The Devil and the Dice; Job and Justice: Understanding the Misfortunes of Job in light of Modern Science & Law:

Abstract

The Book of Job – the original “when bad things happen to good people” story is so troubling, so heinous, so rank unbelievable to most of us, that we react by denial, or worse. So awful is it, that many, including the Rambam (Maimonides), claim it is an allegory or a parable. That “out” doesn’t help. A parable is meant to convey a message. If the story is so repugnant on its face, then the message underlying the parable is sure to be equally unpalatable. Allegorizing the story, however, does allow us to step away from the rigid descriptors of “the Adversary” as “Devil or Satan and look for concepts to account for what accrued as opposed to anthropomorphized personalities.<br><br>Many explanations have been given for the saga, seemingly absurd on its face, from the consolation that the reckoning of reward and punishment happens in the World to Come, to Nachmanides’ view that this reflects transmigration of souls. None of these explanations are satisfying to most of us who, in the causal or deterministic universe we believe ourselves to reside, cannot accept such an infinitely deferred or indirect consequential outcome. Indeed, per Kahneman and Twersky, humans are programmed to see cause and effect when temporal connections are apparent, whether or not they exist. <br><br>This essay attempts to reconceptualize the Job parable by incorporating modern notions of a non-deterministic universe as currently enunciated in quantum mechanics. This scientific predicate would define the Job-events as random or chance happenings (spooky events at a distance), with such a framework built-in to the workings of the Universe, even a Divinely orchestrated one. Such a non-deterministic universe is postulated to exist in perhaps 95% of cases, leaving a “space” for random events (or what might be called freak accidents or alternatively “miracles) to occur. This approach also offers a response to the mother of a child diagnosed as autistic weeks after a measles vaccine – who refuses to accept robust statistical evidence that the vaccine did not cause the disease. Sometimes, says Job, events just happen. This is an explanation that can only be offered in the context of a compound religious-scientific platform, such as First Things provides.<br><br>The essay then goes on to explore how the concept of God-given Justice can still be applied to the events as they occurred, even holding God “accountable” as the creator of the Universal random program using principles of modern tort law. Again, this is a perspective for which First Things offers a unique platform.