Bart D. Ehrman vs. N. T. Wright on "Is Our Pain God's Problem?"

Link. You'll have to start from the bottom up to see the flow of things. Thanks to Ed Babinski that surfer of all surfers for this!

24 comments:

Rachel said...

FWIW, I read this link and I didn't think Wright did well at all. Maybe it's because I don't understand all they were talking about with the apocalyptic/prophetic stuff (I don't know how that relates to the PoE). Wright brought it up, Ehrman countered, Wright said Ehrman was out-of-date, Ehrman said "no way, it's my main subject", and Wright said "this is off-topic, we should talk about this another time". Um, why'd you bring it up then?

And I agreed with Ehrman's second post that Wright had not actually answered the question. For that matter, I don't think he ever answered the question in those posts. His answer seemed to be, here's how God is dealing/has dealt with suffering; however, Ehrman's question is why does/did God allow it in the first place (if I understand him correctly).

Anyway, thanks for the link, but I didn't see much that was beneficial. Maybe Wright's book(s) has more/better answers.

exapologist said...

So glad you brought this up, Rachel! The problem of the failed apocalypse is central to mainstream historical Jesus studies, and Ehrman knows the problem inside and out. Wright is one of the few evangelical historical Jesus scholars who tries to grapple with it seriously, and he's running for shelter when his views about it are confronted.

I hope someone camps out and shines a spotlight on this debate between Wright and Ehrman on this issue of the failed apocalypse, since it makes or breaks the credibility of Christianity.

Jim Holman said...

There must be something cultural going on with respect to the issue of suffering and the existence of God.

Reading Ehrman, it was interesting how he finally "discovered" that there was suffering in the world. It reminded me somewhat of the story of Siddhartha:

At the age of 29, Siddhartha left his palace in order to meet his subjects. Despite his father's effort to remove the sick, aged and suffering from the public view, Siddhartha was said to have seen an old man. Disturbed by this, when told that all people would eventually grow old by his charioteer Channa, the prince went on further trips where he encountered, variously, a diseased man, a decaying corpse, and an ascetic.

What's interesting to me is that there has always been suffering. But throughout most of history this was simply an accepted fact of life, and there was little sense that this somehow constituted an argument against the existence of God.

In fact, in some ways, there is less suffering today than there used to be. But let me clarify that -- yes, in one sense there is perhaps more suffering simply because there are more people. When the cyclone strikes it will kill 100,000 instead of 5,000. And modern technology allows human evil to be even more destructive.

But in another sense there is less evil. People get sick, but there is modern medicine. Disasters strike, but there is the possibility of aid. There is starvation, but also new kinds of crops and farming techniques. Things are pretty terrible in some countries, but in many parts of the world life expectancy is getting better and people are making economic progress.

Granted, things can get pretty bad now, but how many of us would prefer to have lived 2 thousand year ago? Not many.

In other words, the world in which theistic religious arose was no stranger to suffering. Life for most was nasty, brutal, and short.

The idea that the existence is a barrier to belief in God has, I think, gained traction in modern times, mostly in the West, as people began to experience better, more comfortable, and longer lives.

For many of us industrial-strength suffering is something we read about in books or in the newspaper. Like Ehrman, we read about large-scale suffering -- the holocaust, starvation, disease -- but our own lives are not marked by that on a daily basis. Such suffering is no longer routine, and when we read about it or see it, we are shocked. I think many people in the ancient world weren't shocked by it; they accepted it as an unfortunate aspect of life -- of a life that probably wasn't going to be very long anyway.

Thus, I think the argument against God because of the existence of suffering is largely a modern cultural phenomenon. It certainly wasn't an argument that had much traction in the ancient world even though in a significant sense conditions then were much worse than they are today. Christianity arose in the midst of a brutal Roman occupation, during a time without modern medicine, when most people literally lived on the edge of existence on a daily basis.

In a sense we moderns are like Siddhartha -- living comfortable lives in a palace of our own creation, and when we finally "leave the palace" and see what the world is really like -- what it has always been like -- suddenly that becomes a "problem," and not just a problem but "God's problem."

goprairie said...

Maybe in history, suffering was accepted because nothing was known about anything to be done about it. It as okay for God to have made an imperfect world filled with suffering, for it was the best we knew of and it did include an enourmous amount of pleasure and beauty as well.
Now that we have discovered ways to bring ourselves comfort with plumbng and HVAC and medicine, even such simple things as OTC pain meds, shouldn't we be correct in demanding that if there is a GOd, that he be better at that sort of thing than us and demand that if we can solve little to medium problems, the Almighty should be able to solve bigger problems? The more we do ourselves, the more we will demand of a God, and at some point, what we can fake turns up short of what we demand and we must grow up and admit Big Daddy ain't there and the rest is up to us.

Jim Holman said...

goprarie writes: Now that we have discovered ways to bring ourselves comfort with plumbng and HVAC and medicine, even such simple things as OTC pain meds, shouldn't we be correct in demanding that if there is a GOd, that he be better at that sort of thing than us and demand that if we can solve little to medium problems, the Almighty should be able to solve bigger problems?

I suppose we could demand that, but it does make for kind of a strange argument. It's no longer an argument against God because of the existence of evil. It's an argument against God because of the existence of Advil and air conditioning.

It also puts a different twist on another argument. One anti-theist argument is that God doesn't exist because he's anthropomorphic, someone just like us, merely a bigger projection of who we are. But then the argument changes; God doesn't exist because he's not enough like us -- he's not out there making all these great things to give us all a comfortable, safe, and satisfying life, like we do for ourselves.

I think the theist would simply argue that God is simply up to something else, and that the sufferings of this life have to be seen sub specie aeternitatis -- in the aspect of eternity.

In other words, I think the argument from evil isn't a very strong argument. It's not hard to respond to. Whether or not one is predisposed to accept the response is a different issue.

goprairie said...

I agree that the existence of suffering or 'evil' is not a very effective argument against God. It just paints a different God than most people believe in. Most people think God is warm and fuzzy and caring and benevolent and they ignore all the powermongering and vengefulness in the Bible. Suffering allows for a God but a disinterested God, or a God who is interested in being amused by whatever happens sans intervention or a God who is impotent to change things. There are any number of reasons that there could be a God who allows or even encourages suffering. I would go out on a lib and state that any reason for an all powerful God to allow suffering would be a reason not to bother worshipping him if such a God exists. If he is disinterested, he doesn;t care if I worship him. If he is vengeful, even if I worship him, he might find some other reason to damn me to eternal hellfire. If he is impotent to heal a sick kid, he is impotent to affect my eternal soul. So while it is not reason to state for certain there is not God, it is enough to state it if statistically unlikely to matter if I worship him or pray to him or acknowledge him, which is for practical purposes, the same as not believing in him. And if I further do not believe in souls, I have no need for that God if he exists anyway.

Evan said...

Jim Holman, I think you're simply wrong that the problem of evil is a modern one. Review it here.

Epicurus posed it first as far as we can tell, and it has been an unresolvable issue for theists since. I have read lots of theologians and not once have I seen a solution that logically accounts for the existence of evil and the existence of an omnibenevolent, interactive God.

Shygetz said...

What's interesting to me is that there has always been suffering. But throughout most of history this was simply an accepted fact of life, and there was little sense that this somehow constituted an argument against the existence of God.

Bollocks. Origen was fighting against the problem of evil back in the second century C.E. The Greeks were arguing it before then. It has long been considered a troublesome argument against a tri-omni God.

I think the theist would simply argue that God is simply up to something else, and that the sufferings of this life have to be seen sub specie aeternitatis -- in the aspect of eternity.

Fine; then you admit that God is not benevolent in any usage of the term. The PoE has NEVER claimed to make all gods impossible; only the omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent God that Christians (and some others) are so inclined to profess. You say God is not terribly concerned about evil due to His altered perspective, fine; but you cannot then claim that he is perfectly and wholly benevolent while retaining any meaning to the word "benevolent".

Scott said...

JH I think many people in the ancient world weren't shocked by it; they accepted it as an unfortunate aspect of life -- of a life that probably wasn't going to be very long anyway.

However, looking back, modern medicine and science has revealed just exactly how pointless their suffering was. And we're mere mortals, not omnipotent beings. Even with our recent advancements, there are still diseases we cannot treat, which cause needless suffering today.

Thus, I think the argument against God because of the existence of suffering is largely a modern cultural phenomenon. It certainly wasn't an argument that had much traction in the ancient world even though in a significant sense conditions then were much worse than they are today.

In the ancient world, disease and natural disasters were often thought to be caused by supernatural beings. Such events would not have been viewed as pointless since - just as we intentionally cause things to occur - disease and natural disasters were assumed to be the intentional work of sentient, supernatural beings. One could suggest the proposed existence of supernatural beings was an attempt to make sense of out suffering and disasters in the absence of modern medicine, physics, etc.

Jim Holman said...

shygetz writes: Origen was fighting against the problem of evil back in the second century C.E. The Greeks were arguing it before then. It has long been considered a troublesome argument against a tri-omni God.

even writes: ...I think you're simply wrong that the problem of evil is a modern one.

Let me clarify. Yes, it is true that the problem of evil has been around for a very long time. What I'm saying is that the modern quality of life, especially in the West, has given the argument a much greater emotional impact.

It's a matter of expectations, and the expectations for people in the West have completely changed. Let me give you an example of what I mean.

A few years ago PBS did a documentary on Pope John Paul, that involved a number of interviews. In one interview atheist Germaine Greer talked about her experience with Ethiopian Christians in 1984. The people there were full of faith even in the midst of terrible suffering.

It is interesting to see the reaction of a modern Western woman to that situation and compare it with her description of how the people themselves reacted. You can see her interview here:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/
frontline/shows/pope/testimony/

Click on her photo and you can hear the interview. The whole thing is extremely interesting, but the section on Ethiopia starts about 4 minutes into it, and lasts for about 4 minutes. You'll have to copy and past the two pieces of the link into a browser.

Scott said...

Let me clarify. Yes, it is true that the problem of evil has been around for a very long time. What I'm saying is that the modern quality of life, especially in the West, has given the argument a much greater emotional impact.

Modern life has revealed how senseless this kind of suffering was and still can be.

For example, Humans cannot synthesize vitamin C. This has caused many people to suffer and die during long winters due to a shortage of fruit and vegetables. People in the ancient world had no idea that other forms of life on the planet were not "gifted" with this limitation. If God exists and is loving, why would he create humans without the genes that allow us manufacture ascorbic acid?

This is just one of many relatively recent discoveries that make the problem of evil more problematic from a factual (vs. emotional) perspective.

Shygetz said...

I don't think quality of life is what has brought the Problem of Evil to greater prominence. I think, if anything, it is more likely that improved standards of living have lessened the impact of the Problem of Evil, as it does not stare most people in the face 24/7. However, the dominance of worldwide media now allows us to bring every terrible case of hideous suffering worldwide to the immediate attention of the modern world. Which is why, when people bring up canards like "Evil is brought about by people's choices, not God", I can point to the tsunami in Indonesia and the cyclone in Myanmar as immediate counterarguments, despite the fact that I have never seen such devestation first-hand. However, to argue that the PoE is being unjustifiably endorsed because we are no longer sufficiently ignorant of the suffering of others is inane at best and abhorrent at worst. If ignorance is required to refute an argument, perhaps such a refutation is not valid...

Scott said...

I don't think quality of life is what has brought the Problem of Evil to greater prominence.

One could say, ultimately, it was knowledge about the natural world that both improved our quality of life and revealed how pointless suffering was for many in the past.

Jesse Dukes said...

I'm only 25 and certainly not an expert on anything, so please forgive me if I'm ignorant, or unlearned, but it seems like all of the conversation about the problem of evil and how an omnipotent/benevolent/omniscient God allows it presupposes that for God to be omnipotent/benevolent/omniscient he has to be chained to the task of protecting human life, health, and happiness above all else.

I mean, it makes sense, because our understanding of benevolence is certainly tied to the sanctity of life, but our problem seems to be more so with the finality of death. The way I see it, this point is precisely where Christianity takes a different route. One of the bloggers said:

Suffering allows for a God but a disinterested God, or a God who is interested in being amused by whatever happens sans intervention or a God who is impotent to change things.

But what about a God who loves and values his creation, and will bring all things back to life in his new order in which suffering is eliminated. Suffering is only evil if this world and this life are all we have hope for (or if the only access to this hope is some vague mental accent to the validity Jesus' death on the cross, as some Christians believe), but the bible tells a much richer story than that.

My understanding of God is that He allows suffering because he has given us the power to choose good (God's way) and evil (Not God's way) but since there is evil, He uses it to purify and prepare His creation for the kingdom that is to come. And because He has already resurrected his Son and has promised to do the same for everyone else, he will then bring justice to those who have been unjustly treated, and will rightly reward those who defended the cause of the oppressed.

If death is not the end, and there will be justice, our troubles and difficulties take on a much different light. No Father would deny his child Chemotherapy/Radiation if he were sure it would kill the cancer and leave the child alive. There will no doubt be pain and difficulty in the process, but the healing is the ultimate goal. God is not constrained by death, and he is full of love for ALL of his children (Jews, Muslims, terrorists, Atheists, Americans, and even Republicans) so take heart and have faith, Jesus' way of Loving God and Loving Your Neighbor is the way to have life eternally.

Will there be a hell? Who will be there? I really have no idea. The Bible certainly seems to say so, but if you make it your life ambition to Love God and Love your neighbor, God is overflowing with love and kindness and if there is ANY means for saving (whatever that means) I'm confident He will do it.

I realize all that sounds very trite, but have I made any sort of rational argument? Or should I go back to the drawing board?

goprairie said...

"My understanding of God is that He allows suffering because he has given us the power to choose good (God's way) and evil (Not God's way) but since there is evil, He uses it to purify and prepare His creation for the kingdom that is to come."
The problem with that is that the suffering is not aligned with whether someone chooses God or chooses good or evil. The godless get cancer at the same rate as the beleiver and the murderer and the child molester are no more prone to illness or disease than the teacher or the nurse. The suffering is random, just as one would expect if there were no involvement from God in any way, just as if . . there were not God.
So we are back to the data-fit issue - if no help being given makes more sense in a godless world than in a world overseen by an all powerful allloving compassionate god, maybe there is not all powerful all-loving compassionate god.

Jesse Dukes said...

I agree that just like all of the common graces of life (rain, sunlight, air) are freely available to all, God doesn't reserve difficulty (sickness or natural disaster) for "bad people" exclusively. I mean, why not get to the heart of the issue and say, "Why does God let people die?"

That's why my point was to illuminate the fact that if there is a God who has prepared an existence after death, and has taken the steps to right the wrongs that he has promised will happen in this life to ALL of his children (from mother teresa to hitler), then it makes perfect sense that there is suffering in the world and and that it affects everyone regardless of age, race, nationality, or piety.

I am no less likely than anyone to be senselessly murdered or the victim of a natural calamity. God has only promised me that He will be with me in the midst of that, and that death will not be the end of my existence.

goprairie said...

"if there is a God who has prepared an existence after death"
why bother with a limited-length suffering-filled life here at all if there is a pain-free ever-lasting life to be had with God?

Shygetz said...

I mean, why not get to the heart of the issue and say, "Why does God let people die?"

Death is not the heart of the issue; suffering is. Remember, we are talking about a God who is claimed to be omnibenevolent. That means perfectly benevolent, not just decent all things considered. So in order to be considered perfectly benevolent, that means not one single unnecessary instance of suffering may occur.

Tsunami in India; hurricane in New Orleans; cyclone in Myanmar; now an earthquake in China. Lots and lots of suffering. Not just death; maiming, property loss, orphaning, and horrible, prolonged death in agony. Where was the choice for evil? Nowhere; these are "acts of God". And these "acts of God" are nothing near perfectly benevolent. Even if, for some ineffable reason, God just HAD to kill all of those people, couldn't he have done so with less suffering? Did that man need to lose BOTH of his arms to complete God's greater plan? What about phantom pain; is that REALLY necessary for whatever reason? Did that woman need to suffer for EXACTLY 14 years, 7 months, 2 days, 14 hours, 32 minutes, and 17 seconds with metastatic breast cancer before dying? Did that infant need to slowly starve over three days under a mountain of rubble, crying out in fear and pain for a mother that would never come and a world that would never know?

Omnibenevolent my ass--if you try to stretch the word this far, it becomes meaningless. Either God is unwilling to stop unnecessary suffering (in which case by the scoreboard He is FAR from omnibenevolent), he is unable to stop unnecessary suffering (in which case He is FAR from omnipotent), or He is unaware of such suffering (in which case He either doesn't care about our planet or is blind). Pick your poison; it's all the same to me.

Jesse Dukes said...

Note: I'm typing this on my phone, so please forgive any spelling errors, since I'm sure there will be some. And, for the record, I've lost faith in LOTS of gods in my short life (my parents are ministers), so I'm really searching for truth above all else. That being said, this is where I am currently.

My understanding of God (omnipotent, omnicient, omnipresent being) is that His defining attribute is Love. Yes He is Just, yes He is Holy, but I see those as descriptive attributes rather than defining (i.e. He is just because he defends those he loves).

As I understand it, Love by nature desires an object of affection, it desires to share. So God created the cosmos which reflect His beauty and perfection with their fantastic order and chaos and created Humanity in His own image, meaning with the capacity to love (in a way that is patient, kind, keeps no record of wrongs, delights in truth, not envious, 1 Corin. 13 et al) but more specifically with the ability to choose whether to accept God's. Because we all know "love" that is not freely choosen is certainly not love but magic, or worse slavery.

So God takes a risk, we choose not to reciprocate love back to Him, and evil enters into the creation, so He sets events in motion that will bring about the story to which His son will enter and show Humanity the full extent of what Love (God) is all about, then death, ressurection, etc etc.

This doesn't seem like a group who needs to hear the Gospel again ;)

So thats what I believe in a nutshell. I understand I take plenty of things for granted (we can understand love, there was any sort of Garden, Jesus is God's son) but I most of all I believe that if we lived out the commands of Jesus to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves, humanity really would be better off (and gas wouldn't be $4 a gallon :P).

And whats weird is I normally find that your average athiest get that better than your average christian, right? But I like this blog because you all want no false silly gods that can't stand up to questions, I just hope our discussion leads us to truth.

Thanks for being kind.

goprairie said...

Perhaps instead of asking why God allows suffering, we should be asking why millions and millions are gullible enoughh to believe, in a world of suffering, that this could be true about God: "God is overflowing with love and kindness"

goprairie said...

J: "so I'm really searching for truth above all else."
Here's the truth. There is no God. There might not have been a Jesus. If there was, he was just a man. People have a very strong need to understand and explain things. They have a strong instinct to explain and teach things to each other. I am right now a victim of that strong instinct. Everything evolved from a life form that popped into being when a crystal pattern of molecules became self-replicating. The self-replication was not perfect, so some were defective and died. Some that were not perfectly replicated were able to live and some actually thrived better in some niche. Over such a huge amount of time that we cannot really wrap our brains around it, many diverse life forms evolved to fit into every niche and cover the earth. There is pain and suffering because the very process that lead to all the wonderful diversity is imperfect as is every organism in some way, but each one is good enough to live and thrive in its niche of the earth. Because we want to explain and teach, we make up stories for things we cannot explain. Because we have multi-parted brains that evolved as new parts formed and the old parts stayed, we have feelings of things being 'out there' as sensations are processed by different parts of the brain at different rates. This leads us to a feeling that there is some other force out there near us. We call that spirit but it is just brain electical impulses. We made up stories about how things got made, and because things get made by people, we made up a bigger version of people to explain how bigger things got made and called it god. We are afraid to die and want to think we are separate from animals so we made up the idea of a spirit that lingers after death, but when the brain stops, so does all conciousness. That is the truth and for every question such as how life may have began and how evolution of various things happened, there are interesting, fascinating, scientific explanations of them right here on the internet and in books that the internet will refer you to. Once you quit trying to make religion fit and make up twisted logic to make it work out, you can spend that time reading about true earth science and life science and brain science and then you will be reading the truth. But you have to give up the god stuff to really start getting all the details and subtleties of the science stuff.

Jesse Dukes said...

Remember, we are talking about a God who is claimed to be omnibenevolent. That means perfectly benevolent, not just decent all things considered. So in order to be considered perfectly benevolent, that means not one single unnecessary instance of suffering may occur.

I don't know who claimed that God was omnibenevolent, but whoever did was wrong for the very reasons you stated. That's why I also agree that if there is no life after death, or if God is going to send billions of "unbelievers" to hell, then we should be asking why millions and millions are gullible enough to believe, in a world of suffering, that this could be true about God: "God is overflowing with love and kindness"

Either way, I need a clarification as to what we are discussing. Are we talking about the presence of any suffering in the world? or of any unnecessary suffering? or of any suffering as a result of natural disasters?

Because I find all of this incredibly ambiguous territory, I'm not trying to minimize any of the really awful things that have happened throughout human history, but what are the qualifications for unnecessary suffering? And should there be no natural phenomenon that result in death or injury? Or should God step in and magically rescue everyone who who is at risk, stopping falling trees and tectonic plates? And what about if someone is in danger because of their own stupidity or ignorance, leisure hiking without proper gear, storm chasing, failing to reinforce their house, should God magically rescue them as well, or should they be left to face the consequences of their actions

My point is just that this reasoning is very messy and the only thing you can do is go back to question of "Why did God create a world with any suffering?" And while I agree that if this life is all we have God is either
a. impotent (but then He wouldn't be God, would he?)
b. uncaring (could be)
or c. a liar and a vindictive ass (also could be).

But that's not the story the bible tells. I believe it tells the story of a God who loves all of his creation, and while He has intervened at times, He for the most part lets the natural laws of creation (biology, physics, cause and effect) play themselves out in this current age. And in the age to come, He will right every wrong, and bring justice and healing to a world who's people have all had a chance to decide whether He is worth submitting to or not.

But whether you believe that or not is a matter of faith, and while there are good reasons to believe that, no one can be argued into a matter of faith.

Is that fair? Or do we need to go back and settle the terms of this discussion better?

Jesse Dukes said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jesse Dukes said...

go: I really wish it were that easy. That we could just say with all certainty that we've proved that God doesn't exist, conversation over, science has confirmed what many people have always suspected or hoped for. But that's just not true.

I understand evolution, I get that based on our present understanding of science and fossil records that there is no way that the earth was created in 6 literal days, and how the argument doesn't make sense to imagine that God somehow intended the earth to look old. The research that says that we probably evolved from self replicating RNA is not in question here.

The question is, Did (a/the) God start/direct that process? Meaning: did some intelligent being create the earth in its original state, or the big bang that brought the cosmos into being?

Because as I understand it the original question of how still hasn't been answered (How everything came into being). So until then, I imagine our questions and theories about God and what he could be like will continue.

Since you brought up Jesus, he's really the strongest reason that I have for believing in God at all. If He wasn't resurrected then I agree this is all a big fat sham and I personally am the biggest idiot of all, because I've based my life, hope, faith and reality around that.

And I don't take for granted the impossibility of it (dead people traditionally stay dead, God typically doesn't come to earth), I just also take into account the impossibility of the alternative; that Jesus died, His body was somehow taken from a guarded and sealed tomb and hidden forever, that his followers then got together and planned to say that he was alive, and were all willing to die, quite gruesomely, in defense of something they knew to be a lie, all the while espousing the virtues of love, truth, and justice, and with great integrity teaching their subsequent followers to do the same.

I think it makes much more sense (and this has proven true in my life) to say, even though it does not fit in my closed naturalistic worldview, there could be a God, and there almost certainly was a Jesus who claimed to be his son, and the extraordinary response of his followers indicates that it is more probable that he rose from the dead, than not.
Therefore, I'll try what he said on for size. I'll believe that the best way to live human life is to love God, and to love your neighbor self sacrificially, which could ultimately lead to your death.

I guess that's why I don't understand the need for this site. Shallow, truth-fleeing, self-serving, judgmental, asshole-laden, Christianity deserved debunking, and I'll lend myself 100% to that cause. But none of that has anything to do with what Jesus actually said or did.

So why all the effort to squash that? If you truly believe in evolution, won't Christianity just die out soon enough? I mean, its built on the principal of absolute altruism, no benefit in terms of group fitness save hope, peace, and joy, because the fitness of the species is realized in the next life. If there is no God, we should all be dead in no time and you can laugh at us. But real followers of Jesus will be healing the sick and confronting injustice and loving their enemies and fighting for truth and equality and creativity and freedom along the way. Right?