Yellow Beaked Boys - The Karamazov Brothers discuss the Argument from Evil

 The dialogue between Ivan and Aloshya leading up to the Grand Inquisitor chapter is one of sustained power and mastery which I imagine Dostoievsky wrote beating out each awkward sentence while the fire was still hot.  The two full brothers Ivan and Aloshya, the former a philosopher wielding arguments from evil to question God, to call him to task; the latter in the monkish garb of a novitiate responding with faith shaken by the examples that he is confronted with. 

But really they are very young and are foolish; opinionated yet ignorant.  Not stupid, that can’t be said of them, not in the least, because they want to get to the bottom of things.  Young men, there will be terrible things to face before long.  Will you be ready to ‘love life more than its meaning’, to live it with ‘your insides’?  

Downcast by the Problem of Evil

  -  Do you accept physics?   Are you affronted by the failure of over-stressed beams?  Are lava flows an unjust imposition?   What is your position on tsunamis?

 -  Nature is naturing, from indigestion to cancer.  It’s all normal.  It is what it is: only a fool could object to it.

 -  I agree and we differ only in my seeing God as the underlying energy of all this, supporting and sustaining and so forth.  You though, with a very narrow perspective on omni-benevolence claim that I should be baffled by a supposed dilemma and merely hold to belief through obdurate ignorance and refusal to draw a rational conclusion.  I think my love of physics, as such, is greater than yours as I am not in the least downcast by it whereas by your account I ought to be.

Bilimoria on Theodicy

Purushottama bilimoria has a review of the various theodicies in the Hindu tradition.
Towards an Indian Theodicy
theodicy

His remarks on the short sections of Shankaracarya’s commentary on Brahma Sutra Bhasya II.i.34/5 are interesting.

Śaṅkara is adamant that creation is “sāpekṣa,” that is, Brahman is not independent, even though he is the sole material cause of the world. As a matter of fact, he does not have nor can exercise free choice, since he has no control over dispensing the consequences of creatures’ actions, in which he is guided by the “Force of Law” – Karma.

The essence of this view is that when you create a world you create interaction, you create work and therefore causality. Because issuing from the boundless consciousness of Brahman in which there is no border between spirit and matter, interaction on all planes is subject to cause and effect. The explication of Brahman as the material cause of the universe must not be taken to mean that Brahman is itself material. This is made clear by Shankaracarya in his commentary on Tai.Up. (Satyam Jnanam Anantam Brahma). See various posts on this very close analysis –
Tai.Up.
To create a world in which there was no interaction would be incoherent. Bilimoria puts it in a stronger way that might be questioned.

It is clear though that God’s dependence upon the karma of the creatures, seriously delimits, that is, restricts, God’s omnipotence; second, it takes away any element of the hand or even the inscrutability of providence: grace would not be easy to come by in this account

Delimit and dependence seem to suggest the concept of a creation inflicting itself on the creator when in fact the demands of karma are internal to creation. When grace is required it comes from inside the creation via an avatar as the Bhagavad Gita puts it:
.

BG 4.8: To protect the righteous, to annihilate the wicked, and to reestablish the principles of dharma I appear on this earth, age after age

Within the creation the avatar is subject to birth and death and can interact with others to answer their prayers. There is no remote creator dependent on his creation but he must act from within the creation if he is to act in Isvara mode.

Bilimoria stresses again this ‘dependence’ aspect in his consideration of B.S.B. II.i.35:

Be that as it may, the uniqueness of the Hindu idea of the beginninglessness of the universe (in cyclical returns), and God’s dependence on the world (rather than the converse) renders God not as independent and existing outside of, nay prior to, the created world – which marks the idea of God in Judeo-Christian monotheistic doctrines. God is bound by the karmas of the individual creatures even after their selves have been dissolved along with the world.

This is in reference to the beginning-less nature of the Hindu creation which is periodically dissolved and reissued with the karmas of participants continuing on. Before you had the big bang you had the big contraction. And off to work we go.

Mental Muscles

There are a lot of subjects which find us out when they come aknockin’. Ethics is like that for me, for others its Ontology or Natural Theology or topics like mereology. If I wished to be portentous I could claim that the shadow of the inconscient and its occlusive force falls on us and ought to be resisted. Indeed! Natural Theology and Theodicy introduce the concepts of possibility, necessity, contingency, and causality which are worth any thinking man’s consideration. Missing a highly energised discussion that doesn’t find you in is a mistake.

To offer a silly metaphor: mental muscles are built by resistance. Back then to the Ethics mine and the shambling line of shackled Utilitarians.
cadence shuffle

Supreme Being

If you have established to your satisfaction that God exists then you have established that this Supreme Being is worthy of worship. Fie theodicy! The particular form of that worship may be suggested to you by your culture and the practice of the sages and saints that have your respect. However the move from a satisfactory demonstration of the bare existence of God to the exclusive truth of some form of religious belief e.g. Christianity, Islam, is not legitimate. I’m not sure that anyone has ever held this.