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"But on the negative side, stoicism’s Providential claim that everything in the universe is already perfect and that things which seem bad or unjust are secretl

• scantis 2y ago
  In the story oh Hiob/Job,he is unaffected in his behavior and the trust instilled in him from others, which clearly discouble his person from his misfortune. In the original there is no word for faith, believe or trust only for character. Job is of good character despite his misfortune, that makes him a man of God.
  • taylorlapeyre 2y ago
    Technically correct, but quite misleading. The idea of "trust in God" or "faithfulness" is completely central to Job. The story doesn't concern itself with "doctrinal faith", but it implicitly discusses "faith" in the general sense of trust in the providence of God in the face of challenges that might make one abandon Him.
    • scantis 2y ago
      The word used was "aemuna" or "æmunatō". The most basic translation is reliability. The other word much later was pisteōs with loyalty in its most basic translation. The concept of faith as you describe it is a late interpretation, morphing both concepts together. Jobs "faith" is his reliability of character, neither his believe nor faith, yet axiomatically the definition behind those words. That if you choose to believe in God and have faith your reliability of character will come or strive to have it. Without being misleading, you may have it without any believe or faith in God.
      • taylorlapeyre 2y ago
        What is a "late interpretation" in your view? What time period exactly? Job has been read as a story that directly dialogues on the possibility of faith and trust in God in the face of evil for millennia. See The Babylonian Talmud (Bava Batra 15a-16b), Midrash Rabbah (Genesis Rabbah, Exodus Rabbah), Saadia Gaon's commentary on Job, even Maimonides. And on the Christian side, Take Origen, John Chrysostom, and especially Gregory The Great's Moralia in Job in the 500s CE.
        • scantis 2y ago
          With late interpretation I mean what is after the fact. Job has not read his own story. A late interpretation for me is viewing him, with what he has defined. If faith would be praying five times a day and avoiding shellfish, his story becomes meaningless. As you pointed out well, there are many scholars who discussed faith and belief over time. I am not a religious authority, think of me as a simpleton. You may choose their take on the word, it is a late interpretation to me. It could be a whole book on the matter. The direct translation is reliable.
  • gunian 2y ago
    isn't it crazy an all powerful being would abuse a person to teach them some vague lesson? like truly if you think about it objectively how is that different from the Mike Vick dog fighting scandal
    • scantis 2y ago
      Interesting take. I may imagin Job being as class with core attributes, integrity and commitment, and the variable attributes like wife, wealth, family etc. You can have billions of different instances of Job and the variable attributes may change over time. If integrity and commitment are unphased by that, the instance of Job is reliable. It is Jobs choice to be reliable, no matter his attributes. Mistreating dogs changes their core attributes and makes them less reliable. They might be rehabilitated, but this crucial part is not their choice. This is how I would see the difference. What do you think?
      • gunian 2y ago
        i see the human and the dog as classes that inherit from the same base class with slightly different attributes such as computational power, healing, running speed etc isnt your comment like saying abuse a dog if its reliable no matter the attributes it is a good dog? abusing people also changes their core attributes which is what trauma is and by this logic poofy guy in the sky is an abuser or a slaver how do people reconcile that? the christians that raised me used to beat me into believeing wondering if HN has a more philosophical take
        • scantis 2y ago
          Yes absolut exactly. LUCA comes to mind as a base class. Obviously attributes and methods differ quite greatly, we are not just dogs. To reconcile all abuse in this life sounds great, to the humans class, to the dog class it is probably of little interest. Yet specific therapy dogs can take a lot of abuse, without ever lashing out. They are great for troubled children.
• thanhhaimai 2y ago
  > For one, that all bad things are actually good is not a tenet of Christianity and is not in the Bible Just for my own learning, if it's not considered a tenet, why do I see this line of thought so often portrayed: "This <bad thing> is not bad. God made is so to test my faith."
  • taylorlapeyre 2y ago
    This is one of three major answers to the problem of Theodicy (justifying God in the face of evil) in Christian theology. They are: 1. Pedagogical (the one you mentioned) - Evil exists so that we may grow and learn. All evil will be used to create even greater good. Quintessential example would be the story of Job in the Old Testament. 2. Eschatological — Evil is a by-product of having any creation in time whatsoever, and will be fully restored at the end of all things. Another way of thinking of this one is that evil is "non-being", the absence of the good. A lack, a privation. Espoused by Augustine (and before him, Neoplatonism in general), and Aquinas. 3. Freedom-oriented — Evil (even natural evil) is a broken state of affairs caused by the freedom of people, who use that freedom against God. God nonetheless allows this because he allows us the dignity to choose. The official teaching of the Catholic Church. The straightforward reading of Genesis 2. None of these say that "This <bad thing> is not bad" - Christianity acknowledges the existence of evil "as evil". However, with God's grace, evil may be healed or made to serve higher purposes.
    • Cantinflas 2y ago
      Imo 1) and 3) make little sense, e.g. no one learns anything from a toddler dying from cancer, and no "freedom" caused it. 2) looks more interesting, although I'm not sure I understand it
      • heyjamesknight 2y ago
        A toddler dying from cancer is horrible. It's not evil.
      • taylorlapeyre 2y ago
• adamtaylor_13 2y ago
  Came here to write this. Relieved to see someone already wrote this. Only someone who has never actually taken the time to study the Bible could possibly claim that it teaches “things are secretly good underneath” The Bible teaches that things are so broken, so bad, and so irredeemable that God himself had to humble himself into the form of man, dying a physical death, to redeem it. It’s only pop-Christianity that teaches that people are mostly good and make mistakes. The Bible teaches that man is a wretch, incapable of redemption within his own power, and deserving of damnation.
  • timeon 2y ago
    So what is your answer for Epicurean paradox?
    • adamtaylor_13 2y ago
      Free will. If people are allowed to make choices, evil is a possibility. You can argue that free will isn't good, but I'm not sure what evidence supports that argument. So if God allows free will, then evil can happen. Just because he doesn't immediately stop it (read: eliminate free will) doesn't make God not-good. I think part of this is man's hubris in assuming we can know what is perfectly good. The Epicurean paradox is hinged on the description of "all-good," which is far too simple in most people's minds. A metaphor: If I shove my child to the ground to teach them the consequences of falling, I am a bad father. If I warn them to tie their shoes, or they will fall, but do not explicitly force them to, I am a father willing to let my child learn, but I am not a "bad father" because of this. Another aspect I think the Epicurean paradox misses is the concept of justice and eternity. If this physical life is all there is, then yeah, allowing people to suffer and die is an injustice. But if we are eternal beings in a temporary, physical body, suffering and dying in this world is a small blip on the timeline. What comes after has to be factored into the equation of "What is justice?" But that's where non-theistic reasoning can no longer come with us. The Bible is fairly clear about what comes after, and there is justice when viewed in that light. If you believe this life is all there is, then yeah it's not hard to argue that God isn't just. But again, the Bible, upon which the Judeo-Christian belief system is built, is very explicit that this life is NOT all there is. So the Epicurean paradox takes a small slice of the Bible out of context and points at it, without considering all the other context and argues, "Ha! See? Logical inconsistency!" when in reality it's just out of context.
• throw4847285 2y ago
  Yeah, it's an especially odd claim because early Christianity was apocalyptic. The Second Coming was imminent. The world would be radically remade. I think the author is confusing early Christianity with Calvinism.
  • Matticus_Rex 2y ago
    The author's claims are not generally true of Calvinism, either.
    • throw4847285 2y ago
      Fair. I guess I was thinking of a certain kind of prosperity theology which people blame on Calvinism, but that isn't fair. That's not how unconditional election actually works.
• munificent 2y ago
  > For one, that all bad things are actually good is not a tenet of Christianity and is not in the Bible. Surely you in your life you have met many Christians who said "God works in mysterious ways", "there is a purpose for everything", "trust in the Lord", etc.? In the Christian communities I grew up around, it was a pervasive idea that misfortune was explained away by our limited understanding. These cliches were always trotted out when something horrible had happened which needed to be explained away. It's arguably a necessary tenet for Christianity to hold together as a coherent belief system. If you believe in an omnipotent, benevolent God, you need some way to explain why bad things still happen[1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil
  • achierius 2y ago
    > Surely you in your life you have met many Christians who said "God works in mysterious ways", "there is a purpose for everything", "trust in the Lord", etc.? Yes, but this is something people say in times of grief, for the comfort of the grieving -- it's not a consistent moral philosophy that they hold to in other parts of their life, nor is it meant to be. There are better answers than this, but they are oftentimes much harder to process, and much more likely to accidentally pain the one who is grieving. > It's arguably a necessary tenet for Christianity to hold together as a coherent belief system. No, it's not. You're correct in that "you need some way to explain why bad things still happen", but we've come a long, long way from "stuff just happens". For example, the Catholic view is that suffering is A) not committed by, but permitted by, God; B) necessary for salvation and free will to coexist. In this view, evil is in essence a deviation from the will of God -- but free will must, in this conception, at the very least include the free will to choose to follow or choose to oppose God's own will. To quote St. Aquinas, paraphrasing St. Augustine: "Since God is the supremely highest good, he would not allow evil to exist in his creation unless he were so all powerful that he could even make good out of evil". More broadly, suffering is seen as having not only a redemptive but an edifying nature that can ultimately bring us closer to God. I understand that this might sound repulsive on first glance, but frankly I do not think there is an answer to "why is there evil?" which would not be at initial examination -- certainly, it's no worse than the idea that we are simply here to suffer by random caprice, and that that suffering is itself meaningless, nothing but a failure on your own (meaningless) value function. Yes, one might hope that things 'could have been a different way' -- but what would a world without any grief, any suffering even be like? This is the point of the whole pleasure-machine/experience-machine thought experiment: many people would very much rather live in this world, with all its suffering, than one totally blank, devoid of depth and complexity. One might even go as far as to assert that no 'good' God could permit such terrible depths of suffering -- congenital illness, rape, torture, child slavery, so on and so forth. But so many times, in exploring theories of computational complexity or abstract mathematics or informatics, we see that what might have seemed to be simple assumptions can have enormous, essential effects: deciding whether all programs written for a FSM with one stack is simple, but for one with two stacks the problem becomes impossible. Perhaps it is impossible to have a world "with matter, with living things made from matter, with free will for those living beings, but without the ability of one living thing to enslave another". We cannot know -- but if there is a truly transcendent, omniscient God, then He certainly would. For a more modern (more philosophically-flavored) take, I'd suggest reading Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling: he explores the binding of Isaac with the idea being to address this very question. In particular, he strongly disagrees with Kant's idea that God would simply choose to follow the categorical imperative, and emphasizes instead the transcendence of God and divine morality. But as an existentialist I think his writing is much closer to how we as members of the modern world can feel than philosophers/theologians who came before him.
• taeric 2y ago
  You are seeing the literal downside of strawman criticism, I think? You see the same in most criticisms of "capitalism." If you get to build up the representative as only the negatives of that which you are criticizing, than it is usually a bright flame. Is extra devious when coupled with what is basically the opposite for all of the supposed "enemies" of that which is being straw manned. Where they are represented by only the best attributes. And a lot of the deviousness comes from how this makes supposed centrists feel superior in pointing out neither is "true." Which, fair, but where does that take the conversation? It gets dominated by people that rally around the representation they feel invested in and nobody even remembers why it may have first come up in the first place.
• goosedragons 2y ago
  It's the idea of predestination.
• deleted 2y ago
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• mathgeek 2y ago
  I read the author's comments as separating out Christianity (the religion that grew from the teachings of Christ) from the actual source of its teachings.
• senko 2y ago
  > stoicism’s Providential claim that everything in the universe is already perfect and that things which seem bad or unjust are secretly good underneath Having read a bunch about stoicism, I've never heard/read this claim. Stoicism (AIUI) is basically "shit happens, learn to deal with it, could be worse". While it provides a coping mechanism, this is a far cry from "things are actually perfect".
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• harimau777 2y ago
  The version that I've heard from preachers like John Piper seems to be a backlash against the Prosperity Gospel. The argument basically goes: - The greatest good that God can do is to glorify himself. - Therefore, when the Bible talks about God working things out for good or about God's provision, what it really means is that God will glorify himself. I understand the urge to go against the prosperity gospel's idea of "God want's you to be happy so if you have any problems it's because you don't have enough faith". However, I think that argument's like Piper's go too far in the other direction. They basically deny God's provision and in an indirect way say that "every bad thing is actually good".
• gunian 2y ago
  man old testament was the shit it says slaves should be freed with an advance after 6 years
• r_singh 2y ago
  To me, it seems that Stoicism’s assumption—that everything is perfect and interconnected—shares similarities with, and might even originate from, Hindu philosophy or other Indian philosophies, which view ultimate reality as inherently perfect