(26 votes, average: 4.85 out of 5)
Loading...In my last post I discussed two things that get under my skin in professional contexts, making me blow my top (to mix the metaphor): ignorance posing as expertise (not just in biblical studies but generally) and facile answers, by “experts,” to the biggest personal/philosophical/religious problem people have to face, why there is suffering in the world if there is an all powerful and loving God in charge of it.
As I pointed out, I have no problem with people in general not knowing lots of things. I don’t know massive amounts of things. But I at least acknowledge it and try not to pretend to be an expert in something I have only a casual knowledge of.
And I have no objection to people having answers that make sense to them, explaining why they themselves, or those they love, or the millions of people they don’t know experience such misery and pain, suffering in extremis. I do object when people who claim to be experts spread simplistic answers to difficult questions without bothering to think deeply about them.
In my post I was discussing a podcast I did with a Muslim author (he’s an American who converted to Islam) who wanted to explain why suffering is simply not a problem for someone like him. Let me stress as strongly as I can, I have no problem with Islam or with Muslims, including converts to Islam, any more than I have any problem with Christians, Jews, Bahais, Hindus, Buddhists, or anyone else. I have problems with apologists who present themselves as thinkers when it appears they haven’t thought much.
In my previous post I mentioned that this fellow wanted to argue that
Want to keep reading? It’s easy and inexpensive to join the blog, and your entire fee goes to help those in need. So go for it! Click here for membership options
The biblical literalists often source Genesis 2 – the curses on Adam & Eve implicit in their names following their transgression. But Adam’s curse doesn’t make much sense given they were only subsequently expelled from Eden lest they eat from the Tree of Life – would Adam have otherwise had to toil the earth within the garden of Eden?
You have no idea how much I relate to this particular post. For me, it’s the best I’ve read here. I’ve had these conversations hundreds of times, and virtually the same thoughts you’ve expressed here cross my mind as well. I too am an agnostic atheist and have rejected the God hypothesis for many reasons (in broad strokes, it doesn’t make sense whichever way I see it, intellectually or intuitively), but the main one is also for me the problem of suffering. And I cannot stress enough how much it irritates me to read these idiotic “explanations”.
“I have problems with apologists who present themselves as thinkers when it appears they haven’t thought much”: literally 95% of people who talk about this issue. Thank you for this post and for your amazing work!
The “problem of suffering,” of course, is also a problem for the people who are actually suffering. I think the reason that people fall back on these superficial answers is a tacit acknowledgement that they have no better answers. While some of the responses might indeed apply as “benefits” of suffering, in some way, they rarely serve as a genuine purpose and certainly as an actual justification. A little hardship might make us stronger, but a lot of suffering is usually little more than just excessive suffering. Platitudes of this sort become platitudes precisely because they provide a means by which one might stop pondering the imponderable. The idea that the world (and the universe) is actually a cold and uncaring place where we are likely to face any number of problems, and eventually die and simply cease to exist is too bleak. We all need a little bit of lying to ourselves to get out of bed in the morning, and face a new day.
“The idea that the world (and the universe) is actually a cold and uncaring place where we are likely to face any number of problems, and eventually die and simply cease to exist is too bleak.”
I emphatically disagree. If that is the true description of the universe (as I think it is), then it is our obligation to face it and accept it, not to make up fairy tales so that we feel better. I believe that the universe IS “cold and uncaring” — or rather, that there is no consciousness behind the universe so “caring” is a meaningless term — and I have no problem whatsoever getting out of bed and facing the day.
Re: The answer of Swineburne (& others). See John 9:1-3. The disciples ask a stupid question, assuming either (1) people can sin before birth (reincarnationists love this verse) or (2) children are punished for parental sins (vs, say, Jer. 31:29-30, Ezek. 18:20). Jesus gives an appalling answer (but consistent with Swineburne): 20? 30? 40? years of suffering blindness so Jesus could come along and heal him to demonstrate God’s goodness.
Love this. Thanks.
“incredibly offensive and smug and self centered.” You, Professor Ehrman, are being entirely too generous!
🙂 A theme of mine – Bart’s kindness. Sometimes I mutter under my breath “Do some smiting, wouldya?”
Was this an issue that Roman pagans in antiquity stressed out over at all? Sure, maybe there’s hostile gods to explain some suffering, but there were still surely many unanswered prayers to Jupiter to go clean up the problems other deities stirred up. Did Romans fall back on assuming that someone had offended the gods and they were being collectively punished, vaguely similar to Old Testament God of Abraham? Just assume Jupiter/Juno/Minerva/etc. were too busy to bother with the troubles of peons like them?
Oh yes, the “problem of suffering” is expressed quite forcefully by some of the ancient Greek philosophers.
It is even more difficult to understand suffering from the premise that God is an external, extraterrestrial being, outside of ourselves. Reconciling suffering with an all love, all powerful entity seems contradictory, which I think is just that.
For me, who thinks that the biblical stories and messages are in basic attempts to reflect oneness with God, primarely on an inner level. I think that the basic part at least in the OT, and a lot of Jesus’ /Pauls meassages seems to suggest that. In my mind, even the Revelation expresses a concept that most people on earth could have believed when it was written (the concept is very similar to Eastern religion (s) that 2/3 of the world’s population could potentially have in their religious system) , but in a Judeo-Christian guise.
This is not a free ticket to any solution but at least a way to adress a WHOLE LOT of sufferings, both physically and mentally. We are ourself builders of our own experience, even more collectively, to a certain degree at least, and we should start with ourself, both on a personal and collective level. We can at least adress and help /stop a lot of sufferings by our own choices, our own day to day efforts.
It seems to me that we lack this conciousness or willingness, even though it should not be that difficult.
So, at least we should start with ourself, and we can do a lot !
“We are ourself builders of our own experience, even more collectively, to a certain degree at least, and we should start with ourself, both on a personal and collective level. We can at least adress and help /stop a lot of sufferings by our own choices, our own day to day efforts.”
I have always felt a similiar way and believe that though many have the best of intentions, our physical world and those who live in it are the actual reason for the suffering. We are, in a way a mirror for the lives we choose to live, both singularly and collectively. Personally for that reason, I’ve never put that on God. This world is what we’ve actually made it.
I have recently been reading on the blog your thoughts about the women as witnesses to the empty tomb. One of your arguments suggests that it had to be women because the men had run away – “since they had already fled and were probably back in Galilee at the time it would have happened.” (Oct 10, 2012)
It has suddenly struck me that if you are correct and they did indeed flee all the way back to Galilee then Peter and ‘the other disciple’ would not have been on hand to run to the tomb to verify the women’s claim. Please can you comment?
As an unrelated point, what I always find very disconcerting when I look back at the blog in past years is that your answers are accompanied by a picture of a guy who does not appear to be you!
Do you have any idea why this happens please?
That’s right. That story is in John and I don’t think it’s historical.
Do you mean I’m getting older in my geezerhood? Oh boy I wish I knew what that happens…
I see the same on old posts. It’s the profile image of user z8000783 that somehow appears beside your comments instead of the one you have here on newer posts. Seems like a bug to me and I’ve seen other comments asking you about that problem where you answered similarly puzzled
Whoa. OK, I’ll look into it. It would help if you could tell me a post or two with that happening?
I suspect they are referring to such photos as the one that accompanies your reply to a blog member on Feb 20, 2015. The post is titled “Apocalypticism and Apocalypses.”
Thanks!
Here’s a post where multiple of your responses appear to have the incorrect picture:
https://ehrmanblog.org/academic-fraud-at-the-highest-levels/
Thanks.
Check out “Textual Criticism Syllabus”, August 29, 2015. This is one of many posts where the snapshot by your comments is of an older whitehaired guy.
For me it seems to start happening around posts from November 2020. In https://ehrmanblog.org/why-scribes-changed-their-manuscripts/ I see comments with both, your correct and the wrong profile pic.
One of your comments from November 22 has the new one and November 20 has the wrong one. The correct source of the image is https://ehrmanblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Bart-Ehrman-125×125-1.jpg and in the wrong one https://ehrmanblog.org/wp-content/uploads/IMG_5026-66×66.jpg is used. Sadly out of the sources I can see in my browser I can’t derive any conclusion as to why another images is in the src attribute, I guess that happens backendside in WordPress because of some strange reason (sorry for the tech babbling but I’m a WebDev by trade so it interests me)
Thanks!
I’ve noticed the same as Silver – on older posts, there seems to be a technical error where some other guy’s photo accompanies your replies. It’s a bit weird as I’m fairly sure it’s not you, Bart!
Let me know an example or two if it’s easy enough to do.
Here are a couple of examples. I had a fresh look and it’s definitely not you:
https://ehrmanblog.org/the-discovery-of-lost-documents/
https://ehrmanblog.org/st-catherines-monastery/
Thanks. I don’t appear to get the same look as you do for the posts (since I get them as an administrator). I’ll have Ben look into it. Mighty strange!
Example: see your comments at https://ehrmanblog.org/the-son-of-man-as-divine-for-members/
Thanks!
Here’s one: https://ehrmanblog.org/cephas-and-peter-in-the-writings-of-paul-who-knew-them/
You have the second comment, so it should be easy to find.
Thanks!
I’m with Silver! Who is that guy pictured in your older posts?
The picture above is you and appears to be relatively recent. The picture shown by your older posts is somebody totally different. Not younger or with a different hairstyle — a completely different person.
Are you unaware of this different image? Surely not! If you are unaware, please check out the posts from months or years earlier.
Is your staff playing a little prank on you? Is it some sort of inside joke? I’m just very curious.
If you can point me to a couple of instances, I can look into it a bit more easily.
Concerning the image of someone else beside your responses to older posts:
look at :
Would It Matter If It HAD BEEN a First-century Copy of Mark? A Surprising Answer in the Readers’ Mailbag. May 29, 2020
or
An Official Copy of Jesus’ Death Sentence: Another Forgery? May 27, 2019
or any other date from that time or earlier. Every one I’ve checked of the older posts uses that image beside your answers.
Thanks!
You say we are here by chance, in a dangerous universe that has no thoughts. That sounds pretty dogmatic to me. Arrogant? On suffering, if you are open to the possibility that an all powerful God exists, wouldn’t that all powerful God be able to wipe away all past suffering and make it so it never happened? Is your issue with suffering just a detour that doesn’t deal with the fact that we just don’t know how everything works?
Well, I don’t mean for it to be arrogant. I’m not trying to tell anyone else what to thnk. I’m just saying that this is my view, and I believe it is a pretty common view among non-believers.
No, I’m not saying that there could not be an all-powerful God who makes it so suffering never happened int he first place. For me, again personally, I try to find reasons to think what I do, and so if there doesn’t seem to be any reason to think something — not “proof,” just some reason to make it seem more true than some other view — then I tend not to believe it. Do you think there is a reason to hold that particular view?
I guess my thought is that we humans are a speck of dust in a vast universe (s) of which we know very little. So in view of the astounding goodness in people, the amazing beauty of a child’s smile, the great selfless deeds people have done, the majesty of nature, the greatness of love….why would you choose what’s bad (suffering) to base your belief on?
My view is that we have to account for both. If someone does think the universe is mainly good and that this is a reason to think that there’s a beneficent force behind it, then the obvious question would be why there is so much unbearable misery in it. If someone thinks the universe is basically bad/awful, then they’d have to explain why there are good things in it. If someone thinks that there’s lots of good things and lots of horrible things, but they don’t think a deity is in charge, then there isn’t really a problem either way: it’s easy to explain the good and theh evil, from the perspective of physics and evolutionary pyschology.
I don’t know if the universe is bad, good or indifferent. But because I see so much that is good along with the suffering, I choose to believe that “goodness” prevails in the scheme of the universe (s). As a result, I try to live like a good person (as you do), knowing that no matter how much suffering exists, I made my mark in the universe by coming down on the side of goodness and hopefully contributing that to the grand scheme of things, whatever that is. As a liberal Christian, with the beliefs I’ve articulated, I can be comfortable envisioning Jesus as a manifestation of “goodness” or God. I don’t need to believe in the divinity of Jesus per se, or miracles, or lots of other stuff. (As an aside, when I read Raymond Brown, I was amazed at how liberal Catholic doctrine actually was, and how often it was misrepresented.)
I have similar thoughts about suffering with regard to the animal world. How about a pride of lions devouring an antelope on the veldt in Africa, sometimes while it’s still alive? Or a pod of killer whales eating a baby sperm whale alive while its mother is a thousand feet down hunting for squid. And what about the poor squid? I don’t even like to think about such things. How then does one reconcile them with the notion of an all-powerful, benevolent God in control? Why would this God allow them to take place? I don’t know.
It happens all day, every day, the whole world over. Carnivores don’t survive and omnivores don’t thrive unless they devour meat protein regularly. Maybe the lust for the taste of a juicy steak is the original sin.
Wonderfully out.
I’m curious. Do any New Testament authors address this issue? Any early Church fathers?
My view is that virtually every author of the Bible in one way or another tries to explain why people suffer.
In my view, one shouldn’t take the problem of evil in isolation. Even if this argument favors atheism rather than theism (which is something that almost? all informed people would agree on) that doesn’t mean that theism is not far more likely than atheism.
If you compare, for example, naturalism vs theism – theism does have a problem of evil and that is an argument against theism, however there are plenty of arguments against naturalism, one of which is that naturalism requires denial of free will (i.e. human beings have no more free will than a rock has. Under naturalism, we are basically robots with a delusion that we have free will).
To me, that is a far larger problem than the problem of evil under theism.
Very well put Dr Ehrman. My own observation is that when many apologists offer an explanation for believing something with inconsistent logic, or causes cruel treatment of innocents, they relish it as a chance to demonstrate their commitment. The opportunity to defend their faith, and point out that they are committed to it despite the inconsistencies is exactly what they want. They implicitly understand that you don’t look very committed by believing in things with plenty of evidence and sound logic. If you’re really committed to the faith you’ll believe with no evidence at all – which by definition is faith.
Hence you have these intentional demonstrations of commitment to a paradox, such as an ‘all powerful and all loving god’ that allows such immense suffering. So long as they are seen mounting the defence they have got their reward, irrespective of any real suffering.
Dear Dr. Ehrman,
After a long while I managed to subscribe to your blog. I’ve read several of your books and watched many of your debates and lectures. (I’ve also read some books written by christian apologists. They just don’t convince me however open I am to their opinions.) You do a great job educating people around the world. I have learned a lot from you and am very greateful for this. I don’t know how you manage to work so hard and respond to so many people. Your patience and tolerance to respond in a civilized way to aggressive and uneducated people is enviable. This, yoo, is a way of educating. I wish you good health, happiness, long life, and continued success.
By the way, I would like to ask your interlocutor how he explains suffering of non-human animals.
Perhaps I’ve said this before but one problem people have with trusting experts is that many are reticent to say “I don’t know”..they give a best guess, something that sounds plausible (to them) or once I even heard “ when my professors group got together for breakfast, what I remember is..”. I think it’s from a natural tendency to help people by answering questions, but it’s really less helpful to act as if you know something you don’t. Because once people find out you really don’t know, you have lost their trust.
As to the problem of suffering, I think it can coexist with the presence of a positive force of a (what we would call today) a supernatural nature, God, Love, etc, because I can experience that force directly. I don’t know how it works exactly, but mine is not to theologize about suffering but to help where I can.
I think a lot of people think things about a lot of things they have as yet no experience with.
My wife died fairly young. She died before my dad.
Afterwards when I would bring up something about my wife, maybe in a sad reflective way, my mom wouldn’t let me finish … she’d say “you just gotta remember the good times” and nonsense like that, she knew without experience how I should feel.
After my dad died, things changed. She needed to express her sadness through heart rending reflections and I knew exactly where she was coming from.
People with no experience or very little experience with the topic of suffering sometimes seem to know how the topic of suffering should be handled.
Thank you… for this opportunity to talk and read posts about suffering. It is helping me to navigate my own understanding. I am resting in the space now that tells me that power and love don’t coexist. I have never experienced power and love having the same face. So if I am to hope and believe in a Creator… I will opt for love and no power. It is the only thing that has a hope of making sense to me… I just wish more people would look into that idea as being possible. It seems that there are only two options… God that is all powerful and all loving… or no God at all. Neither make sense to me. But that is why I have left behind the term God to define the Artist of the Universe. Too much baggage on that three letter word. Maybe that is also my issue with the bible… it seems like a boat anchor for more people like me than wind for the sail. So glad it’s not the only place to look for the Artist of the Universe.
Your question of “why suffering?” is but one from the immense pile of “why …” questions that are out there, including all of the “why nots.” Even things we feel like we understand, we really can’t say *why* they are like they are. We can perhaps give elegant, beautifully precise mathematical equations describing *how* this or that behaves, but to describe is not to explain. For example, we (okay …, not you or I, but someone) can “explain” exactly how an atom bomb works, but not *why* the energy given off equals precisely the mass lost times the square of the speed of light, rather than simply mc, or mc-cubed. Describing how weirdly different the world would be, does not answer the question, why it’s like it is.
Here we enter the realm of Occam’s Razor. A species arising through evolution by natural selection, out-populating its own food sources, living on a geologically unstable surface and complicated by the rise of tribalism, politicism, authoritarianism and ego? A perfectly logical cause for suffering in every form. A living, all-loving god overseeing all this and causing or allowing the levels of suffering we see ever day? A concept loaded with problems practical, intellectual and philosophical. We can’t answer the problem of suffering by playing the god card because god is who we made him/her/it to be. And since we can’t reconcile problems coming from our own, flawed humanness or the power of natural catastrophes, we are also unable to reconcile the motives of this man-made god. Removing god from the equation essentially answers all questions regarding suffering but the answers are thoroughly unsatisfying since they leave us powerless.
NY’s Cardinal O’Connor once called the Jews’ suffering in the Holocaust a “gift” to mankind. I still haven’t forgiven him for that (actually, there’s a long list of things I haven’t forgiven him for, but that one’s at the top).
You wrote:
” You mean someone else’s suffering is justified because it’s good for *me*??? ”
This is the basis of Christianity: someone else – Jesus – suffered because it was good for me. That’s not quite the point of your post here, but it shows where the mentality of suffering for the benefit of others comes from.
The original poetic book of Job had your approach: it ends with Job groveling in the dust and recognizing that he is simply not in a position to understand the problem of suffering. Unfortunately, they later added a fairy tale ending in which Job gets back everything, including more children, as if that would compensate for the grief for the ones he lost. In my view that ruins the book. The prophets up to and including Jesus voiced great concern about those in need and suffering, and criticized those who ignored it. If they thought it was all just part of God’s great plan for humankind then why did they urge people to do something about it?
Great post. It reminded me not to try to force views on others and not simplify too much when ideas need more attention. Serious question [And I freely admit that I most likely have misunderstood. Religious studies are new to me and I lack grounding!] When St. Augustine wrote “City of God” wasn’t he trying to explain the hardships associated with the fall of Rome? It seems to me that your blog deals with many of his arguments and your post helped me crystalize some thoughts. The timing of your blog post and my readings just happened to intersect. Thanks for some new thoughts!
I’ll take the God problem more seriously since you reiterate it here. As William Lane Craig and others have argued (and your interlocutor quotes suggest), one can perhaps claim a coherent theology where external suffering is instrumental to a believer’s salvation. And, as you point out, that is hard to square with broader claims about God’s nature. The circumstances of the belief are also hard to square, as Hitchens emphasized: sudden appearance in Middle East to small cadre, hundreds of thousands of years of brutish lives and suffering before and after, mythic-poetic plans at best, lack of coherence across belief systems as to resolutions of all this mystery.
But comparing to the positive humanist perspective: “suffering theology” is also intellectually inert in terms of solutions. We don’t get even a stack-ranking of what we can do about the problems of suffering: Disease first? Hunger first? Technological change? At best we get a seed of virtuous feeling that helping others might be desirable. I can welcome committed volunteers to projects who are driven by that feeling, though am personally irritated when they wrap it up with proselytization/missionary zeal.
So the God problem might be useful, William James-style, even when it is unbelievable.
Amen! One needn’t be an atheist to abhor simplistic explanations of suffering. I still believe in a Christian God (well, perhaps not the Orthodox version), but I cringe at the “comforting” words that “believers” sometimes bring to those who have suffered: “It’s God’s will”; “It’s for the best. we just don’t understand how” . . . etc. etc. Sigh.
I agree with most of your points, but I would summarize it a bit differently. My problem is that all of the arguments by your Muslim interlocutor appear to be based on the assumption that suffering is the default.
If you have food to eat you should thank God because the default is starvation. If you are physically safe thank God, because the default is abuse and oppression. If you have reasonable mental health thank God, because the default is suffering. And there is no discernible correlation between those boons and any measure of worthiness.
Even more egregious, the default setting for the next life (according to most Christians and Muslims) is also torment and misery. And whether you get the happy afterlife is mostly random, because it largely depends on the faith tradition you are raised in, or the vagaries of your opportunity to change your religion later in life.
So why would a loving God set up a system that has misery as the default setting, with the mechanism to change that condition mostly random, and only available to a small minority of the 100 billion or so people that have ever lived?
I located the debate you’re referring to here and really enjoyed it. I think you won the debate handily on all points excepting perhaps just one. That is, at one point you say you don’t know the origins of life and the universe, but then seem to say that The Big Bang does serve as a logical explanation for the origin of laws of thermodynamics, as well as everything else that is, and that the scientific world is in agreement on this. I don’t think that’s precisely so, as the Big Bang is only a hypothesis of material expansion, and not an answer for the mystery of the actual origin of the universe.
The attitude that annoys me is that suffering is an essential prelude to an apocalypse. The more suffering there is, the sooner that Jesus will return to save everyone. So bring on the fires, floods, starvation and pandemics!
What would the world look like if God existed and did not allow needless suffering since he was benevolent, all-powerful, and all-knowing? What kind of suffering would exist in that world, if any? Would people ever stub their toe?
In my perfect world, yes. Toe stubbing would be fine. Horrible birth defects that condemn a person to a life of abject misery, not.
If every other bout of suffering had been wiped away except for the comparatively innocuous ones, I wonder if toe stubbing would be seen as a grave evil and thus an argument against the existence of a benevolent creator.
I don’t think on any level stubbing a toe can be compared with the abject agony of starving to death for months.
Unfortunately the words “I don’t know” are blasphemous to those who think they are in possession of absolute truth.
As a Muslim, I’ll agree with your final statement. I don’t know. Suffering is a difficult problem and I don’t think there is an answer that would satisfy everyone. I personally just think that this universe is a a place where anything can happen, good or bad. God is mostly just an observer who doesn’t interfere much to ensure bad things don’t happen to good people. I don’t think that God owes anyone anything. So if people are suffering, there isn’t necessarily any divine reason for it. It’s just the reality of the situation they’re in. Regardless, God, being the creator/ruler, still demands recognition and worship. I don’t think the Quran actually makes the argument for an all loving God anyways. Does he “love”? Yea, but who/how/what isn’t for us to know. As for the question of who goes to heaven/hell, I hate that hardliners are so convinced they know the answer. According to the Quran, no one knows. Not even the prophets knew what would happen to them.
Bart, you are, I’m sure, referring to your YT debate with Dr Laurence Brown on the Blogging Theology channel. I have watched the entire thing. I’ve never watched, nor heard of him before, but I thought he started well. IMO he completely lost it when the topic turned to suffering. We may not be able to do much about Tsunamis, but let’s be clear : starving children is a problem created by humans. It has nothing to do with Allah, the Big Man Upstairs, or any other deity. The idea that starving kids should make us appreciative for what we have is morally depraved. The idea that “who are we to question God’s will ?” in such situations is morally repugnant.
Paul Williams and Dr Brown seem like nice enough guys, but both appear desperate to make scripture true in the absolute sense. If you try hard enough, you can make most anything conform to your worldview. Williams’ reasons for switching from Christianity to Islam (in a separate video() are disturbing IMO.
Thanks! But I don’t think I agree about starving. The problem was rampant for the 299,900 years of human existence *before* we, as a race, had the technological means to stop it (assuming homo sapiens came along about 300,000 yars ago). Now we have the means but not the will.
That’s a fair point Bart. On a separate but related note, I’m wondering what you thought of the Chris Hedges review of your book “God’s Problem” ? This is quite old now, going back to 2008.
Thank you.
I don’t recall ever reading it! That’s more common than you would think.
I finally found and watched the full discussion with Dr. Brown, as well as his followup (which he apparently felt was necessary because some claimed that you kept cutting him off, when I might suggest that he dominated most of the time, and you were mostly stopping him from going further off of his self-made cliffs). You can really see where the discussion runs off the road and into a ditch. (I wonder if part of the problem with the blind near death experience is the people recording the claims. I would think that a person who never experienced sight would find seeing totally bizarre and disorienting, and have a hard time explaining it at all.) The idea that 2 year olds who suffer and die from cancer, or children born with Anencephaly, would in some way not be innocent would also be hard to accept even in his strained attempts. I presume that God did not let millions of Jews die in the Holocaust to teach me a useful lesson that I should not put people in ovens.
Another excellent post – as usual! Thankyou.🙂
Your recollections from that Muslim author & also Richard Swinburne (I saw that one) remind me of similar twists & turns from the likes of William Lane Craig (in his debates with you & others) and my countryman Ken Ham as they do just the opposite of the science they purport to champion and dice, slice & otherwise manipulate the observable data so it must fit their predetermined religious model. It is simply breathtaking to see them in action. And inaction, with regard to the problem of suffering, is often where their conclusions conveniently lead.
I have another possible explanation behind your pet hates of ignorance posing as expertise & facile answers. Could it be simply stupidity? And from that I ask a question – do you know of any book or other publication where someone has studied the biblical concept & theology of stupidity? I’m serious. I cannot recall any biblical example where intellectual or moral foolishness is not thoroughly condemned (as well as their compatriot, Laziness). I share your fondness for Ecclesiastes but I note it (& similar wisdom) seems not to feature highly among conservative evangelical types (except through gritted teeth)?
Well, for anyone who is interested, I found that the question I posed HAS been tackled by the none other than Dietrich Bonhoeffer! Google “bonhoeffer’s theory of stupidity” & enjoy – noting his particular observation that stupidity is a moral problem, rather than intellectual!! Again I note that I am unaware of any example from the Bible where stupidity is portrayed as anything but dangerous, destructive & unGodly!!
I agree with you completely. I tried for years–decades, actually–to reconcile the world as we experience it with the idea of a loving God, because I very much *wanted* there to be a God, a purpose to the universe, etc. But I can see no logical or rational way around the fact that if there is a Creator, then by definition that Creator intentionally designed life on this planet to involve excruciating suffering, agony of all sorts, for all sentient creatures (not just humans). If such a Creator exists, s/he is not “loving” or merciful or just or good in any sense whatsoever.
There’s no workable way around this conclusion, for me. The only explanations that fit the facts are either 1) there is a Creator, and s/he is malevolent and evil; or 2) there is no creator. I find (1) untenable for all sorts of reasons, while (2) fits the observed facts of existence very well.
Bart, during the debate, If there is something we don’t have an answer yet (ie. what was before the Big Bang), Your view: we don’t know (yet). his view: God is the answer.
Hey Bart, hope you are doing well.
I was reading a book recently that the development of the trinity came to light only in the recent centuries and that it was not know (development in your book, how Jesus became God etc.) before the 18/19th century. Is that true, and to what extent? Thanks
Not sure what the book you read was arguing. In my book I show that the word trinity has been around (in reference to God) since the early third century, and the understanding of it developed significnatly into classical form in the fourth and fifth. so I’m not sure what the author you read was trying to say.
I find it extraordinary, perhaps sinister, that those who present/propagate such simplistic answers will not allow other opposing faiths (including naturalism) to present such simple answers to similar difficult questions. Only their simple answers are sufficient. Ugh! Like Bart, I would rather hear a simple “I don’t know” which is much more respectable in my estimation.
I completely agree with your views. There are masses of people who simply haven’t thought it through… or perhaps haven’t thought about it at all. I have several friends and family members who occasionally say things like “it was such a God thing” whenever things work out in their life… like getting that promotion, or buying their home, etc. Do they not hear how conceited and self-serving they sound? As if god (if he exists) takes time out of his busy schedule to concern himself with their trivial matters, when there are starving people, kids with cancer, amongst so much other suffering happening all over the world on a massive scale. I don’t argue with people about it simply because I don’t think it’s worth arguing over (they can believe what they want), and I don’t think they’ve ever given it any real thought. But it’s one of my biggest pet peeves.
Explanations for suffering are most frequently found among those who care for those who are suffering. While the round and round thinking on why suffering happens happens, we know with scientific certainty that those who care and support people and animals in pain make a huge, positive difference in the lives of the sick and dying. Mostly when you debate the topic in print and on the internet, you’re just knocking around various ideas. But when you take that process into the flesh and blood, 3-D world, you can end up knocking around inside the coping mechanisms that people rely upon every day, for the benefit of themselves, and others.
Are the inclusion of terms such as “loving” and “benevolent” in the theist’s God definition (along with or opposed to “all knowing”/”all powerful”) the product of human “hope” as merely reflected in human produced and fallible scripture? How can flawed humans be capable of any precise definition of a God that is posited to be extra-human/inhuman?
Yup, probably so! And it’s a good second question. I remember when I was a conservative evangelical we would say that “God is beyond anything we can imagine!” And then we would tell you about him!!
At age 18, the issue of suffering helped lead me to Sun Myung Moon’s Divine Principle theology, which teaches that God (male/female, Tao-like) created the universe (spiritual/physical) to give rise to companions (children) who required total independence. Adam and Eve existed as physical/spiritual beings who were supposed to grow to maturity (oneness with God) then reflect the godhead as parents. Humans would exist with God as equals. The plan failed when a spiritual being (Lucifer), growing jealous, seduced an immature (sprit-body) Eve, who then seduced (physical-body) Adam (the original sin). Lucifer (Satan) rules over human spirit and flesh, keeping people from God through sin. Humankind suffers (physically and spiritually). God suffers too, yearning for humankind to return voluntarily. Through a kind of chess-like Divine Principle played out through history, God prepares messiahs who people must follow voluntarily. Jesus was meant to marry and build a new world. His death (caused by faithlessness) allows believers’ spirits to ascend closer to God after death (Paradise). Moon succeeded in marrying, wedding others, and the Kingdom (physical and spiritual Heaven) has begun. Suffering will end one day. After ten years of living this, I became an atheist focused on scientific answers, not religious ones.
Is not the problem that we have the belief that God is all powerful?
I am a Christian, but I don’t know that I believe God is all powerful. I see him more as a parent (if he is a personal god) of adult children over whom He has no control except to the extent they are willing to listen and accept his guidance and teachings. I don’t know if God can’t intervene to stop suffering, or he doesn’t do so because to do so would make us puppets, but I see suffering as being caused by human choices and actions.
Take the suffering caused by poverty. The causes of poverty are complex – but usually people are poor because of past wrongs that continue to have an impact or choices made by other humans. (I would need far more than 200 words to explain just some of the theories of the political and economic issues underlying poverty but they are all about human actions).
I don’t know that if humans all lived lives as taught by Jesus and other great moral thinkers would end all suffering, but I suspect it would help
Hi Bart,
After many years of believing that God can meticulously control the universe, I gave up on that. Can I interest you in seeing how I worked that out in my 2021 “Theodicy, Supreme Providence, and Semiclassical Theism” (doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2020.1825195)? If you do not have access to Theology and Science, then I can get you a copy.
James
It is difficult. It is challenging (impossible) to make sense of the whole thing (life) and what it means….One moment you think it is A, the other moment it is B….But after some long contemplation, it is probably C…And occasionally option D also makes sense….and so on.
“Il est incompréhensible que Dieu existe, et il est incompréhensible qu’il n’existe pas.” Blaise Pascal.
I must admit, I don’t share Pascal’s sentiment in the least! And of course, he meant only the God he knew about, not the thousands of others he did not have trouble disbelieving….
I wish I could ask Pascal: “[pourquoi] il est incompréhensible qu’il n’existe pas[?]”
I couldn’t agree more with you. My sister is disabled and her life is very challenging. It’s also very hard on my parents, who of course love her and cherish her. When people say her suffering makes her stronger or God doesn’t burden people with more than they can handle, it infuriates me.
Dr. Ehrman, I had watched a debate you did some time ago with a well-known, right-wing political commentator on his *turf* so to speak (I think it was at a Christian college). It was about the problem of suffering. He was insufferable, and I almost turned off the video because I couldn’t take his insensitivity to others’ suffering, evidenced by the arguments he was making, especially about the Holocaust. At a certain point in the debate, you called him on this: you told him he was “intellectualizing” the argument. Precisely! He was pushing away the suffering of others to make his shockingly unempathic arguments. His response? Of course I’m intellectualizing it: this is a debate. And his audience clapped. They clapped. It was heartbreaking. I know you are posting in the context of “behaving badly” in the face of these arguments, but I was amazed at how you kept going in the face of such ignorance and apathy to others. The audience response was chilling. I’m concerned that if a person believes God is going to send people to a fire where they will burn consciously for eternity, they can justify and wave away all manner of suffering here.
I truly do not understand how you can bear even to try to engage with these folks! I grew up in a very primitive Pentecostal pastor’s home, where such inanities represented the heighth of their comprehension. I am trying to avoid engaging with these people any more, though I’m not always successful. It’s like trying to teach quantum physics in a high school general science course.
I grew up in a fundamental, basic Christian church. Found it interesting one of your favorite books is Ecclesiastes. It has been mine & was my brother’s favorite for years. It just describes life as I find it. I don’t call myself anything. I don’t worry about hell and Heaven anymore. I don’t attend church and don’t miss it, only the socialization. I just want to stay healthy & happy with a roof over my head & enough to eat & drink, to be warm in winter, cool in summer, to have enough extra to do a few things I enjoy, & to have people around who I care for & who care for me, for as long as possible. I wish that for everyone! If you find the answer to suffering or any of the big questions, please share them. But I’m not holding my breath. I don’t have them & I don’t think anyone else does. Broke a shoulder 26 mos ago, had burst fracture of L-3 with L-1, L-2, L-4, & L-5 fusion to stabilize it 17 mos ago. Now 2 days home from a kyphoplasty of T-8. Suffering comes in many forms. Stay well!
What you are asking for is a perfect world. A perfect universe. That is possible but it deprives us of something vital that I believe God has put us here to learn about.
No…not free will. It’s Love. In a perfect non-suffering world love has no opportunity to express itself anymore than sound can be heard in the vacuum of space. Chance, evil, tragedy, loss and the choice to care and heal and bring justice all flow together in a metaphysical symphony that can only be heard in it’s true beauty on the other side. Until then we are all simply writing the sheet music with it’s sweet majors and sad minors. Oscar Schindler gave all he had to reduce suffering in this world with every resource he had. If all of us could do 1/10th of what he did, we could move towards a perfect world.
By the way, I appreciate all that you do to make the world a better place. If ever there were a bible movie that depicted the parable of the Good Samaritan, I would nominate Bart Ehrman to be cast for the part of the Samaritan.
It’s not a perfect answer, but it’s my hope.
“We are here by chance, we live in an incredibly dangerous universe that gives no thought to us since it has no thoughts at all. ”
Ah! But it does, because the part of it that is us – does! Unfortunately often our thoughts are selfish, cruel and violent. What I consider almost a miracle is when we are individually or collectively motivated to act in selfless, kind or compassionate ways to reduce the suffering of others.
The free will answer makes no sense either. For example, if you could stop someone for torturing a child, would you do it, or would you say, no, I’m going to let them have their free will? If the latter, we would consider you, rightly, a monster. And why should we then consider God any differently?
The ultimate answer for many believers is: God’s ways are not our ways, and so you just can’t understand it. That is the ultimate cop out.
In this discussion, I’m reminded of the Bible’s Job, who says that if he could put God on the witness stand, he would have some tough questions to ask him about his suffering as a righteous man. When God does show up, it seems to me that he tells Job that he really doesn’t have a clue. Job never gets an answer to his questions but seems to accept that understanding is perhaps beyond his mortal capacity. Of course, the book has an impossibly happy ending, but his questions remain, perplexing and disturbing. It’s not quite an acceptance of a blind, unyielding universe but an acceptance of how limited our knowledge will always remain. I find Job’s story, with its touches of anger and frustration, strangely comforting. I also return to the thought that with Jesus, cruelly and unjustly killed, God also knows about suffering firsthand, but that’s another train of thought.
SCOTT CULCLASURE
What if God creates beings who live out every conceivable life throughout infinite universes and then throughout the infinite of his power and eternity of life in Heaven melds the minds of all those beings with his own to create some kind of super harmonic consciousness shared between all beings? Throughout the trillions squared by trillions of years lived in Heaven among joys which we can scarcely begin to imagine, is it so hard to imagine that such a process would beyond make right, but bring into absolute spender the cruelties of the Holocaust or any unimaginable pain and horror felt by those on this Earth? To commit to the idea that evil is a problem to God is, to me, just a supreme lack of imagination. When I was a child I used to feel very alien to my peers, as I know is so common to children. When I’d lay in bed at night, I used to imagine that once we got to Heaven we would all sit around and watch, on big huge screen TV’s, all of each other’s lives. Everyone would learn everything about everyone else’s lives. Then no one would be misunderstood.
Woa Muslim here chiming in. Thank you for engaging with Blogging Theology. He’s an older, more mature man (basically-adult) and he’s a relief in the preaching scene as we usually have young hotheads.
This is a question that I suppose hasn’t bothered me. But how to describe my Muslim take in words? Goes something like this.
1) Allah, my Master created me. Invented me from nothing. He also sees our relationship as that of Master and slave. I am propert, my slave labour is owned. Whatever I do in His service, is not something He needs to pay me for as He owns my labor. But likewise, since I am property and He owns my labor, if I err in obeying, I deserve punishment for that. Paradise is basically just grace and forgiveness. Deeds are for what position I have-was I right with God, approved of by Him or perhaps some rank less than that? Well those distinctions exist in the afterlife. To be continued…
2) There’s a narration that the poor emigrants enter Paradise well before the rich. I.e. to compensate for their suffering, they get some extra initial time in Paradise, and this cancels out the lack of suffering of the wealthier but also righteous Muslims. Thus when each person of the same rank enters paradise, say a guy who did good equal to rank 70 but enjoyed life free of suffering, and another who did the same good but suffered, the latter enjoys some extra time in Paradise before the former joins him. They dwell in the same rank forever. Note, by same good this means deeds, patience through trials etc. All said and done they’re =. That is a comfort to me. Since I identify myself as slave, and don’t think the Master needs to answer for trying me with labor or trials, and I know I’ll not be outdone by my equal in good who suffered less/enjoyed more, I’m reassured and hopeful. I don’t feel wronged but I do feel hopeful, for something I don’t truly deserve.
So the nonbelievers? Well they rejected the Master or obeying Him. So ultimately they deserve everlasting torment. Any suffering they faced in this life is inconsequential to what comes next. If I don’t have problems with eternity in the blazes for them, this world is relatively mild in comparison.
It seems to me that a fundamental problem here is that Christianity remains quite anthropomorphic in spite of protestations to the contrary. Sure, most modern Christians don’t believe that God is a tangible physical old man sitting on a throne in heaven. Nevertheless, it seems to me that most modern Christians assume that the Mind of God works more or less like ours, only much, much bigger. And why wouldn’t they assume that? In the Bible, the Mind of the God is anthropomorphic from cover to cover. And according to Christianity, Jesus was simultaneously man and God, and ascended to the heavenly realms in His human resurrected body, so of course we would assume that the Mind of Christ/God continues to function more or less like human minds.
I would suggest that we humans can comprehend “God” to the same degree that ants can comprehend humans. That is, not at all.
IMHO, the Problem of Evil is a fatal flaw in Christian Anthropomorphic Theism. Meanwhile, the options aren’t just “Christian Anthropomorphic Theism” vs. Atheism!
Jordon Peterson makes an interesting point: maybe one of purposes of us all are being here on this earth is actually to suffer! https://youtu.be/lKq4q6lM2T0
Professor Ehrman,
I know my question will seem simplistic.
I hope you don’t mind, but it does relate to suffering.
There are a couple of stories in the NT where specific individuals were suffering from being blind or deaf.
My first question is about the suffering of the blind man in the Book of Mark Chapter 8 and the story of a blind man in the Book of John chapter 9.
From your knowledge of these stories, are they the same story or two separate men and stories?
In addition, could you offer any information on the use of “spit” referred to in each story of the blind man?
There is another story about a person who was deaf where Jesus used his “spit” to heal him.
Was the use of spit as medicine a cultural norm of that day?
I realize from reading your books that these miracles are a creation of the writers of the story. In one story, Jesus uses mud and spit for the blind man and in the other story, no use of clay is mentioned.
Was the writer of one book borrowing a story from the other book?
Thanks for your help,
Rob
NOt simple at all, as it turns out! Scholars disagree on your first query: my view is thatthey are different stories, but obviously similar. Spittle was not widely thought of as having any medicinal value.
“Spittle was not widely thought of as having any medicinal value.”
Why do you think the author of the story had Jesus use spittle?
Bodily fluids and other substances were sometimes used in accounts of miracles/magic.
This is directed to Bart. Let’s pretend Bart is God. He is a teacher as Jesus was. He gives out assignments
and reading material. In order to learn and grow one must “do the work”. He as most teachers tests them on what they have learned. If they do well they pass, if poorly they fail. Bart for his class is “all knowing and all powerful”. If he was all loving and benevolent he would simply give out all the correct answers to his test and everyone would get an “A” and not suffer. Bart has the power to end his students “suffering” but chooses not. Has not Bart ever failed a student? Maybe the all knowing, loving powerful God (which Bart does not believe in) is acting the same way. Perhaps the suffering in the world is there for the rest of us to learn to be unselfish? Isn’t that what Jesus taught? Isn’t that where the money from this blog is going to? To end starvation. Bart cannot understand the question of why God allows suffering, it appears to me, he is doing exactly the same thing.
I’d say it’s more like BArt is the mayor of the town and has decided that even though there are sufficent resources to feed everyone with plenty left over, and medicine for any illnesses that arise, and money well enough to go around, he decides not to make the resources available so that a third of the population starves; a third dies of easily curable diseases, and half of the rest are just miserable in their poverty. A student failin a test is not like a child starving to death. I do hope people see that.
Professor Ehrman, thanks for your help on the blind man NT story.
I also loved your “Bart is the Mayor” analogy.
If this were a sword fight, you would be Zorro and your opponents would have “Zs” all over them.
I hope I am not the only one old enough to picture what a “Z” from Zorro looked like from the Disney series from the late 1950s.
No response is necessary!
Thanks again,
Rob
I’m with you on Zoro.
Hello Bart, these are just my thoughts, I don’t claim to have any special insight on the subject.
I say this in a deistic/pantheistic sense: it would seem to me that if God exists and is a God of truth (Gandhi wrote that God is truth), that He would create the universe uncensored, He allows events to transpire in their natural course. Perhaps God is nevertheless beneficent in providing us with whatever good we have, with consciousness, with some potential Union with him in an afterlife.
Or perhaps God does not exist. I am open to that possibility as well. I do not believe in the Christian/Muslim deity who does intervene, to send bears after children or to send angels to Bethlehem/Mecca but not to help Covid patients in hospitals, and who then sends some number of them to hell. The Holocaust, among other things, would discredit the idea of an interventionist God, in my view.