SECTION III: How do I know?

Fyodor Dostoevsky was a Russian novelist who examined closely religious and moral issues. His penetrating insight into the fraught world of human experience places him among the greatest writers of our world.

Our reading from Dostoevsky presents part of a conversation between two brothers, Ivan and Alyosha. Alyosha is the younger and intends to become a monk in a local monastery. Ivan is the older and is tormented by the problem of evil.

The intent of this reading is twofold: first, to draw in some vivid detail the nature of the problem; and second, to raise a question for a common form of response to the problem. Read first the first part of the conversation. Then read Hick. Then read the second part of the conversation.

Click Here for the First Part, in .pdf format.

(Read Hick in between)

Click Here for the Second Part, in .pdf format.

"'Tell me yourself, I challenge you—answer. Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature—that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance—and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth.'"

Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1821-1881

Go on to John Hick.

Go back to The Problem of Evil page.