Loading...People react lots of different ways when trying to deal with the problem of how there can be so much suffering in a world that is said to be controlled by the almighty God who loves people and wants the best for them. I decided to write my book God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Address our Most Important Question – Why We Suffer (HarperOne, 2008) both because many people don’t realize how many different answers the Bible itself gives (some of them at odds about it) and also because in my judgment lots and lots of people (most?) simply don’t take it seriously enough.
Here’s how I talk about why I think it matters and
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Dr. Ehrman, On October 9th Hurricane Milton slammed directly into my community. I am an Atheist and would qualify as a “Hard Atheist”. Milton (the 3rd storm of this season that I was in path of) has reaped tens of billions in damages across Florida.
Ironically my home came out unscathed. Does this mean that God missed an oportunity to take devine retribution? Why would he reek havoc upon so many likely devout evangelicals and Pentecostals?
The answer as you have so correctly deduced is that there is no devine supernatural entity that interdicts in our lives now or in a make believe heaven.
When we speculate about suffering, we should first of all realize that we (humans) are only a small part of the bigger picture. While we may be unique in our ability to speculate about the reason for its existence, it’s something that is built into the system of our universe. All other organic life is subject to the same physical laws, so humans are not unique from that standpoint. One could argue that we’re not even that special, as we’ve shared the planet with other hominids and other human species until very recently in geological terms. Whatever suffering we experience, they also experienced, and probably to a far greater degree.
As to why our universe is set up the way it is, who knows? As a Platonist philosophically, I tend to believe that the world we experience is only a small part of a much vaster reality. Whether we call these other worlds, universes, or planes of existence, some are perhaps far better than ours, and some perhaps far worse. Either way, the only way to explain our universe’s existence seems to be anthropically if we don’t wish to invoke an intelligent designer.
I much appreciate this topic as it is one that I cry most over. Relatives say that it’s my problem that I am too empathetic. But who could not cry when you stop at a stoplight and there is a man with no legs, filthy, begging who looks at you with a face that must have been handsome or a starving puppy someone threw by the wayside. No, this is not free choice. I and my companion are becoming sick from following the destruction of Gaza. I am so thankful that a view is held such as the one in this article.
A common theme in your writings is that God does not live up to your expectations.
My writings? I’ve never said that or thought it, so far as I’m aware.
Have you ever considered suffering as a type of relativized experience where the sum of all human and animal suffering/pain and happiness/pleasure exist on some kind of scale and within a closed evolutionary system and within time that will eventually (once that system reaches its end) add up to some basically fixed constant? My guess is that it’s a zero sum type of game. I’m thinking microbes and ants and so un upward may have variations from the mean which get progressively further away from zero but with humans it has become hard for us to be able to abstract it given the chaos, our limited perspectives, and our difficulty in even assessing our own localized definitions of baseline. Pecking order and mood, resource abundance/scarcity, environmental carrying capacity, …lots to think about, but it has been my way of grasping it. (PS – who sets universal constants? I’m atheist, but if there are any Deists left maybe they’d like my view!)
For Bart: will you be using the new Westminster Study Bible (NRSVUE) in your classes?
I use the NRSVue translatoin (when I’m not providing my own translation), but not the Westminster Study Bible.
Your thoughts on the RSV, Bart?
It was a great translation in its time, and needed to be updated by the NRSV.