[samspot]

"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 secretly good underneath (a claim Christianity borrowed from Stoicism) can be used to justify the idea that the rich and powerful are meant to be rich and powerful, that the poor and downtrodden are meant to be poor and downtrodden, and that even the worst actions are actually good in an ineffable and eternal way"

I didn't understand these repeated digs at Christianity as having been borrowed from the Stoics. For one, that all bad things are actually good is not a tenet of Christianity and is not in the Bible. Perhaps some Christians taught this, but you can find a person claiming Christ who teaches absolutely anything you can think of. Such is the nature of things that are popular.

I can only assume the author is referring to this section from Romans 8:28 (NIV) "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."

If you fly through too quickly you could reach the Stoic claim, but there are a few key differences.

1. It says "God works for the good" in all things, but not that all those things are good in essence.

2. This is a promise only to those who love God, not automatically extended to all people or things.

Finally, I'll note that the entire Old Testament predates the Stoics, and is the foundation for Christian thinking about God's will and plan for the universe.

[munificent]

> 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

[KolenCh]

There are two kinds of Christians, the Bible studying kind, and the one who hearsay. Philosophical arguments like this are handled extensively in the field of (Christian) theology. There are many things many Christians claim nowadays are not biblical. Imagine “physicists” start claiming things that no falsifiable, tested theories in physics attested to. Now do you call them physicists? If there are enough majority of them is doing it, do you say “physicists“ (as a generic term) now believes in so and so? This the kind of situation that’s happening in Christianity. Because, the core believe is anyone can be a Christian (subjected to minimal check such as the basis of their salvation, some also include baptism), unlike in physics you need to be trained and qualified. I’m not saying that’s right or wrong. But I’m pointing out the situation, so that one can understand, for outsiders one would say “Christian believe this or do that”, and for the “insiders” who really study the Bible and trained in theology and know differences between denominations for example, would be completely puzzled and say it is not.

I guess the former focuses on Christian as a social construct and includes whoever claim to be Christian or even influenced by Christian thinking. The latter focuses on Christian as what it is ought to be and knows that all are sinners, including Christians, and I’d fall short of the standards the Bible uphold. Among these Christians, they know that the majority of Christians has gone astray.

[vishnugupta]

> misfortune was explained away by our limited understanding

I don’t think this is unique to Christianity. A similar key concept in Hinduism is “karma”.

[munificent]

Yes, from the article:

"In Buddhism this is karma, while for the stoics it is Providence, the same concept of Providence that Christianity later borrowed, which argues that everything in the world which seems bad is actually good in a way we cannot fully understand because of our limited perspective."

[scandox]

I think the Cromwellian dictum "Trust in God but keep your powder dry" is the intelligent Christian's attitude to this...

[ilrwbwrkhv]

I think most American christianity is actually fake christianity or derived christianity. To understand real christianity, once must read tolstoy.

[worthless-trash]

Most Tolstoyan Christians are actually fake Christians, to understand real Christianity you must read k&r learning c.

[gunian]

most k&r learning c are actually fake christians to understand real christianity you have to read the constitution and the rust book

[achierius]

> 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.

[tasuki]

>> 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 is the stupidest thing to say to someone who is grieving.

[estarkio]

God had a dozen billion years or so of lead time, but he couldn't piece the plan together without giving your toddler glioblastoma.

Trust the process!

[TaurenHunter]

What if that child was to become a Hitler otherwise?

[senko]

This is the cruelest comment I've seen on HN in a long time.

[carlosjobim]

What would you accept to be said? What would be good enough for you? Words are not magical, they are just sounds. In the most important situations in life and in death, words are simply lacking. We as humans haven't been gifted with neither a spoken nor a written language which can encompass all our feelings and meanings. Words cannot even come close. So people have to do with what they have. And you are in no position to judge against somebody who means well.

[codr7]

It doesn't take much common sense to realize that someone who's neck deep into grief isn't going to find much comfort in being told something happened for a reason.

I happen to believe that everything does happen for a reason, because in general that makes more sense to me and there's no proof either way; but in the middle of the storm it's an extremely difficult position to hold.

What people actually do need in those situations is presence, someone who listens; not good advice.

[drdude]

I strongly agree!

I'd rather say something truthful and of support, backed by real action and history if actual support instead of saying something trivial. I remember a friend told me such thing when I was grieving (something along the lines of "you have to pray" or something) and I blurted "oh really? so I wasn't praying. so it was my fault? so I needed YOU to remind me at my worst times? what happened to reason?"... he stopped talking to me for few months, we are still friends... but if he hugged me and kept quiet just the looks of their face feeling sad for me would have been the perfect support I needed. Sometimes silence is way better than telling a religious lie to "comfort me".

[tasuki]

> What would you accept to be said? What would be good enough for you? Words are not magical, they are just sounds. In the most important situations in life and in death, words are simply lacking.

It's ok not to say anything.

> And you are in no position to judge against somebody who means well.

Oh yes I am. Having good intentions is not enough. I'm sure - in their own worldview - Hitler and Stalin and Mao had good intentions.

When my partner died and I was left to care for our toddler, I learned firsthand about what is and isn't helpful to hear in such situations. The person who said "I know how you feel, I felt awful when my dog died" missed the mark. So would anyone who would say "there is a purpose for everything". No, there was no purpose, and fuck anyone who suggests otherwise.

"God works in mysterious ways", "there is a purpose for everything", and "trust in the Lord" isn't said to comfort the grieving, it's said to comfort the one saying it (and to help them propagate their worldview). Again, fuck that.

[specialist]

> it's said to comfort the one saying it

True.

Such utterances are offensive. But what of it?

My culture (WASP in USA) sucks when it comes to death and grieving. Denial of Death, Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, blah blah blah.

The only advice that's helped me cope with other people is "It's not about you."

When someone tells me "They're in a better place" (or whatever), I just try to remember your point: they're trying to comfort themselves, process their own experience.

[satvikpendem]

Yes, but that is nonetheless the context in which it is said.

[ZoomZoomZoom]

>I understand that this might sound repulsive on first glance...

First and subsequent.

[senko]

> 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".

[scantis]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

> 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]

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]

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

[taylorlapeyre]

A toddler dying of cancer falls under the category of "natural evil" (as opposed to moral evil, in which an intention or will is involved). You're correct to say that natural evil can sometimes be difficult to explain in a pedagogical sense. A storm taking one's home can be a way to teach us our dependence on God alone, but a child being taken by cancer does seem meaningless to us at the best of times, and simply cruel at the worst.

But the story of Job (in which his family, including his children, are taken away through natural evil) shows us two ways of engaging with this kind of evil: 1) Seeing the resulting struggle with God as its own form of growth, and 2) the virtue of humility.

In my opinion, there is no "one answer" to Theodicy - it requires all three and a healthy dose of Job's eventual humility. The first has been true in my life multiple times. The second is often helpful when engaging with evil on a cosmological level. The third is helpful when wrestling with the problem of moral evil. Taken together, I think the picture is reassuring, and certainly better than the alternative (a meaningless universe of hopeless suffering).

I recommend David Bentley Hart's "The Doors of the Sea" as a good short work on this subject!

[heyjamesknight]

A toddler dying from cancer is horrible. It's not evil.

[adamtaylor_13]

Them be some deep theological waters you're wading into.

It's not a tenet, because it's not presented as a teaching that "bad things are good things".

However, we often label things as "good" and "bad," which are overly simplistic for many things in life. A child dying is unequivocally a bad thing. But if your faith deepens through the course of grieving, then a good thing happens from that bad thing. It doesn't nullify the bad thing. It doesn't magically transform it into a good thing. But your faith being made stronger is a good thing, while your child dying is a bad thing.

My understanding is this is the Biblical principle of redemption. Not to be confused with salvation. It's used to refer to God's ability to make good happen from a bad thing, or to "redeem" a bad thing. In this way, redemption can also refer to salvation because man is inherently bad, but through Jesus's death on the cross, man can be redeemed. Once again, bad things happen, but good things can come from them.

Again, it's important to note that the Bible does not teach BAD == GOOD. It teaches that bad things can be redeemed for good outcomes.

I am not a theologian, but that's my understanding of it.

[adamtaylor_13]

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]

So what is your answer for Epicurean paradox?

[adamtaylor_13]

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.

[timeon]

How does free will explains children with cancer or is that good thing?

[halyconWays]

You should put more effort into addressing the very detailed and thoughtful reply you got (at your request) and which you're currently ignoring with just another challenge (with a grammatical mistake). You're currently a troll in the technical definition of the term: baiting for replies and then just mocking what you catch.

[timeon]

You are just dismissing my question without addressing it.

I think free will can be attributed only to actions people are doing. But not everything can be attributed to people (or other animals).

[alienthrowaway]

Free will -> original sin -> all manner of diseases, suffering tyat are part of the human condition.

Even without the theology, a person suffering due to a forebear's poor decision is well-understood: a decent percentage if people think it's the natural order for a child to go hungry if their parents are drug-addicts or imprisoned.

[timeon]

How is hungry children, because of it's parents, relevant to my question?

If someone gets cancer as toddler who's fault is that? If someone is born with disability, with caused by new mutation, who's fault is that? Are these part of free will? Do you thing that it is good that it is happening?

[markles]

And yet the Bible has numerous stories where it seems people don't have free will, with God either "hardening their hearts" or laying out what they'll do in the near future. It's obvious from the Bible that either God plays an active role in the lives of people, whether they ask for it or not, thus negating their free will, and that there is some level of sight into future actions. All that is without discussing whether God is omniscient.

The Bible is not very clear about what happens with an afterlife. The book of Revelation is where you find the most intimations of divine judgement, but the OT has little to nothing and many Biblical scholars agree that the idea of end leans heavily towards the Jewish idea of a literal heaven on earth for the chosen people and that's all.

[sd1010]

In the OT, Daniel 12:2-3,13 describes the Judgement day directly.

[harimau777]

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".

[throw4847285]

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]

The author's claims are not generally true of Calvinism, either.

[throw4847285]

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.

[r_singh]

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

[mathgeek]

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.

[goosedragons]

It's the idea of predestination.

[taeric]

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.

[gunian]

man old testament was the shit it says slaves should be freed with an advance after 6 years