By Samuel Gugliotta
For Variety

TWO traditional problems in the philosophy of religion are (1) Doest God exist?; and (2) If He does exist, how does one account for the prevalence of evil in the world?
These problems exist whenever philosophers want to use reason or scientific method as the final arbiter of knowledge claims. But the walls of religion, or more particularly, Theism, simply won’t budge in the face of rational attacks. Hence the philosopher is astonished that so many in our postmodern world still adhere to what seems to them an absurd mythology; while the practitioners of religions are convinced that the deepest and most important things transcend our finite minds. One often quotes Bacon’s famous maxim: “a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.”
Aside from the many books we see today from famous scientists claiming that God is an illusion, there have been other very influential thinkers who have been prolific and eloquent in their defense of atheism. I need to mention only Sigmund Freud, David Hume, or Arthur Schopenhuer. Freud, for example, in his famous paper, (1907) “Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices,” concluded that “one may venture to regard obsessional neurosis as individual religiosity and religion as a universal obsessional neurosis.” In 1927, he wrote, “The Future of an Illusion,” ending with the phrase, “No, our science is not illusion. But an illusion it would be to suppose what science cannot give us we can get elsewhere.”
In a book of more recent vintage, “The Examined Life,” by Robert Nozick, the problem of evil is discussed with some sympathy and creativity in his chapter, “Theological Explanations.” The problems arise when it is assumed that traditionally God exhibits the attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, and perfect goodness, and is a person worthy of worship.
He makes short rift of traditional arguments. For example, some have asked the question, Can God make a stone He cannot lift? This leads to a contradiction, since being all-powerful He can make he stone. But if he cannot lift it, He is not all-powerful.
He also notes that others have claimed that evil is not a positive reality but only the privation of goodness. But this way out is incoherent. Imagine the number line, with the positive numbers being goodness. Evil cannot be the zero point, but some negative quantity. Let’s face it, we all know evil exists. There are not only natural disasters, but atrocities caused by humans which totally boggle the mind. To mention only one, we are members of a race which created the Holocaust.
Nozick also mentions the famous view of Leibniz, that this is the “best of all possible worlds.” By a possible world, Leibniz meant one that involves no logical contradictions. So the one God made was the best possible, an organic unity including free will. Evil in that case are events that cannot be avoided, and are evil only relative to our finite understanding.
Yet that will not do. An all-good and all-powerful God shounld be able to do better than that. Nozick does provide some hope for aspects of Jewish mysticism’s (the Kabbalists) attempt to account for evil in the world. Aspects of this picture provide for a kind of parallelism between what goes on our world and the divine realm. In particular there may be a conflict between justice and mercy that is causing all the trouble. Compassion, perhaps, is what is needed to right the balance.
When we leave the realm of the rational thinkers and have recourse to the great spiritual teachers of our race, we enter a different realm of discourse, with different rules. Here the mystics must use words to speak of what transcends linear thought. Here are of few words from on the greatest Christian mystics, Thomas Merton, in his book, “No Man Is an Island.” He is speaking of “Salvation”: “This matter of ‘salvation’ is, when seen intuitively, a very simple thing. But when we analyze it, it turns to a tangle of paradoxes. We become ourselves by dying to ourselves. We gain only what we give up, and if we give up everything, we gain everything. We cannot find ourselves within ourselves, but only in others, yet at the same time before we can go out to others we must first find ourselves. We must forget ourselves in order to become truly conscious of who we are. The best way to love ourselves is to love others.... But if we love ourselves in the wrong way, we become incapable of loving anybody else.... As for this ‘finding’ of God, we cannot even look for Him unless we have already found Him, and we cannot find Him unless he has already found us. We cannot begin to seek Him without the special gift of Grace, yet if we wait for Grace to move us, before beginning to seek Him, we will probably never find him.”
Such paradox requires supernatural answers. Are the answers there? Has the conflict between knowledge of religion ever ended? We end with the beginning. The questions we must seek answers to.
Puzzles
1. We are looking for three positive integers such that the square of the first plus the cube of the second is equal to the fourth power of the third. If the third integer is 98 (98^4 = 92236816), what are the other two?
2. In the Millennium Run, the two finalists were Al and George. They now had to make a run, each starting from opposite ends of a road. During this run, they met twice, once 800 meters from one end, and again 400 meters from the other end. How long is the road?
3. Can you find three integers such that the sum of the reciprocals of the squares of the first two is equal to the reciprocal of the square of the third?
Answers to Last
Week’s Puzzles
1. Five dollars.
2. One was honest and all the rest crooked.
3. There were twelve senators, seven Democrats and Five Republicans.