Job 40-42

[wolfpurplemoon]

God is describing monsters, fire breathing(?) monsters. But whatever it was it convinces Job that God is great and then God gives him back twice as much stuff as he had at the beginning.

I'm not sure you require faith in a God that pops by for a chat (not blind faith anyway), in fact Job says that it is the fact that he's seen God that has convinced him to take back any of the mean stuff he said.

And so Job lived to 140 and had a great rest of his life, glad it turned out OK in the end...

Comments

[bill_sheehan.livejournal.com]

And so it ends, trailing off limply with "and they all lived happily ever after, much longer than humans live."

The son-of-a-bitch killed his family, but it's OK because Job made another one. It's the same logic God employs to Job: Shut up and cringe before me. I brought you into the world, I can take you out and make another just like you."

This is immoral. This is inhuman. This is monstrous. If God existed, it would be morally necessary to oppose him.

Fortunately, we are more moral than the gods we invent.

[(Anonymous)]

It wasn't God who killed Job's family and took away from him. It was Satan. Satan wanted to destroy the life of the faithful Job. Satan wanted Job to turn his back on God. Job didn't and God blessed him. Sorry to rain on your God hating parade.

[bill_sheehan.livejournal.com]

Read the first chapter again, Anonymous. Satan is acting on orders from the Almighty. He doesn't make a move until God tells him to. Is the Godfather innocent when his hit man does the actual shooting?

But let me clarify one point: There is a character in this poem called "God." He is a bully and a blowhard and a sadist, immoral, inhumane, a homicidal son-of-a-bitch, a monster who must be opposed as a moral imperative.

There are many other stories in this book of similar age. In most of them, the God character is petty, vindictive, jealous, insecure, capricious, and malicious. I am more moral than the God portrayed in these stories.

And you know what? You are, too. You know very well that the correct answer to a God who tells a man to take his son and slit his throat on a sacrificial pyre is "Hell, no!" You know that it's wrong to sell your daughter into slavery or have your disobedient son stoned to death by the village elders. You know that a man who offers his two virgin daughters to be gang-raped by a mob, and then gets drunk and has incestuous sex with both of these daughters on successive nights is not "a good and upright man," no matter what this God character might think of him.

Job is a lovely poem, and tells us a lot about how an ancient people thought about imponderable questions like the problem of evil. Isn't that enough?

[vequenor.livejournal.com]

Dude...read the first chapter. God did not order Satan to do anything. God PERMITED Satan to test Job's faith. These are two entirely different concepts.

Your invective leads me to believe that there's more going on here than just an annoyance at a literary figure.

Yes, there are a lot of stories in which God exercises his sovreignity. There are also a lot of stories in which grace, mercy, and love are demonstrated. Did you ever read those, or do you just like making character judgments based on selective data?

I think that's possibly the least accurate charicature of the story of Abraham and Isaac I've ever heard. Yes, God asked Abraham to do an immoral thing as a test of faith. The action was not permitted; if Isaac had actually died in that test, then yes, God would be a horrible, horrible entity. I am not familiar with the stories you reference in the next sentence. I do not recall Lot, the individual who tried to follow the cultural rules of his time and city by protecting his guests(albiet in an immoral and horrifying way) ever being called a "good and upright man." Further, as I recall the story, the whole drunken incestuous sex thing was his eldest daughter's idea, and Lot was so wasted at the time that he had no idea who he was with. Further, if Lot had actually behaved the way he was supposed to, he would never have been in the city with the mob, and his daughters would never have been so worried about child-bearing that they raped their own father.

The problem of evil is hardly imponderable. It's actually a very simple philosophical problem that emotional people blow out of proportion into something ridiculous.
1. God Exists
2. Evil Exists
If these two statements are logically contradictory, then there is no God. However, these statements are not contradictory; that is plain to see to anyone who knows what the word contradictory means. However, the existence of evil does raise serious questions about the nature of God and the purpose of the universe. These questions can very calmly and rationally be considered without invective or namecalling.

[bill_sheehan.livejournal.com]

I regret that my time is limited. I reformatted my argument and included citations to my references.

I'll try to address your main points. If I've missed a point you consider important, please let me know.

The Book of Job is one of the loveliest poems in literature. It’s about the eternal imponderable: Why do bad things happen to good people?

One of the things that struck me about the story was how much it reminded me of victims of domestic abuse who rationalize and blame themselves rather than the alcoholic offender. It seemed pretty clear to me that God was being a bullying bastard, but no one - not Job’s friends nor modern religious readers - want to say anything bad about the being at fault. God’s speech at the end sounds just like a drunken tyrant father yelling, “I brought you into this world, I can take you out!” Doesn’t anyone notice that Job’s children were murdered, for a bet?

The objection was raised that God only permitted Satan to test Job’s faith. Satan was the one at fault. Can’t blame God.

If your definition of God includes all-powerful and all-good, you can't shift culpability to Satan. When Worf says, "Permission to fire photon torpedoes at the intruder," and Captain Picard says "Make it so," who's responsible?  When it turns out later that the vessel in question was an innocent passenger liner, who will be held accountable at the courts martial?  And Picard doesn't even have the attributes of omniscience and omnipotence.  He's the captain, everything that happened was at his command.   History quiz: how many people were convicted and found guilty of the My Lai Massacre?  

This isn’t unique to the Book of Job. God’s behavior throughout a great many of the stories of the Hebrew Scriptures is repugnant. Richard Dawkins may have said it best: The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

It is my assertion that I am more moral than God, and so are you.

Is there anyone who doubts that the right answer to a God who orders you to take your son and slit his throat in sacrifice is, “Hell, no?” I’m not talking about the insane here - if God actually existed, and if he gave such an order, would it be moral to obey? I think not. (Abraham’s character was already pretty dubious. We’re talking about a weasel who pimped out his own wife to save his precious skin, after all. Twice. See Genesis 12:11-16, and Genesis 20:2.)

Abraham’s nephew Lot was another piece of work (Genesis 19). Is there anyone who really thinks that a man who offers his two virgin daughters to be gang-raped by a mob, and then gets drunk and has incestuous sex with both of them on successive nights, is a good and upright man? So why would you change your mind if I told you that the author of 2 Peter 2:7-8 said Lot was just and righteous?

Right after those Ten Commandments in Genesis 20 is a chapter with instructions from God on how you can only enslave your own countrymen for six years, but also where the loophole is that will enable you to enslave him and his family for life.  It then goes on to tell you how you may sell your daughter into slavery, and how she must be treated.  At least sex slaves are guaranteed food and clothing, but who thinks this is moral?

Have a slacker wastrel son who sits around playing World of Warcraft and swilling beer rather than getting a job? See Deuteronomy 21:18-21. "...This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die..."

SImply put, we are more moral because we do not base our morality in the customs of late Bronze Age goat herders. We understand what the author of Job did not. Might does not make right.

[vequenor.livejournal.com]

Most people have limited time; thank you for taking the time to express yourself in such an intellectual way. It does you great credit.

I am very sorry; I study philosophy, the very term "imponderable" is quite distasteful to me. This is a minor point that has almost no significance, so feel free to ignore it.

What I find interesting about God's reply at the end of Job is that it seems to have little to nothing to do with the events that took place earlier in Job. It hardly seems to be God's intention to explain the events that took place; rather, he seems more interested in comments that Job has been making about how impossible it would be to judge, condemn, or even oppose God about the matter. As such, it has always seemed to me that the ending "I'm better than you so shut your trap" monologue was simply affirming that yes, God is transcendentally better than mankind in all ways. And yes, it is terrible that the only way to test something is to actually do something to it, rather than just assume results. The death of Job's children was a terrible, terrible thing. In a world of rebels operating in a system devoid of grace, one can expect little better than terrible things to happen.

The definition of God that I will use for this argument does involve all-powerful and all-"good." I say all-"good" because human morality and divine goodness do not really need to coincide. But that can of worms hardly need be opened yet, as that there are a few other aspects of this God-definition that I happen to use. Firstly, this God is an absolutely holy being, and, as that grace has yet to be introduced into his system whole-scale, this holiness requires a great deal of "faith" from those seeking goodness and salvation. This faith is subject to test at any time, which is unfortunate for Job's children. Of course, since Job felt the need to offer sin offerings for his children, rather than trusting them to do so himself, one gets the feeling that they had been protected this far solely on the goodness of their father. Another aspect of this good-definition is that he respects free will, usually to the detriment of the universe. It would seem to have been free will that allowed Lucifer to become Satan in the first place. If Worf was aware that the ship he was targeting had innocents aboard, he would certainly be able, willing, and perhaps required to avoid firing upon the ship. (It's not like people on the Enterprise follow procedure all the time, is it?) Of course, this illustration still has the God-figure slaughtering innocents indiscriminately, but we'll just have to contend ourselves that that situation would not arise. But still, God does not behave like the captain of a starship, nor do we act like crew members. (You know, I'm not too familiar with Star Trek, but how does Picard deal with mutiny and personal betrayal?)

I apologize for that long and rambling paragraph; my time is also short, but I am not so skilled as you at expressing myself well.

I really have to wonder what rebels view their rightful ruler in any better light than Dawkins views God? But I will agree, God is hardly a nice God, nor should one expect niceness from him. At every turn he has been betrayed and ignored by his prize creation; what possible reason, moral or otherwise, would any human have to expect mercy and grace? I personally find that justice tends to be more moral than the alternatives.

It is my assertion that you know very little about me to assume that I have such morality.

I can think of easily a score of people who would machine-gun an orphanage if they thought God told them to. And they are sane, for the moment, anyway. Now, I hardly think that it would be moral to machine-gun an orphanage, as I hardly think it would be moral to slaughter my son. I do not think that it is immoral to prepare to obey a seemingly-immoral command from a God that theoretically has a better grasp on morality than I do. If Stephen Hawking told me that 2+3=4, or that the universe originated from a piece of cotton candy, I would at least listen to what he had to say about it. (I agree, Abraham is hardly one that people would want to claim as a moral leader. Thankfully, I'm not aware of many who do.)

[vequenor.livejournal.com]

No one said Lot was good or upright. Nor did anyone say he was just. All 2 Peter says is that he was a righteous man(and quite possibly even less than that, considering that the author saw fit to further explain that Lot was depressed by the behavior of those around him; being depressed by evil and actively doing good are two different things.) So, one must wonder what great acclaim there is to being called righteous, since it obviously cannot mean good, just, or upright.

You know, I think I'm noticing a common theme here. You don't like ancient Israelite culture. Good for you; it would have been a lousy place compared to our enlightened times. Do I understand why God did not demand that his people's society conform more to our society's concepts of right and wrong? No, nor do I understand why you or I should assume that what our culture has informed us is moral is the absolute moral authority of the ages. Now, I am not suggesting that the behavior described in the OT should or could be described as moral today; there is no reason that that should be a problem for anyone here today. Who thought selling their daughters was moral? People living thousands of years ago apparently did. Heck, slavery was considered perfectly moral just a couple hundred years ago. Whether or not something is considered moral at one period of history or the other has little, I think, to do with whether or not it actually was moral at any given time.

No, I do not have such a son.

I agree that our morality is different. And I agree that it is reasonable to assume that our morality is better, as that we live with it, and would find any other way of life quite strange. I really have to wonder, though, if we do really understand that might does not make right. After all, aren't you relying on the might of your culture, upbringing, and such to determine what is right?

Hmm...I may have allowed my own understanding of morality to have had too much of a sway here. Ah, well.

[bill_sheehan.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to debate the meaning of 2 Peter - if you want to argue that "righteous" doesn't mean, well, "righteous," go for it - I just don't have the time for casuistry, fun though it is.

I cannot, however, leave unchallenged your equivocation. There is a great deal of difference between the "might" of a man holding a gun to your head and the "might" of thousands of years of evolving culture and civilization.

My memory is not what it used to be (and never was), but what would Kant say about your argument that something like slavery, while immoral now, was moral in an earlier age? What do you think the slave would have to say about it?

[vequenor.livejournal.com]

As far as I know, "righteous" is defined as "morally right or justifiable." Since the "or" allows "morally justifiable" to be a definition of "righteous," I believe that Lot could be considered righteous. Considering the cultures involved, his actions would seem to be very justifiable to me. I'm guessing you would disagree, and I doubt I could convince you; I just didn't want to seem like a complete dunce. So, as much fun as it would admittedly be to try to argue that righteous does not mean righteous, the provided definition for the word is quite suitable.

To challenge an equivocation, would it not be helpful to explain where the equivocation breaks down? I could try to respond, but since you've not really said anything other than "I object" I can't really form a decent response.

I fail to see what Kant has to do with anything. I have not mentioned or relied upon him to any extent throughout the discussion, and his opinions, however well formed they were, are hardly pertinent. I neither know nor care what the slave would have thought about it. Quite frankly, I don't see what the slave's opinion, or the opinions of Kant, have to do with anything.

[bill_sheehan.livejournal.com]

Imponderable may not be the best term to use. After all, they're the philosopher's stock and trade!

Sorry to have taken so long in responding, but I realized the fundamental error in my earlier draft: we aren't speaking from a common frame of reference. I was a Christian for fifty years, but I don't recognize your conception of God. My tradition did not share the image of, "The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you...", to quote old Jonathan Edwards.

The attributes of your God seem to be petty jealousy, insecurity, unremitting rage, and paranoid psychopathy. You seem to be describing a being so dependent upon "faith" (another term on which I'm not sure we agree - yours sounds rather more like groveling servility) that torture is required to prove his subjects' fidelity.

And yet, at the same time, you're describing a being who creates universes and crashes whirling galaxies into each other. How can he be betrayed? How can he be resisted? How can he be rebelled against? How can he survive these inherent contradictions?

I can betray and rebel against my father. I cannot rebel against a mountain, or an ocean, or a star. How can you speak of betraying the creator of all? Imagine what deluded arrogance I'd have to possess to think that I'm capable of doing anything that could affect God in the slightest way.

And let us say that I did betray and rebel against my father. Would he ever be justified in killing my children?

No! It is barbaric, immoral, insane. Such a God cannot be called good, let alone all-good. Such a God cannot be called holy. Such a God cannot be called almighty. Such a God can only be called the creation of tales told around the smoking campfires of late Bronze-age goat-herders. He is the night fears of a people dwelling in the hostile wilderness. He is the ancient legends and just-so stories of great floods and giants in the earth. He is the foil of heroic tribal ancestors who boasted that they wrestled with him all night, or claimed to look up from a cleft in the rock and see his ass as he passed by.

I truly wish I had more time, but discussing how many angels can sit on the end of a pin is going to get tedious. (Measure the pin. Measure the angel's butts. You can do the math.) The simple fact is that I see no evidence for the existence of either angels or gods. We're debating the qualities of the imaginary, and we're not even imagining the same thing.

[vequenor.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I am sorry to be so petty on phraseology.

My conception of God is neither here nor there. The conception of God that I have had to construct for this discussion, namely, the God that seems apparent from the Old Testament, is and should be entirely different from the Christian God. The Christian God seems to like love, grace, injustice, and the like quite a bit more than his older version. I realize my terminology has not been the clearest, and I do apologize for that.

I wouldn't say that he's dependent on faith, for how could such a creator being be dependent on anything? He does seem to crave it to a degree that at times borders on the psychotic. And again, I'm not sure how anything this God would choose to do could be petty; unwarranted perhaps, but probably not petty. Unremitting rage seems rather strong too; he would seem to stop short every now and again in his rampages. And I think that anything resembling paranoia could be justifiably ascribed to the being. I grant that it is hardly a pleasant picture, but there is no reason the picture should be pleasant. The question has always been about morality, not pleasantness.

I see no inherent contradiction in a being that is all-powerful and betray-able. A possible explanation for this being's paranoia and jealousy would be that when he created mankind, he made himself vulnerable to the will of man. For all his less pleasant attributes, it would seem that this Old Testament God did create humans to fulfill a purpose that would be pleasing to him. For some reason, he seems to have thrown free will in there too, so that it is possible for mankind to rob God of pleasure. And, so too, did God rob himself of a form of omnipotence that I'm not sure he ever claimed to have. As such, this creator is very thwartable/betrayable/resistable by his creation.

I fail to see the similarity between the Old Testament God and an ocean, mountain, or star. Neither the ocean, mountain, nor star contain will or personality. I've always thought of mankind as somewhat arrogant; I know I am. And I previously mentioned how it would be possible for a single human(for numbers hardly matter when it comes to divine pleasure, it seems) to influence God.

I doubt he would; assuming that your father and you lived in a relatively recent Western culture. I can easily imagine a society in which such behavior would be acceptable. However, since I hope I can safely assume that neither you nor your father live in such a society, I hope I can say that your father would definitely not be justified in such an action. I know my father wouldn't. However, I fail to see what current Western morality has to do with anything. We're not talking about a recent God; we're talking about an old one. To apply recent morality to an old entity would simply be to whine that things have changed in a couple thousand years. So, if all you're trying to say is that the God of the Old Testament doesn't act like you do, I agree completely. I find that idea that you and your culture are the sole arbiters of all that could ever be moral somewhat arrogant and offensive, but that is hardly an issue in this discussion.

Barbaric? Perhaps. Immoral? Hardly, when measured by the morality that can properly be applied to the situation. Insane? I fail to see how insanity comes into play at all. Of course he can be called good and all-good; he just can't be called "Bill's good"(I assume that's your name; my apologies if I was either wrong or somehow impolite) As that "holy" and "divine" are fairly good synonyms...I fail to see why not. I fail to see anything in your remarks that strips this being of any power. And that comment about campfire tales is historically false.

Angel anus measuring has nothing to do with this discussion whatsoever. Further, evidence for such a God has also not come up in this conversation(as far as I recall). If you would like to begin such a discussion, I would be more than willing to do so, so long as our host has not grown tired of our squabbles. I don't recall imagining much of anything; all I did was remember, as best I could, how the Old Testament God acts, and some old Sunday School lessons on him.

[vequenor.livejournal.com]

Ah, that reminds me. Since you were kind enough to tell me a bit about your background, I should probably reciprocate. I was raised by an associate minister of what could be called a highly conservative church. They were kind enough to stop just short of full-fledged fundamentalism, thank goodness. Then I went to college, discovered that several other concepts made much more sense than what I had been raised with, realized that determining the nature of the universe and beyond is a somewhat difficult task, and therefore began to style myself as an agnostic. I know that was probably more detail than you wanted, but I'm a wordy fellow.

[(Anonymous)]

@ Bill...it amazes me that you, the potter, think you know more than God, the Clay. God made you, Bill. You will realize that one day, and I pray that it is while you still stand on this earth, because regardless of what your "wisdom" causes you to believe, one day every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God, the Father. Yes, the same tongue you use now to slander my God WILL declare his Lordship. May your heart be softened, that you will be able to gladly bow in holy reverence as opposed to bowing in shame and terror on that Day.