The Problem of Evil

A sticking point for Muno and polytheistic religions alike, it is thought that Epicurus was probably the first to raise the problem of evil. It centres on how we can reconcile the existence of evil in the world with an omnibus, omniscient and omnipotent God. I'm a little bit and here with me to discuss the problem of evil are Luke Martin completing a philosophical theology at Oxford.

Frase McDermott, who graduated last year in theology at Christ Church and is now studying for a master's in patristic theology and Tilak Perak, a final year undergraduate reading, theology and religion at Oxford, researching Hindu theology and comparative Hindu Christian theology. Look, perhaps you could give us your version of the problem of evil. Sure. So first, we might want to distinguish between two types of evil. First, moral evil on second, natural evil.

So let's let moral evil be evil that comes as a result of free human action and we can let natural evil be evil, that doesn't come as a result of free human action. So example of moral evil, the theft, murder, rape, example of natural evil might be an earthquake. So natural disasters, natural disasters or some illnesses which don't come as a result of, say, bad health or a bad lifestyle or something like that. OK, so to the arguments for premises and a conclusion, premise one.

If God if there is a God, he or she is all powerful. Premise two, if there is a God, he or she is all good. Premise three. An all powerful and all good God could and would prevent evil from taking place in the world. Premise for there is evil in the world, therefore the conclusion God does not exist. Hmm. It's pretty damning. So does everybody else agree with that conception of the problem of evil?

What about you? I think the problem of evil is conceptualised very differently in Hinduism, for example, if there are two paintings and there was a shade of blue in both the way the blue seen, the way the blue is perceived, the perception of that blue colour is dependent on the colours in the painting surrounding that that blue patch. So in the same way, there is evil in Hinduism and in Christianity. But the way the problem is conceptualised and thought of is very, very different.

I see. So is it do you have the same distinction between natural evil and moral evil? Yes, I think the distinction remains. But at the same time, the problem isn't really a big problem in Hinduism. Oh, it's an except that it's an accepted fact of life. OK, and evil is seen as something that's part of the natural order of the world rather than a divine problem. It's seen as a human issue and part of the natural mechanics of the universe.

Could you give us an example then of how Hindus would deal with the problem of evil in real life? So before going to so sort of a practical look at the way he does deal with the problem of evil, I think it would be good to the grounds of bit theory. First, with the with the notion of karma. Karma is one of the key sort of cornerstones of Hindu theology, whereby there's a law of cause and effect.

So. Our actions in previous births and our current lives give us futz with that we had those those be good. If I were to push a granny, I would be I'd receive the fruits of that. If I were to help someone to receive the fruits of that, to sow the evil that happens to us is generated by ourselves and several texts, canonical Hindu texts like the patient's state. This fact. Um, so that means Hindus deal with evil in a very different way.

For example, I an example comes to mind currently of of an attack on on a Hindu temple in 2002. It's a massive complex. And this family are not Shredderman in Gandhinagar in India. And terrorists attacked the place and they killed about 32 people, wounded 70 when the leader of the organisation from Miami arrived at the place, he said that we should pray for everybody and it was God's doing. So that's really a microcosm of how Hindus deal with with the problem of evil even in their homes.

So we've wanted to bring that into comparison with what Luke's saying. Then perhaps the premise that they wouldn't agree with is the idea that God would and should do something about evil in the world. If it's present. Yes, perhaps this evil is more a sort of. A process of how humans become than something which should be prevented.

Yeah, so as I said, karma is the mechanics of the universe, and there's an analogy given in the tradition of the canonical text of Hinduism where they met, there are seeds planted in the ground and God provides the rain and the soil. How that seed grows is dependent on the genetic DNA of the seeds. So my karmic fruits, my karma, my desires are in the seed and that's how I'll grow. And as the fruits I'll experience, God provides the same rain, the same soil to everybody.

So the evil we experience or the good we experience is due to our actions. I see. So even as a problem for people and not for God. Yeah. Fraser, what do you think about returning to Anglicanism for the minute, what would you think about Luke's conception of the problem of evil? Well, I think what we've had so far, two very eloquent descriptions, but two very eloquent descriptions, which are sort of touching upon very different metaphysical constructs.

Yes. So we've had one sort of what I call a modernist approach in Luke's description of how the Hindu approach interacts. And I think what I would like to sort of flag up is that these aren't necessarily the only ways that we would deal with we might deal with evil. The monice approach that Luke explained sort of grew up.

Within well, I suppose originally through the through the sort of Jewish Abrahamic religions, but in Christianity, its main proponent was Augustine, who was great, the fourth and fifth century Christian theologian. But along side, the same time Augustine was was alive, where another group of Christians called the monarchies, whom Augustine was actually one of originally. And they they would reject the description of God as all powerful.

They preferred to believe that they had any sort of experienced evil in such a personal in such a devastating way. I suppose there was no way that they could, in good conscience attribute evil to God. This is very interesting because I suppose what we're seeing here is that it's up to an individual to define how they take evil to affect their life. Sure. And I suppose this might be I mean, especially easy to say in the 21st century.

But back in these times, it was definitely the religion to which you described would determine how how one looks at evil and just have to finish off the monarchies. They said instead of saying that evil is due to that all powerful God, they conceptualise it differently. They said this all powerful, this benevolent God is actually in sort of competition with a completely evil God. There are two there's a sort of cosmic battle going on.

If you kind of imagine a sort of Star Wars situation, you've got the force, the good side against the dark side. And the world is kind of the battlegrounds. So you can see forces for good. You can see force of evil. But in no way should we say that the good God is responsible for the bad.

And actually, that's that's a very interesting way of conceptualising evil for the person, because moral evil is suddenly it's not one's not responsible oneself for moral evil, because if evil is the result of, you know, a situation beyond your control and the result of the dark, dark side, for want of a better phrase, you're suddenly able to say, well, any evil action I do isn't is it my own doing, but is that of some cosmic force.

So this is a Augustan at least I found it very helpful and cathartic for his his sort of guilty conscience. That's that's really interesting. Fraizer, I was wondering whether you comment upon some contemporary religious movements within Christianity which attribute some natural and moral evil to to the devil, devil or demons. So to my mind, this is but I don't know the Manichaeans like you do, but this is so different from what they're saying.

But there's still a similarity where there is this evil being and his minions as demons and they get blamed for earthquakes or for the bad things that people do to think there's a similarity between the two. Definitely, yes. And I think actually I think it was actually more evangelical Christianity, which in the states might say that anything that that one considers evil, be it sort of murder or rape or in some situations gay people or sort of, you know, whatever is due to the devil.

And I'm not sure that's actually consistent with the monist approach that you set out to start, because there's the problem of why is there a devil? Most Christians, which I would say because Satan felt it was as a result of his free will. But then, of course, one has to ask, you know, why did God make it so that Satan fell for it? Can you just give us the story about Satan falling? So generally, I suppose the argument runs as follows.

God created all the angelic dominions, all of the heavenly powers, one of which was called Lucifer or Satan. He decided that this state in which he was he was subordinate to God, yet in perfect bliss wasn't enough for him. So he decided to grasp towards he envied God's power and God's sovereignty and decided to grasp towards it. And as a result of that, he fell back towards that sort of the nothingness out of which he came before earth is created.

And that's a good question. I'm not sure it's because, of course, that the angelic powers aren't mentioned to Genesis one or two. So I don't think Christianity has a strict answer to that question. But it comes up more, I think, mediaeval theology. So this is a product of mediaeval theology more than the Bible. Is mentioned several times in the Bible, but I think certainly becomes more of a caricature in mediaeval theology. Certainly. Yes. Thank you. See, with Hinduism, there is no evil entity.

There is suffering, but there is no evil such there is no equivalent of Satan and for example, the God of death. Kamaraj is actually revered sometimes and even worshipped because he. Gives justice and at the same time, is that justice in the form of appropriate acquittal for bad action? Yes, death as punishment. So once again, there is there's a totally different metaphysical basis for Christianity and Hinduism.

Yes. With Christianity, there is only one life with Hinduism. There are infinite lives as reincarnation. So if I were to commit evil deeds right now, I would suffer them with my karma in my next life, but also in between. When your marriage comes to collecting for death, who take me to a temporary [INAUDIBLE] where I would also suffer a little bit. But there's also, you know, one of the biggest things that we see in suffering is death. It's the climax of suffering, perhaps.

But for Hinduism, death is perhaps just another name for life, because time is seen as cyclical destruction, creation, destruction and creation fact. There are three gods considered to be sort the stewards of the earth, the creative sustainer and the destructor. The destruction is known as Shiva, and he is a very, very popular deity within Hinduism. So despite his his past to disrupt the world, he is revered as God. But it sure shows the difference sort paradigm Hinduism gives to the debate.

Yes, I can see probably important here to distinguish them between suffering and evil as a force. I suppose that means that Shiva perhaps doesn't run the same risk as Satan is maybe exculpating those who do wrong because you have the you have the idea of karma sort of punish people for wrongdoing later on, whereas perhaps as a concern that those who were Satan too heavily in their theology are in fact sidestepping the blame for their bad actions.

Would you say that's an accurate criticism? I think definitely. And I think it's also interesting to look at how perhaps Judaism would view this. For example, in Judaism, there's not such a distinction between this life and the next life. There's not that the afterlife is thought to be a sort of shadowy place called Sheol, where everyone goes no matter what their actions like in this life. So justice is very much thought to be dispensed in this life.

So it's natural that the good will be rewarded for their good actions by riches and prosperity in this life. And the evil should be rewarded with, you know, horrible things. And of course, it's a very good question. Jewish literature when this doesn't occur. Yes. Why this is and this is kind of how the Jewish philosophy framed the question of theocracy, which is why how God can be justified and how evil can be can coexist with a benevolent God.

I think going back to the topic of the devil, it seems like the devil's there to get caught off the hook, but it also gets humanity off the hook. So I'm not too sure about how that fits. I mean, does it really get God off the hook, though, because of God's all powerful and all knowing, you know, he created a world in which there were these angels.

He knew that this angel was going to fall and he knew that the angel was going to cause the the devil was going to cause this evil in the world to still got to bring it back to God and say, you know, why did you create a world in which. The devil fell and and caused the evil that what he has done, if you think he has caused it. I think that's an interesting question because it goes back to the.

Question that's been plaguing theology for four generations is the mystery of God, why does God do what God does? There's a notion of, you know, humanity just not knowing where finite beings God is an infinite being. And even in Hinduism, there comes a point where you have to say, which sometimes are natural even as well, that God's it's God's will and God does things because he knows what he's doing.

And he reminds me of a of a story that I was reading the other day, a 19th century figure popularly revered as God by many Samini. He was travelling in a cart and yet a cart driver and a bunch of men came and asked, you know, someone's stolen our jewellery, who's got it? And some in the eye, and said, oh, the cart driver has stolen it. The men came and they beat the cart driver and they went after and in the cart driving, asked around, why? Why did you allow that to happen? I didn't do anything.

And then so I mean, I said that, you know, you were beaten for six minutes and I wiped away six of your next lives in the in the six minutes. And you will attain liberation now. So the story just goes to show that God's doing is sometimes inaccessible to humans and God does what he likes, really. And it's always for the best. And that's something that Hindus many times resort to when they face suffering.

Yeah, that's that's really interesting. I mean, in the literature I'm familiar with the philosophy of religion. There is a view called sceptical theism, and there's lots, lots written on sceptical theism. But the basic idea is just that we're not in a good position to know or at least always know what good can come from certain evils. So even if we look at a situation, we think, you know, there's no good that we can see coming from this.

We're not in the same situation that God is in. We don't have the perspective on the knowledge that God has. So now we've sketched out the problem of evil. Perhaps it's worth looking at the ways in which people commonly exculpate God. Yeah, OK, so one way to deal with the the problem of evil that I said earlier is by questioning the third premise of the third premise is that states that are all powerful and all good God could and would prevent evil from taking place in the world.

Some. Thinkers want to suggest that whilst God could prevent evil from taking place in the world, it's not clear that he always would. A one response we find here is called the Free World Defence and. Those who hold to the free world defence.

Think that there may be certain goods for which it is worth God allowing evils and in particular the good of free will, because the view is in creating a world with creatures who have significant free will and God's leaves open the possibility of evil in the world. So this is a good deriving from evil, not in the sense that there could be good consequences of actions that immediately see evil, but in the idea that the right to have free will is in itself an intrinsic right.

That's right. OK, would you say that features at all in the Hindu perspective, Tilak? Yes, I think it's very similar in that God given us this Frigo and it's because of that free will. We should be so thankful to God for giving us a free will in the first place and. It's true that free will we can therefore carry out Alkermes and then receive the fruits again. So what problems are there with the free world events? Does that get God off the hook?

OK, so here's a problem. We might think that in certain circumstances, the good of a person having free will justifies the evil that takes place. So say I go in to a shop and I shoplift. You might think that the harm caused by my by me shoplifting isn't great enough to suggest that God should remove my free will. OK, but let's take a more extreme example. Say a child is kidnapped and put in a basement and tortured for 10 to 20 years, then dies in captivity.

This is a horrible example, but it makes us question whether the good of free will is enough to justify God allowing this sort of evil to take place in the world. Surely we might think whilst having the freedom to choose whether or not shoplift seems like a good thing, having the freedom to choose whether or not to kidnap a child and torture the child and kill the child. That doesn't seem good. Perhaps it's worth talking for a bit about what sort of good we see free will to be.

It's very difficult to think about it in terms of the kind of daily benefits we might receive in the way that we might weigh up other goods, for example, like, I don't know, never being hungry or something like that is that phrase of could you perhaps discuss why you think free will is important for humanity?

Sure. Well, I think it's whenever free was spoken about, it's often spoken of, but not spoken about negatively, because the two examples we just had, of course, were, you know, not the best examples of humans exercising their free will, but, of course, free will, I suppose, from a Christian perspective, was originally bestowed because.

Without free will, humans cannot turn towards God, cannot do any good that is truly good without being truly free, inasmuch as the good needs to be intended as good are not predetermined for them. Indeed, yes. So counts in order to be praiseworthy, perhaps. Yes.

Yeah. So I mean the classic defence of Christian Christian three well is that in order for human love to be properly considered love and not compulsion, it needs to be effected, freely compelled, love, love, compelled by God would not be free, for example. It's I mean, it's possible. And of course, God being omnipotent by the classical definition of Christianity, that he could make a world without evil. And as Christians, I think Christians will want to say.

Of course it's possible, but there is some good reason why that didn't occur. Yes, and the possibility and I think I think Freewheel must be that reason and the possibility that that free will will result in good loving actions to be performed by those who have been bestowed with it. So would you say the problem of free will is conceived of similarly in Hinduism? I think before we go further, it would be good to.

Placed a caveat at this point, yeah, that Hinduism is arguably a Western construct imposed on the traditions, the religious traditions within India, by the West during colonial times and. There was never a word there was never worked for a religion in India, and there still isn't an equivalent because there was never a unity such within Hinduism that binds it all these traditions together.

Even today, many scholars say Hinduism is just an umbrella term for many different religions because there is not a single scripture or single God that everyone believes in. Therefore, some say the name Hindu was invented by outsiders, and it was a label conceived and deployed to classify a wide variety of inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent. So do you have canonical texts in common then? With Hinduism being so broad, yes, within individual traditions, there are canonical texts, yes.

So, for example, within there's a specific school called Vedanta School. There are three scriptures to trace the Geeta and the sutras, which are considered canonical and generally within Hinduism Devadas, yes, are considered to be canonical. Having said that, I wouldn't say they are equivalent to the Bible in Christianity. So there is a real unity because some traditions within Hinduism also don't place too much importance on the.

Therefore, there's a wide variety within Islam and probably a wide reflection of that in how different groups treat the problem of free will. Yes. And the problem of evil in general. Yes. So. From the perspective I'm coming from, which is the devotional traditions within Hinduism, there's a notion of the soul, the animal which is common to most in the traditions, and the AMA is considered to be just as old as God. Therefore, I could say I'm just as old as God, which is pretty cool to say.

So I'm on my own journey to attain liberation from the cycle of birth and death. Therefore, this freewill is very, very important to me. So the soul is what's reincarnated over and over again. Yes, well, the common element between different seeming lives and to put it simply, that the soul is your karma counter. Yes, either karmas of this life are onto that soul. And I take them to the next life. Yes. Which is how the system works.

Therefore, freewill is is vital for me to carry out my acts and to attain liberation. I think that's a very good sort of take stock of where we are. So as I see it, it's very important to each system as to how evil is treated temporarily. So in Hinduism, evil isn't such a problem as I think it is for Christianity because of the endlessness of time and of the circularity of time and the fact that evil can be equalised and made good throughout the time,

denatured or denatured. But there isn't there isn't an entity of evil. There is no Satan degree, and which is part of the system of suffering as as a punishment. Whereas in Judaism, as I mentioned, this life is all there is. So there's no sort of there's no ability to for evil to be done restitute have to have done restitution for evil or to be to be punished or rewarded. Whereas in Christianity, of course, there's the notion of this life being rewarded or punished in the next life.

So there's this very clear dichotomy. Yes. So burning in [INAUDIBLE] versus eternal bliss is is that enough of a justification then, for the kind of evil that people can do so yes to? Or maybe justification is the wrong word. So going back to the the example of the child who's kidnapped, I tend not to want to resort to heaven and [INAUDIBLE] the kind of argument that I put forth.

So just to recap, the free will to defend Stitz, that God may be justified in allowing certain evils because of the value of free will. An objection I put forward as well. In some cases that seems right to us, but in other cases, in the example of the child who's been kidnapped and tortured, it doesn't seem like God is justified in allowing this evil for the sake of free will. Rather, we might think that God should restrict freedom. One thought is this here.

This example is one of the most extreme examples of evil I can think of in the world. There are not many things which I find more harm than the thought of a child being tortured for 10 to 20 years and then dying. Absolutely right. Glad we're all in agreement so. Well, let's take a let's imagine a different world in which freedom is restricted.

OK, so there are none of these sort of KISS's these extreme cases say in this world that we're imagining the worst thing that someone does is someone punches another person whilst the person is shopping on the street on a Saturday, OK? Yeah. And that's the worst thing that happens in the world because God has restricted evil.

It still seems plausible to me that if we were citizens of that world, we would still be horrified by this event because this event of the person punching someone on the street would be the worst thing that we'd ever heard of is evil as a relational construct, then? I think our response to evil, the mode of horror we experience is probably relative to the amount of evil we've come across and heard about in our lives.

So the the reason that's a counterargument is because it's just no matter how much God restricts our human freedom, we're always going to question whether God is justified in allowing the most extreme cases of evil in the world. I think the fact that we find evil to be evil is a good thing in itself. Yeah, because if we were to see someone punching someone else just to be normal for to me, then that would show more about humanity.

So the fact that we find evil to be evil is, I think, a good thing in itself. On the other hand, there are some philosophical schools, perhaps like the Stoics, who might dispute that and say, well, you know, the fact that you find evil evil is actually I mean, that's causing you to suffer. That's causing the human race, you know, in its entirety to experience pain and to think that something is bad. Whereas the Stoics might like to say, well, actually, there's no objective evil in itself.

There's no one act that one can say is evil, even murder. You can't say if I murdered my brother. You can't say that is evil. If I was punched when I was walking down the street on a Saturday. I can't say that that's evil. So where they where evil comes in, in the stomach system is in how they judge things.

So if I consider being punished, being violated to be an evil act, to be a badness that's before me, before me, then I that's sort of a suffering, an extra suffering that I'm heaping upon myself as well as being punished. I'm also thinking, gosh, isn't this a horrible thing that I've that I've suffered?

Whereas if I a stooks teach you value all sorts of physical and material things neutrally, then anything that you experience in your material life or in your sort of bodily existence is neither good nor bad and starts to place all the all the. Worth and value in things that can't be taken away in this life, for example, courage, virtue, things, things like that, so evil as something we impute or ascribe to acts rather than intrinsic property in itself.

Indeed, but I think that there's a reason that stoicism hasn't exactly thrived, because that doesn't seem to that most people don't like. We'd like to say that murder is actually an evil and there's some sort of inconsistency with saying there's no objectivity. Yes, absolutely. I suppose. There is also the defence in intersubjectivity, there is objectivity, and as much as if enough people conceive of an act as evil, it's pretty.

It's perhaps more representative to call it evil than it is to call it really evil on the show. Yeah, I mean, one point this raises what raises the issue of objective moral facts. And I mean, it seems if you if you want to hold that the problem of evil is a problem, you're going to have to hold that. There are these objective moral facts that things are actually good and actually bad.

Yeah, no different religious traditions have accounts of not only what is good and what is bad, but why those why those things are good and bad. But, you know, from the perspective of a naturalist, an atheist, the naturalist will have to give an account of objective moral facts if he or she wants to think that there's wita to the problem of yourself. So could you tell us a bit more about what a naturalist perspective entails?

Well, I mean, there's there are debates around what exactly you mean by naturalism, but. If. If I think that the only things that exist in the world are chairs and grass, trees or whatever they're made out of. If I only believe in physical things, it's not immediately clear. How or why I'm going to believe in things like moral facts, because the moral facts, just the the idea, the age range thing, right, the idea that it's wrong to murder is it's not a physical idea.

So I think even though the problem of evil is a is a serious problem for a theists, you know, the atheists still needs to give a really robust account of of of of why we should pursue objective moral facts in our in our metaphysics. Yes. And why there should be any distinction being between good and bad weather should be laws. All of these things, atheists and naturalists, materialists also have to be, as you say, given cultural. Sure. I mean, there are accounts in the literature, but it's.

Yeah, it's not an easy task. Right. Right. So so far, we've just been talking about moral evil, but I seem to remember there being another kind of evil that you discussed. What's your response to the problem of evil concerning natural evil? Well, of course, by natural evil, I think we probably mean any evil that hasn't been or any anybody that hasn't been committed by a conscious, willing agent, earthquakes, as we say, and disease and anything that perhaps it's not due to humans.

And I suppose one response to that from the Christian tradition, which also goes for for moral evil, but there's also quite a good response, I think, to natural evil. Is that that of ironies? And who is a second century Christian theologian and its more recent proponent or opponent, John Hick? And that's that life. And our experience of evil and good are a sort of journey of soul making.

And let me unpack that a little bit. So he he answers talk that Adam and Eve weren't born as fully developed and agents with. A sort of complete intellect and complete knowledge of the good and the evil as born as adults. Is that something we know from the Bible, whether or not do are they babies? Well, it's actually it's ambiguous. There's no sort of thing that says Adam was born a fully grown and made a fully grown human adults.

There's it's conceivable to, I suppose, imagine him being born as a baby and then and then Eve being created out of his robes. I mean, where where he is or even I mean, many contemporary thinkers don't think there was an Adam and Eve which just this sort of the the early chapters of Genesis, sort of a metaphor for the early human condition. Sure. Yeah. That's that's a very important distinction to make because a lot of people are very cautious before they sort of say place any wait on Genesis.

Yes. You know, how are we actually thinking this anyway? Arnez sort of said that Adam and Eve were born as infants. Immature, I think, is the essential word, and that their experience of the world and of evil in the world and of good, but mainly of evil was that of experience and of growth in virtue. So do you mean that as they encounter evil, that they develop their conception of what good is? Yes, that's right. And developed also conceptions of virtue and how the how evil is to be dealt with.

And I suppose more ultimately that they developed their conception of what freewill is for and what God is and what the good is, because it's impossible to know the good if you've never encountered the bad. And I suppose that's kind of of your analogy of the blue in the same painting. You know, in order for a painting to have any sort of meaning and contrast, you need certainly some dark shades as well as light. Otherwise it just be a sort of amorphous, you know, white space.

So you need you need evil in order to balance and to into a product of the structuralist views of theology. It seems to be quite, quite heavily based on the idea that we might conceive of notions as. Relational in character interest. Well, so, yeah, to pick up on this or make an idea well, let's take example last about a year ago I was injured and I experienced chronic pain for a couple of months. And I was all day every day and I did take medication, but it didn't take the pain away completely.

And it also slowed down my mind. But so I experienced a degree of suffering. And, you know, I think about Ernest John Hecks response. This idea of soul making does sort of seem to make sense, you know, because there are certain character traits that I developed through that experience. Right. So traits of patients or being resilient and persevering. And also you could say that, you know, this experience of mine give other people an opportunity to show virtue as well as the doctors and nurses.

And perhaps without this sort of suffering or even more intense suffering the mind, it doesn't. In a world without such suffering, there would be no opportunity for us to show these virtues of kindness and being caring. But still, you got to go to the some of the more extreme examples and think, OK, all right, look, you got a couple of months of chronic pain unpleasant, but you got over it, you know. But what about these people? You have conditions that lasts for their whole lives.

And that's where I think I mean, you almost have to go back to what we were talking about earlier and what we're talking about for the Hindu tradition as well. This idea of mystery that sometimes it is it is very hard to know what good is coming from a situation, particularly from someone who has experienced suffering to such an extent that it isn't having good moral a good moral effect on the person. So the person is becoming grumpy and violent and all these sorts of things.

And perhaps there are you just have to if you believe in God, you just have to think, well, maybe there are there's more going on here than I'm aware of. And I think also talking about this practical response to evil. Yes. In such conditions, there's a notion in Hinduism, a very strong sort of motif of refuge in God. It reminds me of the very popular Hindu text, and there's a war to be fought.

And God is, in this context, telling the man, Arjuna, the warrior, to fight because it's his duty to fight and to remove the evil. And at the end of all of this, of the text of Christian Toltz urging to forsake everything and take refuge in me. So there's a level of trust in his faith in God, trust in Hinduism, considered a virtue in itself.

So we've been talking about evil as a. And I suppose if we were to put it back in terms of the problem, what we would be saying is we can defend God doing evil because the learning that we get is intrinsically a good enough benefit to balance out to the detriment of the world created by that evil. Yeah, it's it's hard to know. I mean, to some extent, yes.

In terms of the moral character we develop. But then you could you could paint it another way and say, you know, if I was to have a child and I say I wanted to make sure my child really loved me. So I put all these obstacles in her way so that she kept getting hurt. And so she kept coming back to me, you know, seems like a bit of a perverse way of getting love and attention from a child. And I suppose what you said about mystery today is very interesting.

And I suppose as mortal, you know, finite creatures we're dealing with when we're talking to someone trying to sort of justify God, which is what we're doing, I suppose, today it's kind of some sort of contradiction in there. And and, you know, who we from such small perspectives and such limited understanding to question what may well be viewed by theists as the word of God.

There's also this using learning. Sometimes I find with these extreme examples, like, for example, the Holocaust or some learning came out of that. And how how was there any progress? Certainly. So it's. And why and why, you know, if God wanted the world or the communities affected by the Holocaust to have learnt from this, why could he not have killed two million Jews instead of six? You know why? Why why would six better than two?

So I think just on that one, you've got at least Hying a lot of quite a lot of weight on the free world defence. I think the sword making will only go so far with something like the Holocaust and that free will is good in itself and that the Hindu perspective, natural evil isn't so much learning. Um, because once again, the starting points are different. There is no notion of the.

In in Hinduism, there's no notion out of Satan, the fall of Satan, the Apple, the Adam and Eve, there's nothing like that in Hinduism. So creation in Christianity was done so out of nothing. But in some Hindu traditions, there is a notion of Christian God being both the efficient and the mature course of the world. But in some nutrition's there's creation material. So God and creator have nothing God created out of something like this.

There's an entity called Maya, so similar to Plato with the very edge. So therefore, God created the world out of this material called Maya. Therefore, the Maya is responsible in a way, for some of the evil in the world. Secondly, there are no dates within Hinduism who are stewards of the world, the god of rain, the cause of fire, the God of air.

So God is delegated, as you know, you could say, the running of the world to these deities who are afflicted by, you know, things like pain and anger, etc., to a lesser degree than humans. But they still are. So God, just leave that to them. Now, you could pose the question, why doesn't God intervene and make sure there's no suffering? And that really goes back down to God knows best.

Um, well, so we're starting to run out of time here. Are there any defences to the problem of evil that we haven't come across? Yes, there's one more view that it's complex, but at a very basic level, it just states that. Given that we're made out of the stuff we're made out of. There are certain side effects which lead to the suffering that we experience, and there's no way to get the sort of creatures that we are without using the stuff that we're made out of.

And if God chooses to use the stuff that we're made out of, then it's just kind of a fact, a natural necessity that you get with it these other side effects of the diseases. And yeah, so it's kind of an acceptance of our embodied state. All right. In Hinduism, there's also this idea of eight factors, so called karma. Uh, so time your actions, your company, all of these things have an effect on what's happening in the world. And sometimes one fact takes predominance over another.

So even if I've been good all my life, the time could take predominance and do something evil and a tsunami happened or something else. So these eight factors also have a role in sort of controlling what's happening in the world. Although God is always seen as the ultimate control, that complicates the causal narrative sufficiently that maybe the problem of evil isn't so stark. Yes, with it's not as simple as just to try triad of God being all loving. And how much of the tradition thinks that's.

The afterlife, as you know, is eternal, it doesn't stop, so, you know, I speaking about pain in my body the last a couple of months, we can think about people who experience pain and suffering for 60, 70 years. But I mean, if the afterlife never ends, then, you know, it's literally just a speck, you know, a point on a very, very long line in terms of the endurance of the suffering and the sort of suffering free life that comes after it.

So in a way, heaven and [INAUDIBLE] as eternal kind of seem, you know, unequal to a life that very well or very badly. So, you know, it's feasible to argue that Hitler, although his deeds were extremely, you know, horrible and horrendous, doesn't deserve an eternal punishment and damnation because that would be unequal to, you know, his his his evil in this world, which he does in Christianity.

It depends who you ask. If you ask Origin, [INAUDIBLE] say no. If you are some, they'll say yes, a whole bunch of different views. Some will even say they won't say like origin, that Hitler will be returned to God. They won't say, like others, that [INAUDIBLE] be gone forever, but they'll say that he [INAUDIBLE] just perish. You'll cease to exist. And that in itself is a punishment. Hmm.

Yes. Certainly Christian Christianity, like Hinduism, is not as simple and as uncomplicated vannett that it might appear to be. Well, thank you very much for this complicated and pluralistic offering of views on the problem of evil and its stance on Hinduism and Christianity. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.