Religion, spirituality, what other label you
want to put on it? It holds meaning for most
people, right? Regardless of what set of beliefs
or practices you hold dear, my guess is that
there is at least some set of claims about the
world or worldview that kind of comes with it.
And for many people, it's centered on a particular
religious community or set of spiritual practices.
Those who are interested in holding a consistent
set of beliefs will inevitably encounter certain
questions about whatever that worldview or those
beliefs or those practices are. The tensions
that they experience depends on the specific
religious views that they hold. I'm not here
to tell you what to believe. Philosophy as a
whole is not necessarily in the business of going
around imposing beliefs onto others or brainwashing
people into believing something specific. regardless
of what my dad says. He tends to be very skeptical
about philosophy as a field. However, philosophy
does point out inconsistencies. This is one of
the things that philosophy does quite well, is
to highlight certain inconsistencies in beliefs
or in justifications we might have for the beliefs
that we do. One strand of philosophy in particular,
the philosophy of religion, seeks to take up...
these questions and make sense of them, specifically
the kind of positions that religious institutions
tend to hold, doctrines, but also including practices,
right? That shouldn't be surprising at all, at
least in Western philosophical tradition, because
many of the influential philosophers were also
men of the church, clergy, people like St. Augustine
and Thomas Aquinas, right? But more generally,
given the role of Christianity in Western societies,
it makes sense that the question that arises
with this particular religion would be of interest
to philosophers in those communities. But the
questions that are discussed are neither Western,
European -centric or Christian -centric, as far
as I can tell. These questions are just central
to humanity in its attempt to understand their
place in the larger world. So this is why we
get questions about whether or not there's a
deity that exists, or if there is, what is the
nature of this deity, if there are multiple deities,
if some of the religious texts, like how much
authority we could own. These are all... under
the broad umbrella of philosophical questions
about justification for belief and so on, right?
Okay. One question in particular, I think, has
been a thorn in the side for a lot of believers,
specifically believers of an all -knowing, all
-powerful, benevolent deity. Okay? Most questions
in, you know, in the philosophy of religion...
You know, things like questions about how do
we justify the existence of God? Is there a justification
or a reason to believe in the existence of God?
I don't think these are particularly concerning
if you don't find an answer to them, because
I imagine for many people, the reason they come
to, you know, engage in certain spiritual practices
or become a believer of a particular faith probably
has something more to do with the community or
with their own personal experience of what they
might. claim is of the supernatural, right? Some
kind of a religious transformative experience.
But there is one question that really, you know,
it makes you stretch the way that you try to
make sense of all the beliefs that you have about
religion and spirituality, which is that if there
is an all -knowing, all -powerful, benevolent
deity, if such a being exists, then why do we
have evil in the world? I'm not talking about
the existence of human suffering. Suffering is
not necessarily evil. I'm talking about evil,
E -V -I -L, like evil, evil, like that dark,
that, you know, That thing that's a central theme
of Elie Wiesel's Night, if you ever read that
book, right? Which wrestles with the horrors
of the Holocaust. I'm talking like evil, like
people doing things to other humans, other living
things. That is just hard to kind of explain.
The reason that the problem of evil is so troubling.
is that there seems to be a tension between the
existence of evil, which is kind of hard to deny.
You just look around the world and you can see,
unless you're burying your head in the sand,
there's a lot of evil in the world, right? There's
this tension that seems to exist between the
existence of evil and the existence of this benevolent
deity. And why is that? Well, we... care whether
or not there's evil in the world and just as
like a as like a human being that sees evil in
the world we want to kind of stomp it out right
we want to bring evil to justice right we want
to rehabilitate people um who are the cause of
so much evil in the world right i mean there
might be exceptions sociopaths probably don't
care but you know most people i think actually
care right standing by and doing nothing in some
cases anyways, seems absolutely abhorrent, right?
Just imagine if I stood by while somebody was
just stabbing you for fun, right? And I did not
do anything at all, right? I mean, you might
say like, oh, I didn't expect you to come in
and try to save me and potentially get stabbed
yourself. Okay, fine. I didn't even bother to
call for help or to call the police. I just saw
you, watched you bleed out and die. If I did
something like that, you would look at me and
be like, what is wrong with you? It's not just
the person who committed that evil that's under
scrutiny, right? I would be as well. You can't
be neutral with evil, right? You can't just be
like, well, evil exists and I just kind of feel
whatever. It exists, and it is what it is, and
you just feel whatever about it. I mean, you
might say that about evil that you might not
be able to do anything about, but if you're standing
right there seeing evil happen, and you have
the ability to do something about it, and you
choose not to, your inaction, your silence on
the matter, makes you complicit in the evil.
It's not just the person committing the evil,
it's the person who's standing by and just allowing
the evil to happen without any care or concern
that the evil is happening. So, like, it's really,
you might think it's screwed up for you to just
not do anything about evil. Similarly, imagine
that you believe in the existence of a deity.
one that is specifically good and powerful and
wise and knows all, right? You can imagine if
we feel this way about other people, how would
you feel about a deity who is supposed to be
much more capable, much more knowledgeable about
how to stop evil, right? And is actually good,
not like me, right? Where I tend to sometimes
be, you know. you know, not good and, you know,
have devious thoughts and so on, right? If you
believe in a deity that's not that and is actually
good, then you'd be puzzled if they just stood
by and watched evil happen. That would make no
sense to you, right? Like, I'm not trying to
make this, this is not some abstract, you know,
question about consistency of beliefs, right?
This is much more personal, and I think this
is much more personal to the people who are really
struggling with the problem of evil. It's much
more personal. Why? Because there's something
abhorrent about other people standing by in the
face of evil and doing nothing when they're capable
of it. And it's just even worse if you believe
in a deity who is much more capable and is much
better as a person, you think morally, than any
other person. And they decide to go ahead and
turn a blind eye to the evil, right? People of
faith lean on this being. They turn to this being
for comfort, for understanding, and yes, for
justice. So what I'm trying to say is this. The
problem of evil carries weight in ways that no
other, you know, problem in the philosophy of
religion, I think, carries weight for the everyday
believer. Not because it is an interesting philosophical
puzzle, but rather it challenges something deeply
personal. How can I make sense of an all knowing,
all powerful, all good God that I supposedly
believe exists that I turn to for comfort and
to make the world better or to bring about a
new world or whatever else is attached to it
for you, right? How can I make sense of that
being existing while there's also all this evil
in the world? And that tension only grows as
we become much more aware of the depths of the
evil that exists in the world. And sometimes
even with experiences of evil that we have for
ourselves. How do I put trust in this supposedly
all -good, all -knowing, all -powerful being
when my toddler is brutally beaten and murdered?
How do I put my trust in this being when I or
my partner or friend is violently raped? Or if
my parents are kidnapped and tortured for the
enjoyment of others? Or, like you just read in
history books, right? Holocaust and genocides
just happen on the regular in human history.
Experiences like this bring to question in a...
deeply personal way, whether that being that
I put faith in is who I thought that being was.
Just as you would question your friendship if
a friend stood in silence in your time of unjust
suffering, you would question whether this higher
being is either seeing evil in the world, cares
about the evil in the world, even has the power
to do anything about it. Right? And I'm going
to be real with you. These questions cannot be
dismissed so easily and explained away, right?
In certain ways that I think a lot of people
tend to kind of go to very quickly, right? Like
that these evils are somehow necessary as part
of some grander plan. The truth is that we can
easily wonder whether things had to be this way.
Whether this level, depth, amount of evil was
really the only way. Like, look, I'll be honest
with you, right? Like, I could imagine the Holocaust
happening with just a few less deaths, suffering,
torturing, burning people alive, right? Like,
I could imagine Holocaust, whatever good you
thought came out of the Holocaust, like, I could
imagine that there would be equally as much good
if we just had a little bit less, a little bit
less of the unjust suffering, right? I imagine
that, I mean, like, look, I'm thinking of cases
where people, like, let's say, have violently
been, like, tortured or raped, assaulted in ways
that led them to spiral and to suffer from, you
know, debilitating depression that led to suicide,
and then they just, life ended. There was no,
there was no, like, scientific discovery that
came about from it. There is no lesson that the
world learned. The world just kept on churning
as it did. Look. We experience this a lot where
evil happens and nothing really comes about from
it. And you could try to justify it by saying,
oh, yeah, but in the grander scheme of things,
it's serving some sort of purpose. Well, it's
kind of hard to see the purpose when we don't
see any impact one year, two years later, three
years. Horrendous. I mean, look, the reality
is that there are infants being born every day
that are suffering from debilitating, excruciatingly
painful birth defects, and they just suffer and
then they die like nothing else happens. There's
no treatment that could be developed for it or
anything like that, right? And you could argue,
oh, maybe that'll inspire people to do more medical
research. Well, medical research, money not necessarily
going in that direction, even when this happens.
People just suffering and dying. We might not
blame someone who's incapable of doing anything
about it, right? We wouldn't blame a doctor because
they couldn't do anything about it. If you don't
have any treatment or cure, you wouldn't look
at the doctor and be like, you could have done
something about the evil. How could you just
stand by and do nothing about it? No, they couldn't
have done anything about it. But God, or whatever
deity that you want to turn to, that you might
believe is a protector of justice, righteousness,
goodness, surely must be capable of doing something
more. At least something more than what it is
that we're seeing today. Look, maybe the problem
of evil doesn't matter much to those who already
deny the existence of God. I mean, I'll be honest.
If you already don't believe that there is such
a being, or maybe there is some supernatural
being, but they're not really good, These are
kind of like what the Roman and Greek gods kind
of are to me. They are gods, and they're like
superheroes. They're like gods, but then they
were horrible. They're immoral in so many ways
if you read stories about what they were doing
to humans and animals and all kinds of stuff.
But to the people who actually put faith in something
greater, this problem is inescapable. It's not
something that you can just simply brush aside.
And I think it becomes even much more difficult
to brush aside when we're faced with certain
realities in history, but also in the lives of
the people that are around us that suffer immensely
from situations, circumstances, events that call
for some sort of explanation. Because without
it, you start to wonder. You start to wonder.
whether or not the person or being that you have
been putting your faith in, whether it's time
to rethink whether or not you put faith in that
being.