“You are face to face with God. Bone cancer in children, what's that about? How dare you? How dare you create a world where there is such misery, that's not our fault? It's utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious mean minded, stupid God who creates a world so full of injustice and pain... Because the god who created this universe, if it was created by god, is quite clearly an utter maniac.”
Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov, right? So what happens in The Brothers Karamazov is that Ivan wins the argument. But Alyosha is the better person. So it's very interesting - *interrupted by Stephen Fry*
Let's take the argument you made there. There's a direction that goes in that's nihilistic and resentful and vengeful and angry and all understandable. But it doesn't look to me like there's anything good in it, it looks like it's entirely counterproductive. It makes the problem it purports to have been generated by worse. So then the question is, what's the appropriate attitude, given that the argument you make is actually an extraordinarily powerful argument? And I don't know the answer to that but I do know, I think, that resentment and anger—and even the motive that would make you want to say that to god himself—I think that's probably not helpful, even though it's so- *Stephen laughs*
I came to that with great difficulty. I mean I've had my reasons to be resentful and angry, especially recently. Because I'm suffering a lot of pain and it makes me resentful and angry and wanting to shake my fist. But I found upon intense consideration that there was nothing in that that didn't make it worse and that therefore that must be wrong. Even though it's justifiable, right?
The amount of the world's evil that's a consequence of our voluntary moral insufficiencies is in-determinant. You know, so you might say, hypothetically speaking, that as part of god's creation we actually have important work to do. And if we shirk it the consequences are real. And you might say well that's just an apology for god, perhaps that's the case, and perhaps there's no god at all and what the hell are we talking about, but I do think it's an important issue. —Jordan Peterson, An Atheist in the Realm of Myth | Stephen Fry - Jordan B Peterson Podcast - S4 E22
