An Empire of Reason - The Problem of Evil

American Political History · Jul 4, 2023 · 28m

In the year 524, a condemned man named Boethius sat in a cell awaiting a brutal execution and wrote down the question that has haunted the West ever since: if there is a God, whence comes evil? It is the hardest objection ever put to the faith — and this episode, true to its promise, states it at full and terrible strength before it answers a word, from the cold logic of Epicurus to the scream of Ivan Karamazov, who returns God his ticket over the tears of a single tortured child.

Then come the great answers, and they are not waved-away comforts: evil as the absence of good, from Augustine…