WEBVTT 00:00:28.010 --> 00:00:31.570 Religion, spirituality, what other label you 00:00:31.570 --> 00:00:34.920 want to put on it? It holds meaning for most 00:00:34.920 --> 00:00:37.539 people, right? Regardless of what set of beliefs 00:00:37.539 --> 00:00:40.920 or practices you hold dear, my guess is that 00:00:40.920 --> 00:00:42.960 there is at least some set of claims about the 00:00:42.960 --> 00:00:46.280 world or worldview that kind of comes with it. 00:00:46.420 --> 00:00:49.340 And for many people, it's centered on a particular 00:00:49.340 --> 00:00:52.640 religious community or set of spiritual practices. 00:00:53.920 --> 00:00:56.719 Those who are interested in holding a consistent 00:00:56.719 --> 00:01:00.810 set of beliefs will inevitably encounter certain 00:01:00.810 --> 00:01:04.930 questions about whatever that worldview or those 00:01:04.930 --> 00:01:08.329 beliefs or those practices are. The tensions 00:01:08.329 --> 00:01:11.049 that they experience depends on the specific 00:01:11.049 --> 00:01:14.810 religious views that they hold. I'm not here 00:01:14.810 --> 00:01:16.989 to tell you what to believe. Philosophy as a 00:01:16.989 --> 00:01:19.569 whole is not necessarily in the business of going 00:01:19.569 --> 00:01:22.629 around imposing beliefs onto others or brainwashing 00:01:22.629 --> 00:01:26.519 people into believing something specific. regardless 00:01:26.519 --> 00:01:28.500 of what my dad says. He tends to be very skeptical 00:01:28.500 --> 00:01:31.640 about philosophy as a field. However, philosophy 00:01:31.640 --> 00:01:33.980 does point out inconsistencies. This is one of 00:01:33.980 --> 00:01:36.000 the things that philosophy does quite well, is 00:01:36.000 --> 00:01:38.700 to highlight certain inconsistencies in beliefs 00:01:38.700 --> 00:01:43.780 or in justifications we might have for the beliefs 00:01:43.780 --> 00:01:48.000 that we do. One strand of philosophy in particular, 00:01:48.200 --> 00:01:51.459 the philosophy of religion, seeks to take up... 00:01:51.640 --> 00:01:54.799 these questions and make sense of them, specifically 00:01:54.799 --> 00:01:58.500 the kind of positions that religious institutions 00:01:58.500 --> 00:02:02.799 tend to hold, doctrines, but also including practices, 00:02:03.019 --> 00:02:07.579 right? That shouldn't be surprising at all, at 00:02:07.579 --> 00:02:09.539 least in Western philosophical tradition, because 00:02:09.539 --> 00:02:13.400 many of the influential philosophers were also 00:02:13.909 --> 00:02:17.870 men of the church, clergy, people like St. Augustine 00:02:17.870 --> 00:02:20.750 and Thomas Aquinas, right? But more generally, 00:02:20.870 --> 00:02:23.430 given the role of Christianity in Western societies, 00:02:23.590 --> 00:02:25.389 it makes sense that the question that arises 00:02:25.389 --> 00:02:30.389 with this particular religion would be of interest 00:02:30.389 --> 00:02:33.289 to philosophers in those communities. But the 00:02:33.289 --> 00:02:36.569 questions that are discussed are neither Western, 00:02:36.629 --> 00:02:39.729 European -centric or Christian -centric, as far 00:02:39.729 --> 00:02:42.889 as I can tell. These questions are just central 00:02:42.889 --> 00:02:46.289 to humanity in its attempt to understand their 00:02:46.289 --> 00:02:51.330 place in the larger world. So this is why we 00:02:51.330 --> 00:02:54.550 get questions about whether or not there's a 00:02:54.550 --> 00:02:57.629 deity that exists, or if there is, what is the 00:02:57.629 --> 00:02:59.770 nature of this deity, if there are multiple deities, 00:02:59.990 --> 00:03:04.650 if some of the religious texts, like how much 00:03:04.650 --> 00:03:07.360 authority we could own. These are all... under 00:03:07.360 --> 00:03:09.840 the broad umbrella of philosophical questions 00:03:09.840 --> 00:03:12.379 about justification for belief and so on, right? 00:03:12.979 --> 00:03:17.960 Okay. One question in particular, I think, has 00:03:17.960 --> 00:03:21.000 been a thorn in the side for a lot of believers, 00:03:21.319 --> 00:03:24.080 specifically believers of an all -knowing, all 00:03:24.080 --> 00:03:29.759 -powerful, benevolent deity. Okay? Most questions 00:03:29.759 --> 00:03:33.139 in, you know, in the philosophy of religion... 00:03:33.639 --> 00:03:35.139 You know, things like questions about how do 00:03:35.139 --> 00:03:37.319 we justify the existence of God? Is there a justification 00:03:37.319 --> 00:03:39.159 or a reason to believe in the existence of God? 00:03:39.639 --> 00:03:42.360 I don't think these are particularly concerning 00:03:42.360 --> 00:03:44.659 if you don't find an answer to them, because 00:03:44.659 --> 00:03:46.879 I imagine for many people, the reason they come 00:03:46.879 --> 00:03:49.919 to, you know, engage in certain spiritual practices 00:03:49.919 --> 00:03:53.300 or become a believer of a particular faith probably 00:03:53.300 --> 00:03:55.680 has something more to do with the community or 00:03:55.680 --> 00:03:59.719 with their own personal experience of what they 00:03:59.719 --> 00:04:02.509 might. claim is of the supernatural, right? Some 00:04:02.509 --> 00:04:04.810 kind of a religious transformative experience. 00:04:06.050 --> 00:04:11.490 But there is one question that really, you know, 00:04:11.490 --> 00:04:17.110 it makes you stretch the way that you try to 00:04:17.110 --> 00:04:20.730 make sense of all the beliefs that you have about 00:04:20.730 --> 00:04:26.769 religion and spirituality, which is that if there 00:04:26.769 --> 00:04:30.879 is an all -knowing, all -powerful, benevolent 00:04:30.879 --> 00:04:36.300 deity, if such a being exists, then why do we 00:04:36.300 --> 00:04:40.939 have evil in the world? I'm not talking about 00:04:40.939 --> 00:04:44.959 the existence of human suffering. Suffering is 00:04:44.959 --> 00:04:47.300 not necessarily evil. I'm talking about evil, 00:04:47.500 --> 00:04:52.199 E -V -I -L, like evil, evil, like that dark, 00:04:52.300 --> 00:04:57.290 that, you know, That thing that's a central theme 00:04:57.290 --> 00:04:59.769 of Elie Wiesel's Night, if you ever read that 00:04:59.769 --> 00:05:03.149 book, right? Which wrestles with the horrors 00:05:03.149 --> 00:05:05.449 of the Holocaust. I'm talking like evil, like 00:05:05.449 --> 00:05:10.089 people doing things to other humans, other living 00:05:10.089 --> 00:05:17.410 things. That is just hard to kind of explain. 00:05:19.029 --> 00:05:21.709 The reason that the problem of evil is so troubling. 00:05:22.649 --> 00:05:26.170 is that there seems to be a tension between the 00:05:26.170 --> 00:05:29.449 existence of evil, which is kind of hard to deny. 00:05:29.589 --> 00:05:32.050 You just look around the world and you can see, 00:05:32.149 --> 00:05:34.949 unless you're burying your head in the sand, 00:05:35.050 --> 00:05:37.209 there's a lot of evil in the world, right? There's 00:05:37.209 --> 00:05:39.649 this tension that seems to exist between the 00:05:39.649 --> 00:05:43.329 existence of evil and the existence of this benevolent 00:05:43.329 --> 00:05:51.800 deity. And why is that? Well, we... care whether 00:05:51.800 --> 00:05:54.319 or not there's evil in the world and just as 00:05:54.319 --> 00:05:56.920 like a as like a human being that sees evil in 00:05:56.920 --> 00:05:59.980 the world we want to kind of stomp it out right 00:05:59.980 --> 00:06:05.360 we want to bring evil to justice right we want 00:06:05.360 --> 00:06:10.339 to rehabilitate people um who are the cause of 00:06:10.339 --> 00:06:13.199 so much evil in the world right i mean there 00:06:13.199 --> 00:06:14.920 might be exceptions sociopaths probably don't 00:06:14.920 --> 00:06:17.360 care but you know most people i think actually 00:06:17.360 --> 00:06:21.420 care right standing by and doing nothing in some 00:06:21.420 --> 00:06:25.100 cases anyways, seems absolutely abhorrent, right? 00:06:25.459 --> 00:06:29.579 Just imagine if I stood by while somebody was 00:06:29.579 --> 00:06:34.399 just stabbing you for fun, right? And I did not 00:06:34.399 --> 00:06:36.860 do anything at all, right? I mean, you might 00:06:36.860 --> 00:06:38.680 say like, oh, I didn't expect you to come in 00:06:38.680 --> 00:06:41.300 and try to save me and potentially get stabbed 00:06:41.300 --> 00:06:43.779 yourself. Okay, fine. I didn't even bother to 00:06:43.779 --> 00:06:47.600 call for help or to call the police. I just saw 00:06:47.600 --> 00:06:52.829 you, watched you bleed out and die. If I did 00:06:52.829 --> 00:06:54.709 something like that, you would look at me and 00:06:54.709 --> 00:06:58.750 be like, what is wrong with you? It's not just 00:06:58.750 --> 00:07:03.170 the person who committed that evil that's under 00:07:03.170 --> 00:07:08.250 scrutiny, right? I would be as well. You can't 00:07:08.250 --> 00:07:11.050 be neutral with evil, right? You can't just be 00:07:11.050 --> 00:07:13.689 like, well, evil exists and I just kind of feel 00:07:13.689 --> 00:07:18.339 whatever. It exists, and it is what it is, and 00:07:18.339 --> 00:07:20.560 you just feel whatever about it. I mean, you 00:07:20.560 --> 00:07:22.480 might say that about evil that you might not 00:07:22.480 --> 00:07:25.300 be able to do anything about, but if you're standing 00:07:25.300 --> 00:07:30.019 right there seeing evil happen, and you have 00:07:30.019 --> 00:07:33.839 the ability to do something about it, and you 00:07:33.839 --> 00:07:38.459 choose not to, your inaction, your silence on 00:07:38.459 --> 00:07:41.819 the matter, makes you complicit in the evil. 00:07:43.240 --> 00:07:45.920 It's not just the person committing the evil, 00:07:46.019 --> 00:07:49.180 it's the person who's standing by and just allowing 00:07:49.180 --> 00:07:52.959 the evil to happen without any care or concern 00:07:52.959 --> 00:08:00.279 that the evil is happening. So, like, it's really, 00:08:00.459 --> 00:08:02.620 you might think it's screwed up for you to just 00:08:02.620 --> 00:08:07.100 not do anything about evil. Similarly, imagine 00:08:07.100 --> 00:08:10.000 that you believe in the existence of a deity. 00:08:10.639 --> 00:08:13.800 one that is specifically good and powerful and 00:08:13.800 --> 00:08:18.860 wise and knows all, right? You can imagine if 00:08:18.860 --> 00:08:23.079 we feel this way about other people, how would 00:08:23.079 --> 00:08:26.819 you feel about a deity who is supposed to be 00:08:26.819 --> 00:08:30.519 much more capable, much more knowledgeable about 00:08:30.519 --> 00:08:34.759 how to stop evil, right? And is actually good, 00:08:34.860 --> 00:08:37.580 not like me, right? Where I tend to sometimes 00:08:37.580 --> 00:08:40.549 be, you know. you know, not good and, you know, 00:08:40.549 --> 00:08:43.250 have devious thoughts and so on, right? If you 00:08:43.250 --> 00:08:45.070 believe in a deity that's not that and is actually 00:08:45.070 --> 00:08:47.950 good, then you'd be puzzled if they just stood 00:08:47.950 --> 00:08:52.009 by and watched evil happen. That would make no 00:08:52.009 --> 00:08:56.769 sense to you, right? Like, I'm not trying to 00:08:56.769 --> 00:08:59.870 make this, this is not some abstract, you know, 00:08:59.870 --> 00:09:03.129 question about consistency of beliefs, right? 00:09:03.669 --> 00:09:05.370 This is much more personal, and I think this 00:09:05.370 --> 00:09:07.230 is much more personal to the people who are really 00:09:07.230 --> 00:09:09.750 struggling with the problem of evil. It's much 00:09:09.750 --> 00:09:12.570 more personal. Why? Because there's something 00:09:12.570 --> 00:09:15.730 abhorrent about other people standing by in the 00:09:15.730 --> 00:09:18.250 face of evil and doing nothing when they're capable 00:09:18.250 --> 00:09:22.690 of it. And it's just even worse if you believe 00:09:22.690 --> 00:09:26.970 in a deity who is much more capable and is much 00:09:26.970 --> 00:09:30.769 better as a person, you think morally, than any 00:09:30.769 --> 00:09:35.669 other person. And they decide to go ahead and 00:09:35.669 --> 00:09:42.210 turn a blind eye to the evil, right? People of 00:09:42.210 --> 00:09:46.330 faith lean on this being. They turn to this being 00:09:46.330 --> 00:09:50.129 for comfort, for understanding, and yes, for 00:09:50.129 --> 00:09:55.509 justice. So what I'm trying to say is this. The 00:09:55.509 --> 00:09:59.549 problem of evil carries weight in ways that no 00:09:59.549 --> 00:10:03.639 other, you know, problem in the philosophy of 00:10:03.639 --> 00:10:07.019 religion, I think, carries weight for the everyday 00:10:07.019 --> 00:10:11.500 believer. Not because it is an interesting philosophical 00:10:11.500 --> 00:10:15.700 puzzle, but rather it challenges something deeply 00:10:15.700 --> 00:10:20.340 personal. How can I make sense of an all knowing, 00:10:20.440 --> 00:10:23.259 all powerful, all good God that I supposedly 00:10:23.259 --> 00:10:28.700 believe exists that I turn to for comfort and 00:10:28.700 --> 00:10:32.220 to make the world better or to bring about a 00:10:32.220 --> 00:10:35.539 new world or whatever else is attached to it 00:10:35.539 --> 00:10:39.580 for you, right? How can I make sense of that 00:10:39.580 --> 00:10:43.379 being existing while there's also all this evil 00:10:43.379 --> 00:10:48.090 in the world? And that tension only grows as 00:10:48.090 --> 00:10:53.769 we become much more aware of the depths of the 00:10:53.769 --> 00:10:58.029 evil that exists in the world. And sometimes 00:10:58.029 --> 00:11:00.950 even with experiences of evil that we have for 00:11:00.950 --> 00:11:06.330 ourselves. How do I put trust in this supposedly 00:11:06.330 --> 00:11:08.269 all -good, all -knowing, all -powerful being 00:11:08.269 --> 00:11:10.850 when my toddler is brutally beaten and murdered? 00:11:12.139 --> 00:11:15.139 How do I put my trust in this being when I or 00:11:15.139 --> 00:11:20.860 my partner or friend is violently raped? Or if 00:11:20.860 --> 00:11:22.980 my parents are kidnapped and tortured for the 00:11:22.980 --> 00:11:28.039 enjoyment of others? Or, like you just read in 00:11:28.039 --> 00:11:31.120 history books, right? Holocaust and genocides 00:11:31.120 --> 00:11:35.340 just happen on the regular in human history. 00:11:37.720 --> 00:11:40.840 Experiences like this bring to question in a... 00:11:40.990 --> 00:11:43.950 deeply personal way, whether that being that 00:11:43.950 --> 00:11:47.110 I put faith in is who I thought that being was. 00:11:47.909 --> 00:11:50.809 Just as you would question your friendship if 00:11:50.809 --> 00:11:54.769 a friend stood in silence in your time of unjust 00:11:54.769 --> 00:12:00.009 suffering, you would question whether this higher 00:12:00.009 --> 00:12:05.210 being is either seeing evil in the world, cares 00:12:05.210 --> 00:12:08.210 about the evil in the world, even has the power 00:12:08.210 --> 00:12:12.549 to do anything about it. Right? And I'm going 00:12:12.549 --> 00:12:15.070 to be real with you. These questions cannot be 00:12:15.070 --> 00:12:19.809 dismissed so easily and explained away, right? 00:12:22.710 --> 00:12:24.690 In certain ways that I think a lot of people 00:12:24.690 --> 00:12:27.230 tend to kind of go to very quickly, right? Like 00:12:27.230 --> 00:12:30.070 that these evils are somehow necessary as part 00:12:30.070 --> 00:12:32.690 of some grander plan. The truth is that we can 00:12:32.690 --> 00:12:35.210 easily wonder whether things had to be this way. 00:12:36.250 --> 00:12:40.519 Whether this level, depth, amount of evil was 00:12:40.519 --> 00:12:43.240 really the only way. Like, look, I'll be honest 00:12:43.240 --> 00:12:45.259 with you, right? Like, I could imagine the Holocaust 00:12:45.259 --> 00:12:49.259 happening with just a few less deaths, suffering, 00:12:49.440 --> 00:12:52.220 torturing, burning people alive, right? Like, 00:12:52.220 --> 00:12:55.960 I could imagine Holocaust, whatever good you 00:12:55.960 --> 00:12:57.460 thought came out of the Holocaust, like, I could 00:12:57.460 --> 00:12:59.899 imagine that there would be equally as much good 00:12:59.899 --> 00:13:03.000 if we just had a little bit less, a little bit 00:13:03.000 --> 00:13:07.740 less of the unjust suffering, right? I imagine 00:13:07.740 --> 00:13:10.480 that, I mean, like, look, I'm thinking of cases 00:13:10.480 --> 00:13:12.220 where people, like, let's say, have violently 00:13:12.220 --> 00:13:16.220 been, like, tortured or raped, assaulted in ways 00:13:16.220 --> 00:13:20.500 that led them to spiral and to suffer from, you 00:13:20.500 --> 00:13:23.059 know, debilitating depression that led to suicide, 00:13:23.139 --> 00:13:25.399 and then they just, life ended. There was no, 00:13:25.539 --> 00:13:28.139 there was no, like, scientific discovery that 00:13:28.139 --> 00:13:30.759 came about from it. There is no lesson that the 00:13:30.759 --> 00:13:32.299 world learned. The world just kept on churning 00:13:32.299 --> 00:13:36.980 as it did. Look. We experience this a lot where 00:13:36.980 --> 00:13:40.059 evil happens and nothing really comes about from 00:13:40.059 --> 00:13:42.639 it. And you could try to justify it by saying, 00:13:42.779 --> 00:13:45.620 oh, yeah, but in the grander scheme of things, 00:13:45.740 --> 00:13:47.500 it's serving some sort of purpose. Well, it's 00:13:47.500 --> 00:13:51.899 kind of hard to see the purpose when we don't 00:13:51.899 --> 00:13:56.759 see any impact one year, two years later, three 00:13:56.759 --> 00:14:07.830 years. Horrendous. I mean, look, the reality 00:14:07.830 --> 00:14:10.629 is that there are infants being born every day 00:14:10.629 --> 00:14:13.809 that are suffering from debilitating, excruciatingly 00:14:13.809 --> 00:14:16.710 painful birth defects, and they just suffer and 00:14:16.710 --> 00:14:18.929 then they die like nothing else happens. There's 00:14:18.929 --> 00:14:21.409 no treatment that could be developed for it or 00:14:21.409 --> 00:14:23.629 anything like that, right? And you could argue, 00:14:23.710 --> 00:14:26.250 oh, maybe that'll inspire people to do more medical 00:14:26.250 --> 00:14:29.570 research. Well, medical research, money not necessarily 00:14:29.570 --> 00:14:32.090 going in that direction, even when this happens. 00:14:33.330 --> 00:14:37.730 People just suffering and dying. We might not 00:14:37.730 --> 00:14:39.570 blame someone who's incapable of doing anything 00:14:39.570 --> 00:14:41.950 about it, right? We wouldn't blame a doctor because 00:14:41.950 --> 00:14:44.169 they couldn't do anything about it. If you don't 00:14:44.169 --> 00:14:46.370 have any treatment or cure, you wouldn't look 00:14:46.370 --> 00:14:47.889 at the doctor and be like, you could have done 00:14:47.889 --> 00:14:49.889 something about the evil. How could you just 00:14:49.889 --> 00:14:51.850 stand by and do nothing about it? No, they couldn't 00:14:51.850 --> 00:14:56.649 have done anything about it. But God, or whatever 00:14:56.649 --> 00:14:59.590 deity that you want to turn to, that you might 00:14:59.590 --> 00:15:02.690 believe is a protector of justice, righteousness, 00:15:02.950 --> 00:15:07.570 goodness, surely must be capable of doing something 00:15:07.570 --> 00:15:10.129 more. At least something more than what it is 00:15:10.129 --> 00:15:14.629 that we're seeing today. Look, maybe the problem 00:15:14.629 --> 00:15:18.070 of evil doesn't matter much to those who already 00:15:18.070 --> 00:15:20.429 deny the existence of God. I mean, I'll be honest. 00:15:20.529 --> 00:15:24.529 If you already don't believe that there is such 00:15:24.529 --> 00:15:26.950 a being, or maybe there is some supernatural 00:15:26.950 --> 00:15:29.409 being, but they're not really good, These are 00:15:29.409 --> 00:15:32.269 kind of like what the Roman and Greek gods kind 00:15:32.269 --> 00:15:35.870 of are to me. They are gods, and they're like 00:15:35.870 --> 00:15:37.850 superheroes. They're like gods, but then they 00:15:37.850 --> 00:15:41.049 were horrible. They're immoral in so many ways 00:15:41.049 --> 00:15:43.490 if you read stories about what they were doing 00:15:43.490 --> 00:15:46.009 to humans and animals and all kinds of stuff. 00:15:46.389 --> 00:15:50.269 But to the people who actually put faith in something 00:15:50.269 --> 00:15:57.769 greater, this problem is inescapable. It's not 00:15:57.769 --> 00:16:00.789 something that you can just simply brush aside. 00:16:01.129 --> 00:16:03.250 And I think it becomes even much more difficult 00:16:03.250 --> 00:16:06.309 to brush aside when we're faced with certain 00:16:06.309 --> 00:16:09.669 realities in history, but also in the lives of 00:16:09.669 --> 00:16:12.690 the people that are around us that suffer immensely 00:16:12.690 --> 00:16:19.470 from situations, circumstances, events that call 00:16:19.470 --> 00:16:23.610 for some sort of explanation. Because without 00:16:23.610 --> 00:16:25.809 it, you start to wonder. You start to wonder. 00:16:26.519 --> 00:16:29.960 whether or not the person or being that you have 00:16:29.960 --> 00:16:33.460 been putting your faith in, whether it's time 00:16:33.460 --> 00:16:38.659 to rethink whether or not you put faith in that 00:16:38.659 --> 00:16:38.879 being.