WOTM: Job & Suffering
Okay, I've kind of messed up in terms of breaking up the Frank Turek and William Lane Craig. You'll have to forgive me. Just don't watch in the order I'm posting if it's too much.
In this video, we have Christian apologist Frank Turek explaining, not just why God allows evil and suffering, but why he allowed evil and suffering to plague (literally and figuratively) a near perfect man and his family — someone doing exactly what God wants him to do, in order to win a bet with the Devil. The insipid platitudes flow out of Franks mouth like stupidity at a Trump rally. It's horrifying. But someone's gotta push back on this stuff.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you! Of all the people I've never met, you're the best. I mean it! Enjoy!!! B
Comments (13)
Once again evil is defined out of existence as misunderstood good. How can Frank say that evil exists if it's all ultimately good? With this kind of thinking, the baby dying is a good thing because its necessary for the evangelist to live. Ugh!
Putting the word "loving" and the Christian God in the same sentence makes no sense...
Props to Paulogia
Who is Bam Bam and Bam Bam? Did I miss something obvious?
Try selling this horrific snake oil to the baby's grieving parents...
The book of Job is one of the most damning in the bible for God. Consider this passage: "3 And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? and still he holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause." God destroyed him "without cause." This pretty well confirms that there is no transcendent value in pain, suffering and evil. When the explanation is "without cause," where the hell are the ripples going?
As a disabled person I'd like to show Frank some pain & suffering. He wouldn't like it. To be on the safe side Frank should kill every baby in the world so something "good" might happen 500 years from now. Herod might have been on to something?
The argument isn't very good, because Frank can't demonstrate the good "ripples" that came from Job's suffering. He still boils it down to "take it on faith"
As to Job's bet with Satan, why would not the all-knowing God not already know how Job would respond to each provocation? Why go through it if you already know what happens.
God loves roleplaying, where all the outcomes are known and he gets to see his children suffer. Sounds like an evil D&D Dungeon Master.
To answer Frank's rejoinder, I would answer "do not do to others that you would not have done to yourself," no?
Ah… we get it now, Frankie! Jehovaries killed off nearly a quarter million men, women, children, babies, and all kinds of animals with that 2004 tsunami because… he and Beelzebubbies had a bet going! We ignorant people just don't appreciate the value of gambling.
When theists tell the story of Job, they usually focus on Job himself. But God seems to treat Job’s children like props on a stage. God doesn’t seem to care at all about their lives. They are literally cannon fodder— there to be killed to tell the story. Job’s kids were no more than props in the divine comedy. Is the Infinite Being’s ego so bruisable that he needs to kill someone’s children to prove anything? Are human lives, to him, like so many gambling chips?