Job

[Ranjr]

People are defective, have illnesses and do bad things.  Some more than others.  This creates suffering among people.  This is exactly what we should expect in a world with no god.  But somehow, we need a god to explain why bad things happen?  No, we don't.  It doesn't explain anything.

[The Grand Nudger]

Apparently, it's what we should expect in a world with or without a god. There's no particular reason that suffering wouldn't exist just because a god did. All sorts of fun and interesting combos make that apparent.

Maybe some gods are just impotent. Maybe some gods, like our new friends god, are flat out evil. Maybe some gods are flatly incompetent ala an animal just doing what it does, or a volcano erupting.

[Angrboda]

Regarding Job, I'm reminded of the Jewish saying, "We are God's chosen. Next time, God, please choose someone else."

I'm curious what the limits of the devil are. In Job, he's able to coerce Job through loss, suffering, and torment. Typically Satan is portrayed as a deceiver, a tempter who achieves his aims by tricking us into doing the bad thing, much as a con man uses our innate desires for gain to persuade us to embark upon unwise courses of action. So the question to my mind is, how much of Satan's effectiveness depends upon our complicity?

[HappySkeptic]

If the OP actually believes that demons do the bad things in the world (despite this not being biblical), I'm not sure there is much of a conversation to be had.

Job isn't history. It wasn't even meant to be literal. God didn't chat with Satan, and God didn't have a heart-to-heart with an actual person called Job.

It is a story meant to hash out the question - why is there evil in the world, and why does evil happen to good people just as much as bad people? It is pointed out that the unjust go unpunished, and the righteous die. All the injustice in the world, contradicting the idea of a Good God, are brought out. The arguments of the 3 friends and Job are meant to mirror the arguments that religious people have heard or said.

In the end, the answer is that God is all-powerful, and you can't understand the real reasons. The ending is crap, though I'm not sure what better answer a 3000-year-old story is going to give. The rest is actually a well crafted bit of philosophical questioning.

[Belacqua]

Regarding Job, I'm reminded of the Jewish saying, "We are God's chosen.  Next time, God, please choose someone else."

I'm curious what the limits of the devil are.  In Job, he's able to coerce Job through loss, suffering, and torment.  Typically Satan is portrayed as a deceiver, a tempter who achieves his aims by tricking us into doing the bad thing, much as a con man uses our innate desires for gain to persuade us to embark upon unwise courses of action.  So the question to my mind is, how much of Satan's effectiveness depends upon our complicity?

(With the caveat, of course, that Satan is a fictional character who has been depicted in all kinds of ways, for all kinds of purposes.)

In the greatest depictions, which shape our idea of what Satan is (Milton, Goethe, etc.), he is powerless without our complicity. That's largely the message of the books.

[Mister Agenda]

Interestingly, of all the books of the Bible, it was the Book of Job that mostly contributed to me eventually becoming an atheist.

Me too. I was shocked the most at the idea that the compensation for losing your family was a new, better family that WAS SUPPOSED TO MAKE KILLING THE FIRST ONE OKAY. It's almost like the dead family members weren't real people, just props for the story. Not to mention God supposedly had the power to bring back the original family, which would have been much more impressive and more meaningful feat.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Concerning the story of Job.


It' s a STORY. Fiction. It doesn' t mean any more the one about Luke using the force to blow up the death star......

Well, stories mean what the particular reader decides they mean. To some, Moby Dick means that there is a constant epistemological conflict which may never be resolved. To others, it’s a how-to whaling manual.

Similarly, the fictive Job narrative can either be a treatise on the value of suffering, or a nightmare-inducing bedtime story. I’m firmly in the latter camp.

It isn’t about the factual truth of Story that matters, but whether a specific story is a good one or a bad one.

Boru

[Duty]

Job? Pays the bills but...I thought it was pronounced (and thus spelt) "Jobe" - call me theistically challenged....

[vulcanlogician]

Regarding Job, I'm reminded of the Jewish saying, "We are God's chosen.  Next time, God, please choose someone else."

I'm curious what the limits of the devil are.  In Job, he's able to coerce Job through loss, suffering, and torment.  Typically Satan is portrayed as a deceiver, a tempter who achieves his aims by tricking us into doing the bad thing, much as a con man uses our innate desires for gain to persuade us to embark upon unwise courses of action.  So the question to my mind is, how much of Satan's effectiveness depends upon our complicity?

I've heard that Satan is simply hebrew for "adversary," and that the Christian perception of Satan is much different from the Jewish one.

[Duty]

...how can a loving God allow for an innocent man to suffer?...

Which God? Thor? Ganesh? Vishni? Shiva? Odin? Zeus? Mithra? Loki?...Yahway? Leprechauns? Unicorns?