What little I heard this afternoon, it sounded pretty interesting - will have to start up iTunes and download today's Fresh Air Podcast.

How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question -- Why We Suffer

I don't think the average religious person's faith is improved at all by reading the Bible. The only thing that keeps such people believing is peer pressure, and the religious leaders who "interpret" things for them (and tell them that they will go to hell for being gay, that it's a great idea to keep slaves, that it's okay to hate and kill people who look or act different, and that everyone must willingly submit to irresponsible tyrants. This is all "God's will" as conveyed by the Bible, they say.)

And it's not as if the whole "shepherd" motif isn't a clue.

I'm so sick of Christians whining about suffering. Either you believe in an infinitely pleasurable heaven, that would reduce the most miserable life imaginable to a pain less than a stubbed toe, or you don't believe in the hokum at all. One or the other, people! And for my sake stop pretending that this is a meaningful issue!

Ehrman wrote the book Misquoting Jesus, and that one and most likely this one, if the interview with Terri Gross is any indication, belong on every non-believer's bookshelf. He's not an out and out atheist, but these arguments, which are often based on serious biblical analysis, are important to us.

Dawkins shows his blindspots by saying, in The God Delusion, that he was never very affected by this problem, so he doesn' use it in his atheist arsenal. Love Dawkins, but that's a huge mistake, which more serious philsophical treatments don't make, and this book seems to use the Problem of Evil effectively as a tool in our arsenal.

I like that he refers to Suffering, as opposed to Evil, in characterizing the problem. To some, Evil in this usage comes to include "human-inspired" as part of its very meaning. Suffering includes the baby whose head is bashed in against the wall in a hurricane, which presumably humans are NOT responsible for, as well as the murderer, which (in some ways) humans are.

And he also sees that this is not necessarily a problem of why there is ANY evil in the world, but a problem of why there is so much of it. If god could have reduced a smidgen of it, and didn't, he's morally responsible.

I highly recommend Misquoting Jesus to all serious atheists.

Frenetic, I agree completely. Non-clergy who have studied the bible for years have a much different take on it than most 'believers', and I find my conversations with these learned folkes far more... relaxed? interesting?

I would like to ask you folkes, have you ever read the Tao Te Ching?

I was given the Jane English translation once and really enjoy the poetry of it all. It is less 'do this or you go to hell' and more 'this is what I've learned of how the world works'. Frankly, I don't think of it as a religious text at all.

I also like that the very first line in it says that it can't possibly describe its subject matter accurately ("The toa that can be told is not the eternal tao"). I imagine a world where the Bible and Qu'aran started out "this text is imperfect". Wowza.

Anyhow, it takes a while to get into the subtlety of the Tao Te Ching, sorta like the first act of Shakespeare is lost on most, 'til they get into the mood (and by then, Murcutio is dead, and you might as well leave anyhow).

As an artist, my favorite page:

. . . . 11. . . .

Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub;

It is the center hole that makes it useful.

Shape clay into a vessel;

It is the space within that makes it useful.

Cut doors and windows for a room;

It is the holes which make it useful.

Therefore benefit comes from what is there;

Usefulness from what is not there.

. . . . . .

the link to my favorite translation: http://peacefulrivers.homestead.com/LaoTzu.html

This text applies to the 'Suffering" idea of this post (#2) and the earlier 1gm post 'Danes are happy people' (#3). And I think we can all agree that the opposite of these ideas = my neighbor Britney Spears/Elvis/Micheal Jackson/Bush/Cheney etc.

Thoughts?

brad,

Misquoting Jesus is excellent, so is the Men That Wrote The Bible.

You say every athiest should have M.J., but I think every person that really thinks of themselves as a Christian should own these books as well.

If you really think he is the son of god, shouldn't you want to get to know him as best you can? if you base your life on the bible, shouln't you know which parts were added by clergymen centuries later? Of course by this argument, they would actually be calling him by his correct name Yeshua(which you think would be kinda important, no?)

the problem of evil is easily dealt with by removing one of the shackles christians have placed on god- that she is "all benevolent". i always wondered where they got that shit, and how any thinking person,having been told to believe this nonsense, could fail to come to the conclusions expressed in the article.

as the jews have always known, "god" is pissed off and in your face and jealous and likes some people better than others.

personally i think this would explain a lot.

the problem of evil is easily dealt with by removing one of the shackles christians have placed on god- that she is "all benevolent".

I would offer another "real problem " for religion.

It's The idea that god would care at all. Suggesting god had either a benevolent or pissed off motive is just silly.

The idea that an omniscient being with the universe at his command would be tied up in human emotion and selecting sexual positions and ordering stoning of people collecting firewood on the sabbath is only reasonable if god was a human. Atheists are just people that figured out that god is exactly what he seems to be, human.

Atheists are just people that figured out that god is exactly what he seems to be, human.

i thought those were christians. i don't know anyone else who tries to make a case for god being human- other than small cults that die with their leaders.which christianity would have been if anyone was calling jesus "god" in his lifetime- which they weren't.

as far as god having human attributes- that don't make her human. i could say the same about a lot of homo sapiens as well as dogs, cats and my ex wife. what, you don't like the idea of god having human attributes? i suppose complete detachment isn't a human attribute either? not caring is perhaps the most human attribute of all.

"God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question -- Why We Suffer"

what about:

Science's Problem: How Science Fails to Answer Our Most Important Questions -- How Did the Universe Begin, How Did Life Begin.

when it comes to the really big questions - where did we come from, why are we here - science (as a tool used and limited by our primate brains) comes up short.

religion, obviously, will never get us the answers to these questions, but science is becoming less and less likely to provide the answers either

(...what is M theory but another creation myth?)

How Did the Universe Begin, How Did Life Begin.

Big Bang and they have created amino acids and other basic elements of biology from not inanimate matter.

where did we come from, why are we here

Evolution and the second question assumes there is a god, so it's a question for philosophy not science.

science is becoming less and less likely to provide the answers

Wha? You see science running out of steam or something? Far as I can tell, science has been advancing more rapidly the last 30 years, not slower.

Atheists are just people that figured out that god is exactly what he seems to be, human.

i thought those were christians.

I meant human in the collective sense of human, not that he is one guy.

dogs, cats and my ex wife.

I am going to guess only one of these judged you based on your sexual positions and firewood gathering practices.

"if you think you understand quantum physics you dont understand quantum physics" - feynman

redseven,

i appreciate your response and the time you took to write it, but

1. the laws of physics break down from a billionth of second after the big bang to the big bang itself (which is a very big problem). science can't even explain how the instant inflation of the universe itself expanded at speeds greater than the speed of light. there is not one physicists who understands what happened in the milliseconds after the big bang. physics is useless. and we have no idea what sparked the big bang. what set it off? why did it contain the particles that it did? its all speculation.

2. why can science tell us nothing about gravity? what is dark matter? what is dark energy? we dont understand gravity. and we certainly dont understand quantum mechanics. probabilities? "god doesnt play dice" as einstein said.

3. science cant even answer the small questions, like where and how the earth got all its water. i hold out more hope for these questions, but it shows how little we really know (the more we know about the universe the less we know about it.)

4. the cosmological constant, which is science, might have something to say about why we are here. and many evolutionary bilogists will tell you that humans are actually an inevitable product of evolution, and if you were to start over from the earliest common ancestor, humans would again appear. so the shy is more than philosophical, and rightly so. the why is the ultimate question, after all, adn if science has nothing to say about it, that is a knock against science and its 'magisterium'

5. unfortunately, i do think we as humans, with limited primate brains, have gone about as far as we can go at tackling the big questions. we might create an inteligence that can evolve greater inteligence, but our brains will never, i believe, achieve a 'theory of everything.' remember, i am only talking about "our most important questions." sicence has done little to enlighten us here.

6. science barely understands the 4% of the universe we can see. science has no idea what the other 96% of the universe is made up of. that's a little humbling.

7. science has no idea how the first molecule become self replicating. we have no idea how life started. like the universe, we understand the evolution of life after it started, but no idea how it started.

we have no idea how simple atoms could bind together in such a way as to contemplate their own existence. we have no idea how to take atoms and make life ourself.

again, religion will never answer these big questions either. and i think the answers to all these problems are out there to be found. just not with our human brain (which, i should point out, is not getting any smarter, and has already reached its optimal size).

we are primates, who use dead plants for our fuel and believe in fairy tales. we are trapped by our brains as shaped and limited by evolution. we are small potatoes in the cosmic scale. i cant teach a dog calculus and i doubt you can teach a human how the universe and life started.

ps. when humans can think in 11 dimensions maybe then we'll understand just what the heck is going on in the universe. until then we are doomed to be in the dark.

pss it is an assumption of science that the universe can even be understood in the first place

am going to guess only one of these judged you based on your sexual positions and firewood gathering practices.

lol. i ain't never been judged by a dog, that's one human attribute they don't have, and i like 'em for it.cats and my ex wife, why i don't really care what they think. :)

Brendan, I agree.

For the most part Science won't dial in on exact answers. This is true.

Science has Theories that cover most of what has happened between the big bang and the creation of the first blog, but there are indeed many holes, "missing links" if you will.

But if you are comparing this problem to the problems of religion then you are not testing the two on the same scale. The bible isn't about to tell you how the physics worked in the time directly after the Big Bang. Religion will never even try. If you compare Big bang, to "god created the heaven and earth" you will quickly see that Science has a much more reasoned and detailed "answer".

No answer will ever be final. I think the only limit science will find is that the human race will likely wipe itself out before it can find the proof of every last detail of the vast majority of theories.

Bart Ehrman's spiritual journey from Christianity to agnosticism was, by his own account, a process. Having traveled a similar path, two books that shaped my thinking early on and that were required reading--irony of ironies--in a theology class at a Catholic University, were Bertand Russell's Why I am Not a Christian and Sigmund Frued's The Future of An Illusion.

Chris

I quit believing in karma several years ago. I used to believe in it.

Some years back I took in a roommate who turned out to be a real user and abuser. I always worked hard to do the right thing, but this guy was selfish, totally inconsiderate and stole money from me.

Then he moved out and led a disapated life of alcohol and ripping others off.

A few years ago he won several million dollars in the lottery. He then bought his own home, and spends every other month at a hawaiian resort.

Me, meanwhile, who has tried to do good in this world, has always had to struggle, and face disappointment after disappointment.

I think karma and all that crap belongs in the outdated outmoded views, with all those ancient beliefs such as the world sits on the back of a turtle.

Life is all about chaos, and the only thing that makes this world a better world is the good one can do. Otherwise the world is hell.

It's very sad that good people get trashed while self-centered creeps win millions of dollars and get trips to Hawaii.

Jesus is love.

And even though He knows you and I are so fickle and cannot comprehend Him and choose to believe Him, His love is still everlasting.

Even though we are faithless, He is faithful, for He cannot disprove Himself.

And yes, if you claim to be a Christian you should be brave enough to read this book.