21 Feb 2016

Why Does God Let Really Bad Stuff Happen?

Religious 46 Comments

I purposely worded the question in this way, to show what (I think) is wrong with the usual framing. People will often say, “Why would a good God have permitted institutional slavery, children dying from cancer, the Holocaust…etc.?” But nobody says, “Why would a good God have allowed me to stub my toe this morning?” unless the person is cracking a joke.

Now thus far it seems like I’m not contributing anything, but I’m being dead serious. If you go back and re-read the above, I think we have our answer. WHY would it be goofy for an atheist to demand, “Why would a good God let me stub my toe?” It’s because we easily recognize, “That’s a silly argument. In the grand scheme of things, stubbing your toe is no big deal, and so if a God existed we could imagine there is some reason that would trump you avoiding a toe stubbing.”

And there’s the answer.

P.S. Obviously, it doesn’t seem that way to me either. The first three things I mentioned are absolutely horrible, they’re some of the worst things of the human experience. But right–no matter how bad the absolute level of misery God permits to occur on Earth, those things (by definition) will be the worst things in history. They will horrify us. But it could be worse–remember what happens to people who cross Jabba the Hut.

C-3PO: You will therefore be taken to the Dune Sea and cast into the Pit of Carkoon, the nesting place of the all-powerful Sarlacc.
Han Solo: Doesn’t sound so bad.
C-3PO: In his belly, you will find a new definition of pain and suffering, as you are slowly digested over a thousand years.
Han Solo: On second thought, let’s pass on that, huh?

If you’re a parent, think of a typical American toddler who doesn’t get his way. He absolutely flips out; he is outraged that it’s time to leave the park (or time to turn off the DVD). That’s how we must look to people in the afterlife.

46 Responses to “Why Does God Let Really Bad Stuff Happen?”

  1. Reader says:

    The parent-child analogy is a really good one, I think. We are compared to children explicitly in 1 Corinthians 3:11-13.

    “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

    Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.

    So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

    I look forward to one day seeing perfectly clearly. Thanks for the post, Bob.

  2. Guest says:

    We have free will, God does not let anything happen or should I say, God lets it all happen.

  3. E. Harding says:

    Why would a good God permit you to write posts of such quality as this?

    Oh, and my other email is still blocked. Is this a punishment or something, or just a result of Bob editing my comment?

  4. E. Harding says:

    My big problem with this view is that it is badly unfalsifiable. Has Bob read this?:

    http://lesswrong.com/lw/uk/beyond_the_reach_of_god/

  5. Tel says:

    It is an interesting question that an omnipotent God would have to face the fundamental dichotomy of whether to either allow free will to exist and thus also allow bad things to happen, or else prevent free will from existing and ensure the “correct” answer to every situation but then be left with the difficulty that nothing could really be considered “good” if there was no choice to begin with.

    Even more interesting when you consider that a very powerful (not omnipotent) government faces the exact same question on something like charity. If you allow private charity and don’t interfere then not everyone will be charitable, but if you crowd out private charity with government handouts then you cannot really claim to be charitable at all.

    Now a truly omnipotent God would simply say, “I don’t have to obey logic, it is whatever I say it is so just deal with it,” however that’s a deeply unsatisfactory answer, coming from either government or God.

    Let’s presume God is not quite omnipotent and can do a lot of big stuff, yet still bound by logic itself. If God did mull over the option of free will or no free will and God decided, “OK, we are going to need to have free will, because I want to see goodness in a real form, not faked by all outcomes being fixed,” then you must also think of what other constraints God would be up against (I mean logical constraints). One of these would be that God would need to voluntarily sacrifice his/her ability to see the outcome before it happens. Yes, an omnipotent God could see the future, but to do so would remove free will, so logically God must leave the future clean and untouched, and not cheat by looking ahead.

    The further implication is that God didn’t know you would stub your toe. After all, at the last moment you might have gone back for your coat and then walked a slightly different path. God could have known, but carefully chose not to.

    If you want to get really weird, let’s consider quantum mechanics where observing the entity intrinsically alters the outcome. It makes no sense, and yet it keeps getting proven. Have you considered that strange though this design might be, it could be the only way to have a universe that does allow free will at all? Perhaps this design was part of God’s plan, in terms of preventing any cheating and really totally sacrificing the ability to see the future.

    • Tel says:

      Not that I believe in God of course… but since it’s a logical constraint, you end up with similar questions recursively all the way down (or up) with each lesser (or greater) being you might care to imagine.

      It’s a logical problem, not a belief problem.

    • Guest says:

      Tel you pretty much nailed it all. As a Christian who uses actually reads my Bible with my own eyes and logic, I have concluded exactly what you have suggested. God chose for us to have free will and he does not know the final outcome I f only by more choice. Another mind blowing concept for the average Christian is that the Bible says God has temporarily granted Satan authority over this world system we live in.

      It is all right there in the Bible. You just have to read the Bible backwards. Meaning from the End to the Beginning not vice versa.

      You don’t use the OT to interpret the NT, instead use the NT to interpret the OT. You also have to block out all the wrong teaching from seminary and from Constantine. You also have to Love Jesus with all your heart mind and soul.

      Tel you many not believe in God but you are right where you need to be.

      I will only add, never fall for the greatest lie of all. The lie that Jesus is God. Really, Jesus is God’s son. God never ever left the throne and now Jesus sits to the right of God however The Holy Spirt is down here on behalf of both of them. The incarnation story is the greatest lie ever foisted onto humanity. If you believe incarnation you also believe Jesus never came. Jesus warns, ” They will try to kill me from now on and forever! Don’t let yourself be Judaized, Don’t worship a false idol in the form of dirt, located in the Middle East , named Israeli. God wants us to worship Him, not dirt.

      Satan is very crafty indeed.

      Tel keep it up, you discernment and reason is that of what I call, The God Thought. Somebody has laid hands upon you, you have the Holy Spirit. Amen

      • guest says:

        “I will only add, never fall for the greatest lie of all. The lie that Jesus is God.”

        Hmm. Doesn’t refer to God as “Heavenly Father”, so I’m going to guess … JW.

        • Guest says:

          No. No.

          Not a Unitarian either.

          Just somebody who reads The Bible.

          Trinity, incarnation, modalism. Fully man, Fully God, Left the Throne temporarily. Rubbish.

          God of The Holy Bible is the 1 true God.

          Jesus is His son.

          • guest says:

            Damn it. That would have been sick if I was right, though.

            😀

            • Guest says:

              Right now is when a Pastor or seminary student/graduate will jump in an scorn me. He will claim that if Jesus was created, Jesus can’t be divine therefor would disqualify Jesus as true Savior. They will then say Jesus was with God since before creation. This is the giant lie.
              Jesus was indeed created by God. The same creation as man, no. Man was created from dirt, the first Adam and Jesus was created from spirit, the second Adam.

              God watched the pre Christ folk use their free will long enough. God then created His Son Jesus and sent Jesus down to save but also Judge us. IF you don’t choose the real Jesus, you have been judged.

              John 1 does not say Jesus is God, etc. John 1 is the most twisted passage in the entire Bible.

              Most of the NT , Jesus refers to God as being in Heaven, the true power, etc. A few times Jesus comapres himself to God. What child does not at times think he is Daddy? The entire NT, other than the silly interpretation of John 1, refers to God in Heaven, sending things down to us and we look up to Him. God never leaves the throne, He sent Jesus to us. Then HE recalled Jesus back up to Heaven. Now Jesus sits next to God. The Holy Spirit works here on earth constantly.

              Just remember, don’t kill the Savior! Not precross, not on the cross, not post cross. The antichrist has 1 goal, kill the Savior. IF God is Jesus, there was no Savior. Quite the deception if you think about it. Devil is crafty.

        • knoxharrington says:

          I just read this – I thought he was a Jehovah’s Witness too. The theology is very odd.

      • Tel says:

        I must admit, that even to the limited extent that I do believe in God, I don’t see the Bible (nor any other holy scripture) as purely the absolute word of God. It is the word of people who might have been somewhat inspired by God, people trying to interpret the will of God, and it has stood the test of time (thus someone supporting evolution should rationally also support the Bible, and established religion in general).

        And for those who are curious, I come from a Unitarian tradition, but although I was brought up fairly left of center I’ve done a lot of personal research into the free market and freedom in general. I think there’s too many socialists amongst the Unitarians, at least there is right now. They may of course change their minds over time, and I welcome them to do so.

        I’ve also hung around with the JW’s a bit, I get where they are coming from, I think they are peaceful good people, but I don’t agree with them on philosophy.

    • Brian Macker says:

      “either allow free will to exist and thus also allow bad things to happen”

      If you are God is all powerful then that is a false assumption. He could allow free will and then prevent the bad things from happening also. For example identifying the bad people and taking their weapons away, then telling others that they are in fact bad so they can be avoided, etc.

    • Brian Macker says:

      “If you want to get really weird, let’s consider quantum mechanics where observing the entity intrinsically alters the outcome. It makes no sense, and yet it keeps getting proven. ”

      Actually it makes perfect sense even with a Newtonian model of the very tiny. You can only observe something via a reaction such as the emission of a light wave, the reaction with another particle, etc. Any such observation entails a transfer of some momentum.

  6. knoxharrington says:

    It is one thing to say that God spun the universe into existence in the deist fashion and let creation go. It is quite another to explain the intervention of God and commanding evil. The better question is “why does God ORDER bad stuff to happen?”

    In case it isn’t clear I’m talking about God commanding genocide:

    “Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.” I Samuel 15:3 (NIV)

    • Guest says:

      If Jews had it all figured out, God would have not needed to send His son.

      You place the OT, its authors and what they were believing versus the reality of it all, in the entirely wrong context.

      Other than OT prophesy, that OT is a bunch of manmade crap.

      Why don’t you ever reference the NT, why do you always fall back to the OT? Oh I see, the NT goes against your narrative of portraying God as a jerk.

      • knoxharrington says:

        Are there two different God(s)? Is the OT God the same God as in the NT?

        I’ll answer these for you. According to the Bible there is one God and that God is the same in both OT and NT. Presumably God’s nature didn’t change between the OT and the NT therefore criticizing the genocide command is criticizing the NT God also. I’m not portraying God as a jerk (that assumes that God exists), I’m asking why God would order genocide?

        I have to say your theology is bizarre. Are you a Jehovah’s Witness?

        • Guest says:

          No, nor am I a Unitarian.

        • Guest says:

          No, there is 1 true God, Jews and Gentiles have never met God unless they have accepted Christ.

      • Guest says:

        And I don’t mean the Bible is not pure and Gods word. I mean the people of the OT wrongly interpreted and recorded their reality. What they describe as Gods actions was actually their sin nature.
        God never murdered anybody, God is love.

        The OT only exist to validate need of Savior. It is not an actually history lesson. It is people wrongly attributing their own sin nature to their own god. The real G, is something entirely different. God is love. He has no other state.

      • knoxharrington says:

        Ok. So everything in the OT is wrong except the prophecy portions and God is love. Is that correct?

        • Guest says:

          Don’t kill The Savior.

          • Guest says:

            5For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; 6Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.

            5Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?” 6Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.

            So unless you have met Jesus, you cant know God. So unless all the OT folk met Jesus, they did not know God. If they met Jesus back then BC, then why did Jesus come 2000 thousand years ago.

            So when you say Jesus was always there, you are also saying HE never came.

            You would be an anti- Christ.

            Listen, only you can unpack all the lies. It is up to you.

            You will win this conversation. You have been granted temporary authority. 1And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, 2in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. 3Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest

            You will win this conversation. Jesus is the Savior and God is the ultimate winner.

              • Guest says:

                1 Cor 10: 1-14

                Warnings From Israel’s History

                10 For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. 2 They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. 3 They all ate the same spiritual food 4 and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. 5 Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.

                6 Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did. 7 Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written: “The people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.”[a] 8 We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did—and in one day twenty-three thousand of them died. 9 We should not test Christ,[b] as some of them did—and were killed by snakes. 10 And do not grumble, as some of them did—and were killed by the destroying angel.

                11 These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the culmination of the ages has come. 12 So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! 13 No temptation[c] has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted[d] beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted,[e] he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.

      • Brian Macker says:

        “If Jews had it all figured out, God would have not needed to send His son.”

        What are you talking about. The Jews didn’t make that order. If the bible is to believed then it was God who called for that, and many other genocides. In fact God commits several of his own genocides including the Noah’s Ark incident.

        “Other than OT prophesy, that OT is a bunch of manmade crap”
        How do you know that the OT prophesy isn;’t also manmade crap, and how do you know the NT isn’t also manmade crap? Seems identical to me.

        Also why don’t you remove all the crap from the Bible and pare it down to only the good stuff?

  7. Craw says:

    “Don’t worry, be happy.”

  8. Craw says:

    A common rap on anarcho-capitalists is that they really don’t care about people, and make light of the risks and costs of their proposals. It’s nice to have posts like this, “why the Ethiopian famine really wasn’t such a big deal in the grand scope of things, oh and Star Wars” to rebut them.

    • guest says:

      “A common rap on anarcho-capitalists is that they really don’t care about people, and make light of the risks and costs of their proposals.”

      The risks and opportunity costs of which you speak come from the choices that people wish to make.

      *I’m* not the one making your choices for you. If you don’t like the risks of a particular choice, don’t do it.

      You are not entitled to my property simply because it would lower the risks of the choices you wish to make.

      Caring about people would also be caring about their property.

    • guest says:

      “It’s nice to have posts like this, “why the Ethiopian famine really wasn’t such a big deal in the grand scope of things …”

      Rockwell’s Thirty-Day Plan
      http://archive.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/30-day-plan.html

      “DAY SEVENTEEN: Centrally planned agriculture, as imposed by Hoover and Roosevelt, is repealed: there are no more subsidies, payments-in-kind, marketing orders, low-interest loans, etc. Farm prices drop. Entrepreneurial farmers get rich. Welfare farmers go into another line of work. The poor eat like kings.”

    • Tel says:

      I thought that was the common rap about socialists and their engineering experiments.

  9. Craw says:

    Is Guest guest? Are they the same person?

    • Richie says:

      Is Craw Ken B.? Are they the same person?

  10. Craw says:

    Murphy wrote
    >>WHY would it be goofy for an atheist to demand, “Why would a good God let me stub my toe?”

    He gave a speculative answer. Let me try another that might be more plausible. Because there are so many obviously greater ills that harping on a stubbed toe seems myopic. Because harping on your own stub when the religious are burning men in cages and stone women in markets seems narcissistic.

    I don’t think most people would get beyond that before dismissing the questioner as goofy. Do you? They certainly wouldn’t even consider the question Murphy makes such a to-do about.
    But eliminate all the large scale suffering and ask the question again, and maybe it’s not so goofy looking. Eliminate small-pox and polio and TB and then see if people shrug off lesser diseases.

    • RT says:

      1st world people are just as miserable as 3rd world people. Perception is reality. If you see bad, you will feel bad. I have hips of an unhealthy shape, but it is not an affliction. It doesn’t make me less happy. It is no person’s fault. God (for the believers) didn’t “do” anything to me. Some of the happiest people I have ever come across have life-threatening diseases and predicaments.

  11. Brian Macker says:

    Robert,

    You write:

    “Why Does God Let Really Bad Stuff Happen?: I purposely worded the question in this way, to show what (I think) is wrong with the usual framing. People will often say, “Why would a good God have permitted institutional slavery, children dying from cancer, the Holocaust…etc.?” But nobody says, “Why would a good God have allowed me to stub my toe this morning?” unless the person is cracking a joke.”

    Obviously stubbing one’s toe does not constitute “really bad stuff” and so your supposed re-wording doesn’t work. I don’t know what you are talking about either because people do in fact word things the way you do. Just stubstitute “really bad stuff” with slavery,children dying from cancer, the Holocaust…etc.?

    I’ll do it for you: Why does God let slavery happen? Why does God let children die from cancer? Why does God let genocides like the Holocaust occur? The rewording does not in fact help your case at all.

    What you did is substitute evils of incomprehensible magnitude with the trivial like “stubbing ones toe”. The trick here isn’t the rewording. The trick is in the straw man of making a trivial version of another persons argument. This is also similar to attacking the weakest point of several points made in a comment, instead of the strongest. Except in this case you created a straw man argument out of whole cloth.

    “If you’re a parent, think of a typical American toddler who doesn’t get his way. He absolutely flips out; he is outraged that it’s time to leave the park (or time to turn off the DVD). That’s how we must look to people in the afterlife.”

    Total nonsense. It don’t see how the genocide of the Jews was “not getting my way”. I don’t see how slavery is “not getting it my way”. I don’t see how cancer in children is “not getting things my way”. I was not effected by any of these things. Again you are trivializing things that are serious plus infantilizing anyone who disagrees with you. This is nothing more than an ad-hominem attack on your intellectual opponents claiming they are wrong because they are babies, or spoiled brats. Complaining about slavery, genocide, and cancer is more akin to a child complain about being adopted and turned into a sex slave, or complaining that his parents were murdered, or being upset at actually getting childhood cancer.

    “But right–no matter how bad the absolute level of misery God permits to occur on Earth, those things (by definition) will be the worst things in history. ”

    This is a ridiculous argument if I am reading it correctly. You are claiming that if God were to eliminate evil which he supposedly had the power to do then trivial accidents would be the worst we could complain about. Sounds like a good outcome, so why doesn’t your god do that? Also any criminal can take advantage of this same argument. The criminal could argue, “Hey, so what if I’m raping you right now. If you weren’t complaining about my penis being thrust into your ass then you’d just find something else to complain about like stubbing your toe. Grow up baby and stop acting like a spoiled child. Now spread your cheeks and take it like an adult.”

    This article was horrible. This is the very kind of crazy ethically dubious thinking that made me reject Christianity in the first place.

    • Craw says:

      It gets worse, believe or not. Murphy sometimes says it’s *better* that people suffer.

      • Brian Macker says:

        Well in my view “suffering” (pain, embarrassment, feeling stupid, etc.) are evolved mechanisms which one feels when the brain rewires itself to avoid bad situations. Pain is part of the way we learn to avoid things. If one sticks one’s hand in a fire it is in fact “better” that you suffer, than if you feel pleasure. This is for the obvious reason that if you felt nothing, or felt pleasure you’d do it again and damage yourself. Of course, this is something evolved to be able to operate in a universe that is not conscious and doesn’t care whether any individual lives or dies.

        As to what Robert Murphy says, I’m not going to believe any characterization of his beliefs without seeing his original words. I’m skeptical about everything.

    • Guest says:

      Hey now Bob does not represent every Christian nor hold the definitive monopoly on interpreting the message of God and his chosen Savior Jesus.

  12. Guest says:

    A scripture than may prove free will? At least partial free will? “Hope that they might grope for Him and find Him.”

    Acts 17: 26-28
    26 And He has made from one blood[c] every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, 27 so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’

    • Guest says:

      Not to mention, why did God need to command us to do anything if we have no will? Why did the Apostles need to evangelize?

      To claim no free is preposterous.

      With that being said, evil happens when people chose to disobey God. We all have to deal with the results. So although you may not have driven drunk, the guy who did, chose to. Now you have to pick up the pieces. God did not kill your family member. The evil sob did.

      Maybe Christians should be more focused on bringing others to Christ instead of the myriad of other behaviors they engage in.

      The freewill pool would change for the positive, i.e. less evil and less consequences of evil.

      • Brian Macker says:

        “With that being said, evil happens when people chose to disobey God. ”

        Really? Well no god of any kind has ever ordered me to do anything. So I guess it is impossible for me to do evil.

  13. Innocent says:

    And God told Adam that by the sweat of his brow he would earn his bread.

    Call bad things happening a way to remember God. I did not really know God until I needed Him and went looking. When I looked I found and learned a great deal. Hence I would suggest for those that do not harden their hearts when bad things happen and BLAME God. Bad things happening are a good thing. Ironic perhaps, but still there.

    • Guest says:

      It is ironic, we apply all of these principals to our children when parenting our kids, but when God does it to us, somehow it is a divine conspiracy.

      Fact is, we share a similar nature to God, minus the fallen temporary state of being.

      Hardened hearts is problem but more so is the stiff necked. The Bible says the stiff necked CANNOT receive Holy Spirit. Even if you are a professed Christian, watch out for that stiff neck!

      Bad things are a result of evil and free will. Bad things are a result of living in a natural world eco system, maybe you chose the wrong place to live?
      Bad things are the result of genetics, maybe you chose the wrong mate because your smoking a cigarette and the smoke prevented you from smelling her cheeks.( research this genetic selection process). Stop blaming God, we have free will and a fallen nature. It is a tough road, you can thank Adam and Eve, your ancestors for making a bad choice. You can thank your other ancestors who murdered Jesus on The Cross. You did this, not God! Put on your big boy britches, pull up your boots and man up.
      Anything less than accepting personal responsibility If even only by lineage, insulates no free will. If you have no free will, then why protest. Simply sit back and watch the show. You need to decide if humans have free will or not. This is a difficult concept for most Christians because the Calvinist and Armenian’s have been clouding the waters for centuries. These people lead your churches and they make a mess of everything. They probably consume too much alcohol/sin. There is a reason Quakers and other denominations segregate.

      You need to walk the straight path, this will all become very simple and the confusion will lift. It is tough I know, but you can do it. Next time you are in the middle of doing something dirty, invite Jesus into the act. Yep, Bible in 1 hand, vice of choice in the other. Jesus saves. Jesus loves you. You are saved, you just need to realize this.

  14. DZ says:

    This point of view would seem to rest on the idea that nothing can really be that bad because God has surely let other much more horrible events occur. You can never be wrong, because God would only need to let something even more horrible happen to marginalize the prior claim of God’s insensitivity. This also assumes the idea that there is a “worst” event that has ever happened, as well as a “misery hierarchy,” and that the group which experienced this worst event has a rightful claim to God’s inhumane nature until he allows for something even worse.

    Further, this completely abandons any focus on the individual. If misery can be clustered and marginalized so easily, then surely individual prayers and worship would be marginalized as well correct?

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