Reddit reviews God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question-Why We Suffer

Ehrman has spoken quite a bit about how struggling with the problem of evil was the impetus behind losing his faith.

Bart Erhman wrote a wonderful book about the Bible's failures to address the problem of suffering. However, like other Biblical scholars (including atheists like Robert Price), he has a lot of respect for the sophistication of Job's attempt to answer this question as it is the most honest and most sobering.

Like most critical scholars on both sides of the faith fence, he sees this as a work similar to Grimm's Fairy Tales. When approached in this way, we see that the historicity and narrative events take a back burner to the conversations between Job and his friends as well as the significance of the narrative.

Unfortunately, I lack the scholarship to walk you through it, but one of my favorite parts is it's rejection of Just World Theory, something found elsewhere in the Bible and a huge motivating force of Christianity's ails (it is just to go to war, if you are experiencing difficulty then you are being curse by God, if you are sick then you have sinned, etc.).

In 11:13-20, Job's friend Zophar presents his take on just world theory, which, in 42:7-9, God beautifully renounces:

"After the Lord had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has."

The reason that Job can be so confusing is because it has been subject to redactions and edits over the centuries, with various scribes trying to edge in their particular take on things. It's a marvelous study well worth your time if you have an interest in ancient literature, philosophy, and generally shutting down less competent Christians with valid and grounded argumentation.

I think there is a lot of issue to take with Christianity, but faulting the religion for the book of Job is not one of them. Next to Ecclesiastes, it is a beautifully sophisticated and highly relevant work of past thinkers trying to work out why we suffer in this world.

I stopped praying when I realized that if there was a god in charge of this world, then he (she/it) was doing a really horrible job of taking care of people who really needed it the most. 21,000 people die every single day of hunger alone. The lack of clean water for the vast majority of the population in the world is staggering. I just couldn't bring myself to thank god for "blessing" me. It felt wrong. I imagined how society would treat a father who gave everything to a few of his children while letting a few starve to death. That father would be arrested and put in prison.

The book that really changed my mind about prayer and thanking god for "blessings" was "God's Problem" by Bart Ehrman. I recommend it.

"I could no longer reconcile the claims of faith with the facts of life. In particular, I could no longer explain how there can be a good and all-powerful God actively involved with this world, given the state of things. For many people who inhabit this planet, life is a cesspool of misery and suffering. I came to a point where I simply could not believe that there is a good and kindly disposed Ruler who is in charge of it." http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Problem-Answer-Important-Question-Why/dp/0061173924

So, to summarize the discussion so far:

Your claim:
>People who take the Scriptures as authoritative accounts of God's plans have evidence in their own terms for what God's plan is.

Counter-claim (with source, including brief description of what the source tells us):
> The Bible fails to answer the question of evil/why we suffer. Excellent book you should be reading right this very second right now

Your claim:
>Actually you just added a claim to it – “The Bible fails to answer the question of evil/why we suffer” – that plenty of people, including me, reject.

He didn't actually add a claim to his response, he was responding to your claim that scriptures address the problem of evil. You have yet to provide evidence for your claim that scriptures address the problem of evil.

Your claim:
>A case would need to be the made for this claim because many who hold the free will defense, especially those in the Calvinist tradition, don't find the claim convincing.

Counter-claim:
>Free will or not, this still leaves the question of natural evil (volcanoes, EQs etc.) addressed.

>I won't go deep into freewill, however, the question still remains why god would allow the free will of someone to be infringed by another human's own free will. Furthermore, god is still supposed to be all-powerful and all-knowing and thus be able to advert such acts of free will.

Your counter:
>Not necessarily: it depends on the theodicy in question.

Includes no link to debate, nor even a one-sentence description of what the debate it about:
>Since you like Erhman, I suggest listening to his debate with Richard Swinburne on the subject of evil. The program is too short for natural evils to be addressed, but the freewill of others causing harm to others is addressed.

The only claims that remain unaddressed are your own. We have two claims: one, that scriptures address the problem of evil; and two, that free will is a defense of the problem of evil.

Bonus points if you can tie the two claims together to show us that scriptures say that free will is a defense for the problem of evil.

My guess is that you won't be able to win the bonus points.

Theodicy argument

EDIT: Actually, Ehrman wrote a book about it

>That's not any more arrogant than knowing the contents of your football coach's playbook and stating this to be the case.

The Bible fails to answer the question of evil/why we suffer. Excellent book you should be reading right this very second right now

So my point that people saying 'its gods plan' still stands because its assuming to know the mind of god/gods plan.

>A case would need to be the made for this claim because many who hold the free will defense, especially those in the Calvinist tradition, don't find the claim convincing.

Free will or not, this still leaves the question of natural evil (volcanoes, EQs etc.) addressed.

I won't go deep into freewill, however, the question still remains why god would allow the free will of someone to be infringed by another human's own free will. Furthermore, god is still supposed to be all-powerful and all-knowing and thus be able to advert such acts of free will.

From a religious perspective (the one in which I agree with) there is When Bad Things Happen to Good People. From a critical perspective there is God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--Why We Suffer

> Ehrman's The New Testament (amazon link) is one of the more widely used. Ehrman is very much on the "critical" end of critical scholarship, to the extent that his studies led to the weakening and eventual loss of his faith.

Ehrman says it was the problem of suffering rather than his scholarship which led him to become an agnostic with strong leanings towards atheism. See God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--Why We Suffer

Here's a good book by a well-respected Biblical Scholar, God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--Why We Suffer https://www.amazon.com/dp/0061173924/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_biwQBbZWC7VWM