The Book of Job

[Machadaynu]

I mentioned my thoughts on The Book of Job in the 'Back to Church' thread, and it was suggested that I start a new thread about it. So here it is.

The story of the book of Job is (to quote myself from the other thread):

God is chatting to Satan and mentions how Job is his best follower and would never lose faith. Satan essentially has a bet with God that Job would turn on God if his life wasn't so great. God, for some reason, accepts this deal with the proviso that Satan doesn't kill Job. It's not explained why God is chewing the fat with Satan rather than, say, destroying him completely, what with God being omnipotent and Satan being pure evil.

Anyway, Satan sends all sorts of illness to Job, kills all his animals, destroys his farm and kills his entire family. God, being omniscient, knew this would happen when he took on the bet - he knew Job would suffer, and he knew Job would remain true to him. Quite why he needed to prove this to Satan (pure evil, remember) is something of a mystery.

In the end God gives Job twice as many animals as before, and 10 new children, including 3 daughters that were prettier than the ones God allowed Satan to kill.

Christians see this as a story of how faith is rewarded (even if you're only suffering because God is trying to prove a point to Satan) I see it as a story of how God will use us as he sees fit, is insecure and vain and is apparently either unable, or unwilling, to resist being influenced by Satan.

I contrast God's treatment of Job, his wife and children - all "God's children" used as pawns in a game, and suffering terribly for it - and wonder what we'd make of a human father treating his children in such a way. I expect the MN opinion would be rather damning to say the least. Yet when God does it, it becomes an inspiring story, and God is love, apparently.

Christians, I am told, see the book as a lesson in why the righteous suffer. The answer, it seems, is that their all-loving, all-powerful, all-knowing, benevolent holy father is sometimes prone to abandoning people to the worst excesses of Satan to try and prove some kind of point to God knows who.

Seems odd to me. God does not show love in that story. God shows himself to be deeply unpleasant. Or not God.

What are your views on Job?

Belief isn't a decision made by the intellect though. Could you make yourself believe in say, unicorns by sheer will? What if unicorns we're in a position to grant you eternal life if you believed in them. Would they still grant you eternal life knowing that you effectively pretended to believe in them whilst on an intellectual level you found the very idea absurd? And if so doesn't that reveal what a farce the belief system is for supposedly the most intelligent force in and outside the universe?

It sometimes is, hih. I think CS Lewis made the decision on the basis of intellect (he was a staunch atheist) - there are some more cerebral thinkers that go more down this avenue. Certainly not always the case, a lot of people have encounters with God, and this is what makes all the difference. When that's happened, you cannot argue with it :) It's a stunning kind of force, more than emotional hype, more than wishes from vulnerability. It is certainly what makes a huge difference in many people. And often after that, they come to see the intellectual value too, or some will come to both together, or either.

mad the problem with taking a supposed 'encounter with god' at face value is that:

a, all believers claim to have encountered their god. Christians, Muslims etc.
b, we are steadily learning through science how and why the brain can create these experiences.

Can you give me an example of anywhere else in your life that you believe something without any shred of evidence whatsoever?

With regards to Lewis; are you referring to the 'lord, lunatic, liar' trilemma? How do you feel about the forth possibility, that it's just a legend? My thinking is that if there was an actual man called Jesus he was just one of the many religious fanatics that sprang up from time to time during that era. Heck, they still do!

I have also had what I thought at the time were experiences of the divine but now see clearly how they were totally self induced.

Sorry, that should be 'believers of all faiths' not 'all believers'.

Sorry hih, had a bit of a busy day yesterday.

I was referring more to CS Lewis' conversion from atheist to Christian and how he found faith through study. I've always liked his Lord, Liar, Lunatic thing as it has made sense to me - the Legend thing not so much in light of what I see as good historical evidence, early writing down of events etc - too many early manuscripts for a legend to be so fully formed imo.

I can understand what you say about self-induced experiences of God, and think this does happen, tbh, especially in charged up atmospheres. However, there's stuff happened with me and friends I simply cannot put down to that, and right away from large events where these atmospheres tend to be

You ask about belief in something without evidence; that is difficult for me to answer as I think there is evidence, in experience of myself, friends and millions of people throughout history and the world now. But I guess I could say I believe in beauty, for example, and could argue that there is no evidence for beauty, because beauty is not quantifiable and is in the eye of the beholder, so to speak. Many people may agree that, for eg, the Lake District is a very beautiful place, but what makes it beautiful, and what is the evidence for the beauty? Someone else may say it is ugly and rugged. I may say my children are beautiful, others may think not. There is not standardised evidence, but I firmly believe in it.

Love as well. You could say evidence for love is that the person who loves you treats you well, or reciprocates your love. But that falls down if you are loving a small child for eg, or caring for a profoundly disabled person. One of the greatest examples of love I ever saw was a lady in hospital (I was an inpatient and this lady was in the bed opposite) who was so profoundly disabled she could not move, talk, eat. She was stick thin and so terribly frail and hardly even moved her eyes. Yet her mother spent hours talking to her, reading to her and stroking her hair, she painted her nails, she dressed her beautifully. This reminded me of God's love. But her love was not being obviously reciprocated. There was no evidence that her daughter loved her back.

I know these are imperfect examples with plenty of holes, but I just wanted to show it cannot be that clear cut.

Hi mad

Thanks for your response. The problem with taking dramatic conversions to christianity as evidence for your faith is that you then have to accept dramatic conversions to other faiths as evidence for their deity.

The gospels were written sometime after Jesus died and all contradict each other in numerous ways.

You cite solitary religious encounters as evidence but again you will have to accept solitary experiences of Muslims as evidence for their faith. how can you discount their testimony?

You say the fact that there are millions of other Christians is evidence. There are millions of believers of other faiths?

I don't understand how the notion of beauty is proof of god? (If you're implying that the beauty of nature reveals gods nature in some way then you have to also look to the parasitic worm that burrows into the eyes of african children to lay its eggs.)

As for love, many animals nurture their young. Natural selection obviously favours animals that are good at looking after their young for obvious reasons. If you're not very good at rearing your young they are less likely to survive long enough to reproduce themselves and as such your genes are not passed on. Therefore the better parents, those with higher levels of the nurturing hormone, seratonin, are more likely to get their genes replicated where as the parents with poorer levels of the hormone are more likely to fail to successfully rear young that go on to have their own young.

Also if the ability to behave altruistically is evidence for god what about parents who deliberately kill their children? What is that evidence for? If people nurturing and caring for others points to gods loving nature how can he watch so many people suffer unspeakable horrors day in and day out?

I don't understand how the notion of beauty is proof of god?
I don't think thats what mad meant exactly- the beauty thing came up in the context of 'You ask about belief in something without evidence'. Yes, we may believe -or not -that the Lake District is beautiful. However, that is clearly a subjective opinion. It has little to do with objective truth. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder; faith is in the mind of the believer. I used to believe in God and would have said then I had experience of him, now I don't; neither of these mental states of mine affects in the slightest whether a deity actually exists (only on the Discworld does that happen )

Love is somewhat different again. Aside from the feelings and oxytocin, the proof of love is what a person does. The evidence for the mother's love was in her actions. (Believers may attribute good things to the love of their god but there's no proof of such causality.). Love does not require reciprocation.

Thanks Grimma, that was indeed what I was trying to do, answer headinhands question '
Can you give me an example of anywhere else in your life that you believe something without any shred of evidence whatsoever?'

• I was not citing love and beauty as evidence for God even though I think they are but that is another discussion

I think what I was saying about the mothers love is that love is not always evident (eg in the daughter) but still there. A bit clumsy I know :)

Don't get me going on Discworld, we have enough of that in this house

In the love case, we believe that the child probably loves the mother based on our own experience - that we think we would love in that situation. The 'evidence' is that such empathetic extrapolations usually serve us well in decoding human relationships. However, we surely have to recognise that they aren't always reliable, and become less so for someone in a situation we've not actually been in. Hence the 'probably'.

mad why choose the nice things as proof for god? Why don't people say 'I see ugliness and hatred as proof of god'? And if you deem beautiful scenery as proof, what god is the peak/lake district evidence for? It's not as if it has a gift label on it saying 'To mankind, live from Yahweh, kiss kiss'?

Furthermore these beautiful places are just the results of millennia of geological activity. Yes they look beautiful but they weren't dropped on earth as is.

mad why choose the nice things as proof for god?

HiH - she doesn't (leastwise, not in these posts). She was giving an example of belief without evidence. Not that her belief in the beauty of the lake district was evidence of god.

Anyone watch the Richard Dawkins series last night on More4?

Very good food for thought, indeed!

No - which series is that please (new or a rerun of something)?

I was referring to where mad had said something like 'I was not citing love and beauty as evidence for god even though I think they are but is for another discussion' although she had striked through the latter part of her sentence But you know me, flag, red bull and all that.

I saw last weeks last night. Will watch new one tonight. I get a little too distracted with his unruly eye brow hairs at times though.

Can't he let Lalla give them even a teeny tiny trim?

HiH - oh right, gotcha.

It's a new series, Grimma. Really good food for thought.

I don't know as much as I'd like to about Islam - in some ways it seems more rational than Christianity, except (and its a big exception) the foundation on which it is built, as Crescent puts it : 'my certainty in the Qur'an as the word of God'. How does this certainty arise?

Thanks crescent that was really interesting. You say that in Islam you pray for Allah to send salutations on Mohammed, . Why does Mohammed need these salutations. What would happen if no one prayed for them to be sent? Is there no way Allah could do without the prayers and send them anyway? What benefit is there to you and Mohammed?