life, as a reward, for instance. Indeed, so far as I can tell, Augustine has no idea whatever as to why God should provide some people with grace and withhold it from others.
So even if we (per imposible) allow God to get off the hook for human cruelty by means of an obscure “uncaused cause” behind every human action, even if we say that God creates ‘em and then they get to run off the cliff if their libertarian free will allows them, still and all whether the person is chosen to be heavenly material or not is something entirely up to God’s antecedent will, in his free granting of grace to some and withholding grace from others.
So: God is clearly evil in withholding grace from any created being.
Then we have the additional problem of natural evils, as you note in passing: earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, plagues, infections, cancer, et cetera. None of them are due to human acts, so once again none of them can be explained away by means of libertarian free will. They are due to God’s will, and so God is a mass murderer.
And then there’s the whole issue of Jesus. Of course, if we actually take the history seriously, Jesus himself was a Jewish messianic figure who believed the world was going to end in his lifetime. It wasn’t until Paul that the message got broadcast to gentiles, and Paul too believed that the world would be ending soon. Neither of them was remotely correct of course, which makes it quite odd why we should be taking seriously any of the rest of their message. However, assuming we are prone to do so, why would a perfectly benevolent God need to torture his own son to death in order to expunge the “sins” of the world? First of all, original sin is itself unethical. We are not responsible for the sins of our fathers, so cannot be condemned for them. (And certainly we can’t be condemned for the acts of a couple of fictional characters, Adam and Eve, but that’s a separate issue). And even if we do at times engage in unethical action, God certainly doesn’t require the torture of his son in order to expunge them. He can well do so at will. Et cetera.
Yes, it’s a standard move at least since Augustine to blame the evil that humans do to one another on free will.
A not-quite quibble: It’ a standard move to blame the evil that humans do on the humans who do it. It’s misleading to pick something to ‘blame’ that’s a little closer to his responsibility - his granting of free will - instead of the humans who act unjustly against others, who use their free will (granted by God).
Yes, yes, yes. I know you find ‘of God’ and ‘acting unjustly’ to be no real difference. Heh. I’m pretty confident that the ordinary man all over the world doesn’t have a big problem being a theist and still not blaming God for the actions of others. (The poor wretches who lose loved ones in the prime of life aren’t typical. In law we typically don’t let the victims be the judges, because they are too involved.) Most of the world will always live a hard enough life to find the suffering from his neighbor to be no problem about the existence of their gods. The atheist attack is the non-starter, over the population of humans. It’s - unsuccessful. So far.
Then we have the additional problem of natural evils, as you note in passing: earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, plagues, infections, cancer, et cetera. None of them are due to human acts, so once again none of them can be explained away by means of libertarian free will. They are due to God’s will, and so God is a mass murderer.
Hrm. The Job poet doesn’t think losing your goods is suffering enough to concern himself with. They’re just things; Job’s wife’s response isn’t adult enough, and I’m afraid on that I agree with him. Again, it seems ancient human practice to keep believing in the face of this. The world isn’t easy to understand, and we aren’t quite as smart as Job, so most of the world has a high tolerance for being unclear about the reasons for ‘fate.’
The killing of millions who will likely be example to no-one is an ‘interesting’ big problem. There’s a knotty problem with animal suffering.
However, assuming we are prone to do so, why would a perfectly benevolent God need to torture his own son to death in order to expunge the “sins” of the world?
Well. First, the operative word is ‘gave’. Allegedly, he ‘gave’ his Son. And some humans in the world did with him - well, they did what they willed. So you’re just back to repeating that there’s no good difference between being the ‘ground’ and ‘agent’ of injustice. Further, well, Jesus is supposed to be God Himself, not another Job. If it’s crazy - it’s not the crazy of a king using his distinctly different human champion.
As for ‘original’ sin. The word’s latinate - where’d it orginate or start? It doesn’t say how, or that it’s ingrained in the species, or even that God put it there. Hm. Maybe sin is like morals - i get my morals from other people. they teach it to me. There’s a recognizable way to get something. And guess what? My parents don’t teach me perfectly. Neither does society. And their parents got it partly right and partly wrong too. that’s just a gesture to your objection.
Well, the free will angle is certainly an old standard. It doesn’t move me because 1) I am something of a determinist/compatibilist and don’t really believe in it (cf the lengthy and tedious threads on the topic here), 2) it doesn’t seem to me adequate to get God off the hook. It is one thing to say he has to let humans do evil because it’s better for them to be free and do so than to be mere machines enacting his divine plan. But that doesn’t mean God should deliberately allow evil to be done to someone he knows is righteous just to prove a point. If you want to stick strictly to the story, there really isn’t a strong case to be made that God is protecting free will by using Job as he does.
Anyway, you seem to want to judge the actors as the author would, by 6th century standards. Fair enough if you’re just trying to elucidate what those standards were and making a little foray into historicist literary studies. But it begs the question of what we as moderns see as the message and the right or wrong in the story. Even commited theists often have trouble with the image of God as portrayed because what we want and expect from a just/loving Creator is different from the 6th century. I think the point Occam and I and Zeis are making is that by modern standards, theist as well as naturalist/non-theist, God is unjust in this story, and the moral that we can’t or shouldn’t judge him doesn’t resonate with a very wide audience anymore. The reason for God to allow the suffering does not seem adequate to justify it. I don’t think this is an argument difficult for non-naturalists or theists.
I’m pretty confident that the ordinary man all over the world doesn’t have a big problem being a theist and still not blaming God for the actions of others.
Yes, it’s called fuzzy thinking, or being convinced by a rhetorical move. Or just as likely, implicitly thinking of God as the ur-Godfather: a nasty enough piece of work to be sure, but the guy who might pay you off in big coin if you pull water for him long enough.
... which is not precisely consistent with the pure-as-snow God of the theologians ...
inthegobi - 06 January 2008 06:40 PM
Hrm. The Job poet doesn’t think losing your goods is suffering enough to concern himself with. They’re just things; Job’s wife’s response isn’t adult enough, and I’m afraid on that I agree with him.
An odd response, since I wasn’t talking about losing goods. I was talking about lives lost to natural disasters and illness. You note that it is “an ‘interesting’ big problem.” I must agree; that’s to put it mildly. It’s actually quite fatal to a certain conception of the deity.
inthegobi - 06 January 2008 06:40 PM
Well. First, the operative word is ‘gave’. Allegedly, he ‘gave’ his Son. And some humans in the world did with him - well, they did what they willed. So you’re just back to repeating that there’s no good difference between being the ‘ground’ and ‘agent’ of injustice. Further, well, Jesus is supposed to be God Himself, not another Job. If it’s crazy - it’s not the crazy of a king using his distinctly different human champion.
“Gave” is a vague word, not nearly so descriptive as “nailed to a piece of wood and hung up to die of asphyxiation”, which is what crucifixion amounted to. (And it was quite a standard punishment in the day, as I’m sure you know. The Romans were known to crucify thousands in a single encounter if it pleased them).
And although Jesus is supposed to be God, he’s also supposed to be fully human, which is to say, not God. And of course this is a plain contradiction, but then I didn’t come up with the Trinity so I can’t be responsible for it. At any rate, it’s standard Christian teaching that Jesus was fully human and so fully suffered as any human would. One can’t get round his apparent suffering by claiming that he was a deity so it wasn’t real. At least you can’t unless you go in for heresy.
inthegobi - 06 January 2008 06:40 PM
As for ‘original’ sin. The word’s latinate - where’d it orginate or start? It doesn’t say how, or that it’s ingrained in the species, or even that God put it there. Hm. Maybe sin is like morals - i get my morals from other people. they teach it to me. There’s a recognizable way to get something. And guess what? My parents don’t teach me perfectly. Neither does society. And their parents got it partly right and partly wrong too. that’s just a gesture to your objection.
Since God is supposed to have created the world, including all that is in it, and to be otherwise omnicompetent, he is ipso facto responsible for the way things turned out. Now, as we’ve already noticed, there is a sleight-of-hand with free will. However, even allowing that move out of charity, God is still responsible for the way humanity was set up. That is, he’s responsible for the origin of sin. He’s responsible for having left the snake in the garden. He’s responsible for giving some people grace and withholding it from others. There’s simply no consistent way out of this, and the standard theological moves I’ve seen when discussing this sort of evidence is to go immediately for masses of obscurantism.
