Isn't this the exact same book that William Lane Craig quotes to make the claim that Dostoevsky believed atheism could not account for morality, or something along those lines?
@havvyweponsman Surprised that WLC took a passage out of context and distorted the real complexity of the source? The famous line (If there were no God then everything is permissible) comes from one of the characters, and it is challenged by other characters, not a direct statement of Dostoevsky's beliefs. He believed in God, but he was much more conflicted that WLC would have you believe. His novel is an amazing analysis of the complexities of religious psychology, not a work of apologetics.
@SisyphusRedeemed I never quite realized exactly how much Craig's quoting made this book seem like a work of apologetics and thereby led me to dismiss it out of hand as not worth reading. What's actually surprising is that a 'professional philosopher' like Craig was citing a character from a novel in a formal debate instead of, for instance, a relevant philosopher.
@havvyweponsman There's nothing wrong with a philosopher citing literature, especially when it's as philosophical as Dostoevsky. He's usually considered to be one of the greatest existentialist authors out there. And there's nothing wrong with using him to make a Christian point, provided the broader context of the point is acknowledged.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that this book was highly overrated. Ivan was the only worthwhile character and all of maybe 50 pages out of the 1000-page book were devoted to him. The rest of the time I felt like I was reading a straight-to-book adaptation of All My Children.
No colder person exists than the one who imagines eternal joy, no suffering and no concerns for himself at the cost of 90 percent of the population experiencing never ending suffering with no promise of death as respite. Even If this were the truth,which I do not believe the ethical response would be to refuse to accept heaven. And christians with all their talk of love are no better than eva braun (Hitler's gf) choosing commitment to their imaginary tyrant because he has blessed them.
I've heard it said that those children who do survive the brutality at the hands of their torturers will have a place in heaven assured because of what they went through. I wonder why they still have to spend a lifetime in hell, and then have to die in order to be freed from it.
@321lawc Ivan considers and rejects this solution. He says that even eternal paradise does not outweigh, compensate for, or justify the suffering of children.
I don't understand how reincarnation could be an answer, since the wages of sin are wiped clean in the second life, but compounded by inheritance over multiple rebirths... and with each renewal, the price of suffering must still be paid. Would that not be an even crueler scenario?
And if paradise/damnation be eternal, then what is a finite lifespan by contrast? Your time in the moral world would be infinitely small compared to infinity... (cont)
And how is that just to judge your eternal inheritance based on an infinitely small window of decision? And just because it's infinitely small by comparison, that does not make it non-existent... so the suffering is still unexpiated.
I've heard the following chapters on Father Zossima's life were to be Dostoyevsky's answer to Ivan's Inquisitor... but I found no satisfactory answers in them, and it seems to me that Dostoyevsky didn't either.
one of the best novels ever written, i've read it three times now and it's still like new each time i read it. i also really enjoy the part about "the grand inquisitor"
@nuckable, Loved the grand inquisitor, had to write a paper about it for my Russian lit class. Jesus's response was both weak and appropriate. Though i wonder if my liking of jesus's answer is more a reflection of my cultural upbringing and less as a agreement with his answer.
thanks now sceince and maths the future could hold predicted and determined, infant death reduced, diseases erradicated - surely a powerful God worthy of our devotion.. But science can never tell me why this existence, the ontology of things, 'misunderstood' theodicy. or signs of a ceator God in the empirical record.
Again, I contend that people can be bad as evidenmced by their actions - there is no Zoroastrian eternal baatle between the 'forces of light, 'and the sources of dark.
This cut me to the quick the first time I read it. 3 or so years ago, I participated in a debate about whether the world would be better without religion and in my final speech used the bit about "building the edifice of human destiny" because it is so powerful. "No, I wouldn't agree." Indeed.
By the way, NICE reading. Well done.
Next time perhaps a reading from "Going Rogue: An American Life"? ;-)
I find that denomiations who stick to medieval dogma of unbaptised purgatory...te issue was cenral to the intellectual fire of the reformation and counter-reformation So much has been said about the subject by scholars that I have little to add but opinion. Evangelicals for intance prefer adult baptism, pointing to scripture as their source.
Is is of note thay 'Original Sin' and its attatched ecumenical sacrements for whom we have Augustine to thanks (We have Augustine to thank for that one)
Just because Ivan cannot understand why God allows children to suffer does not mean God does not have a good reason. How presumptuous of Ivan! Because God is goodness itself, then God must have a good reason to allow children to suffer. For example, the free will of the torturing parents is the overarching good in this case.
The true nature of the inflicted children that the story speaks of is why I could never take on the the tasks that my parents have which is abused child Psychology. I am not brave enough to face the sickness that bad people forced onto their young (in fact I can almost not listen to this). I wish I could but I cant :~(.
Good reading, good selection. Oddly this is how I feel in my absence of faith, also a part of the reason I also elected to be a soldier, it may be naive but I hope to prevent more suffering in this world by my actions (I am aware that I will likely create my own, though I hope that this is the lesser of two evils).
@TheLummer66 I saw a stage production of "The Idiot" once, but haven't read it, mean to some day. "Rebellion" is the passage right before "The Grand Inquisitor."
I've not read this YET, but this echos things in my own mind. However I don't see this as grounds for atheism, I see this as a demand for true rebellion..
When will mankind truly become accountable for it's own evils?
@beastxeno I agree, it's not really an argument for atheism. Ivan says that he accepts the existence of God (as did Dostoevsky). What Ivan rejects is the 'justice' of God.
@beastxeno Well, what I think is probably less interesting that what Ivan thinks. Ivan says that even if the 'justice of God' does happen later on, he still refuses to accept it. The problem is insoluble: nothing could truly justify the suffering of children, and even if 'the majesty of God' somehow changes his mind in the future, he thinks that changing his mind would be wrong. That's why he 'returns the ticket' right now.
@calvinhobbesliker2 He says roughly as follows: "The reason why God allows natural disasters is because when we (whoever that is) told God to back off he partially obliged."
As for Hell: "There are no good, moral, ethical people. God sends people to Hell because they think they are the center of the universe."
@SisyphusRedeemed: So only a evil pragmatist would choose to create a harmonious world where everyone is happy for the cost of 1 child's death or temporary suffering? Would you not kill 1 person to save 10,000? 100,000? 1 Million? Guess i am the only bastard.
@einstini15 I don't think that's the implication. Ivan is trying to get Alyosha to realize that a perfect and loving God would not do this, that true moral perfection wouldn't use a child in this way. It's not an argument for an absolute deontological constraint against harming children; it's an argument against the idea that perfect love, benevolence and power is compatible with using children in that way.
Beautiful reading Sisyphus. It was those long, sleepless nights of contemplation regarding the suffering of the innocent (and to some degree I agree with Ivan, to hell with the adults, they have eaten their apple), and the sum totality of the evil in the world, and this book, perhaps above all else, that are responsible for my atheism. Dostoyevsky was a tortured soul and never has the reality of such suffering been so painfully articulated in the pages of literature.
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Excellent read, thank you.
One note on your pronunciation of Alyosha:
your Al is correct, soft l and everything,
but the Y is not pronounced as a yee, its pronounced yo
Al-yo-sha
sovietsnowman 9 months ago
Excellent read, thank you.
One note on your pronunciation of Alyosha:
your Al is correct, soft l and everything,
but the y es not prouounced yee, its pronounced yo
Al-yo-sha
sovietsnowman 9 months ago
Isn't this the exact same book that William Lane Craig quotes to make the claim that Dostoevsky believed atheism could not account for morality, or something along those lines?
This same fucking book?
havvyweponsman 10 months ago
@havvyweponsman Surprised that WLC took a passage out of context and distorted the real complexity of the source? The famous line (If there were no God then everything is permissible) comes from one of the characters, and it is challenged by other characters, not a direct statement of Dostoevsky's beliefs. He believed in God, but he was much more conflicted that WLC would have you believe. His novel is an amazing analysis of the complexities of religious psychology, not a work of apologetics.
SisyphusRedeemed 10 months ago
@SisyphusRedeemed I never quite realized exactly how much Craig's quoting made this book seem like a work of apologetics and thereby led me to dismiss it out of hand as not worth reading. What's actually surprising is that a 'professional philosopher' like Craig was citing a character from a novel in a formal debate instead of, for instance, a relevant philosopher.
havvyweponsman 10 months ago
@havvyweponsman There's nothing wrong with a philosopher citing literature, especially when it's as philosophical as Dostoevsky. He's usually considered to be one of the greatest existentialist authors out there. And there's nothing wrong with using him to make a Christian point, provided the broader context of the point is acknowledged.
SisyphusRedeemed 10 months ago
Absolutely brilliant. I've shared this with a number of my friends. Thank you.
tommylehman 11 months ago
agreed.
bodine1975man 1 year ago
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that this book was highly overrated. Ivan was the only worthwhile character and all of maybe 50 pages out of the 1000-page book were devoted to him. The rest of the time I felt like I was reading a straight-to-book adaptation of All My Children.
erdosismyhomeboy 1 year ago
No colder person exists than the one who imagines eternal joy, no suffering and no concerns for himself at the cost of 90 percent of the population experiencing never ending suffering with no promise of death as respite. Even If this were the truth,which I do not believe the ethical response would be to refuse to accept heaven. And christians with all their talk of love are no better than eva braun (Hitler's gf) choosing commitment to their imaginary tyrant because he has blessed them.
classicchinadoll 1 year ago 2
A beautiful and powerful reading. Thank you.
qjuice14 1 year ago
I've heard it said that those children who do survive the brutality at the hands of their torturers will have a place in heaven assured because of what they went through. I wonder why they still have to spend a lifetime in hell, and then have to die in order to be freed from it.
deepashtray 1 year ago
This conflict is resolved by the existence of the soul and reincarnation.
321lawc 1 year ago
@321lawc Ivan considers and rejects this solution. He says that even eternal paradise does not outweigh, compensate for, or justify the suffering of children.
SisyphusRedeemed 1 year ago
@321lawc
I don't understand how reincarnation could be an answer, since the wages of sin are wiped clean in the second life, but compounded by inheritance over multiple rebirths... and with each renewal, the price of suffering must still be paid. Would that not be an even crueler scenario?
And if paradise/damnation be eternal, then what is a finite lifespan by contrast? Your time in the moral world would be infinitely small compared to infinity... (cont)
Sinuev1 1 year ago
@Sinuev1
And how is that just to judge your eternal inheritance based on an infinitely small window of decision? And just because it's infinitely small by comparison, that does not make it non-existent... so the suffering is still unexpiated.
I've heard the following chapters on Father Zossima's life were to be Dostoyevsky's answer to Ivan's Inquisitor... but I found no satisfactory answers in them, and it seems to me that Dostoyevsky didn't either.
Sinuev1 1 year ago
one of the best novels ever written, i've read it three times now and it's still like new each time i read it. i also really enjoy the part about "the grand inquisitor"
well read my friend =)
nuckable 1 year ago
@nuckable, Loved the grand inquisitor, had to write a paper about it for my Russian lit class. Jesus's response was both weak and appropriate. Though i wonder if my liking of jesus's answer is more a reflection of my cultural upbringing and less as a agreement with his answer.
einstini15 1 year ago
cont
thanks now sceince and maths the future could hold predicted and determined, infant death reduced, diseases erradicated - surely a powerful God worthy of our devotion.. But science can never tell me why this existence, the ontology of things, 'misunderstood' theodicy. or signs of a ceator God in the empirical record.
Again, I contend that people can be bad as evidenmced by their actions - there is no Zoroastrian eternal baatle between the 'forces of light, 'and the sources of dark.
Origen305 1 year ago
This cut me to the quick the first time I read it. 3 or so years ago, I participated in a debate about whether the world would be better without religion and in my final speech used the bit about "building the edifice of human destiny" because it is so powerful. "No, I wouldn't agree." Indeed.
By the way, NICE reading. Well done.
Next time perhaps a reading from "Going Rogue: An American Life"? ;-)
ProfMTH 1 year ago 2
I find that denomiations who stick to medieval dogma of unbaptised purgatory...te issue was cenral to the intellectual fire of the reformation and counter-reformation So much has been said about the subject by scholars that I have little to add but opinion. Evangelicals for intance prefer adult baptism, pointing to scripture as their source.
Is is of note thay 'Original Sin' and its attatched ecumenical sacrements for whom we have Augustine to thanks (We have Augustine to thank for that one)
Origen305 1 year ago
I buckle under the heavy text and meanings... Dostoyevsky = too much for me!
Paxmax 1 year ago
wow. The bit that sticks out to me is...
...No truth is worth such a price...She has no right to forgive...
Good stuff. I'd like a 'reading of' little snipit on the thing though. Just so they know (if they didn't) that this is a reading from...
I maintain, good stuff.
happysplodie 1 year ago
Just because Ivan cannot understand why God allows children to suffer does not mean God does not have a good reason. How presumptuous of Ivan! Because God is goodness itself, then God must have a good reason to allow children to suffer. For example, the free will of the torturing parents is the overarching good in this case.
Apologetics is so easy.
UnBeguiled 1 year ago
YEP
michalchik 1 year ago
Very powerful. I also had a hard time with the audio, but I'm going to go back and try again.
LJonYT 1 year ago
There is something to be said for the passion that you read this with. It is beautiful, perhaps.
xiberphim 1 year ago
The true nature of the inflicted children that the story speaks of is why I could never take on the the tasks that my parents have which is abused child Psychology. I am not brave enough to face the sickness that bad people forced onto their young (in fact I can almost not listen to this). I wish I could but I cant :~(.
Great video Sur S.Redeemed.
M1ST3RHYDE 1 year ago
Good reading, good selection. Oddly this is how I feel in my absence of faith, also a part of the reason I also elected to be a soldier, it may be naive but I hope to prevent more suffering in this world by my actions (I am aware that I will likely create my own, though I hope that this is the lesser of two evils).
Newradical78 1 year ago
Good reading, sir. The Peaver & Volokhonsky translation packs that little extra punch though.
psycropticunt 1 year ago
That's an appeal to emotion, isn't it? It usually is when someone says "what about the children?"
theantithesis1 1 year ago
One of the greatest books written. Nearly as good as Heart of Darkness... nearly...
insidetrip101 1 year ago
My favorite book of all time and my favorite author. Great video.
WayOfTheBastard 1 year ago
Powerful. Even the sky is crying as I'm playing this.
It just started raining like there's no tomorrow (and I'm not in any tropical area).
Ypthor 1 year ago
Your video stops at 2:37. I can't stream it to a later time and resume playing, I can only rewind it until it stops at 2:37.
ChristopherSEAY123 1 year ago
@ChristopherSEAY123 I had that same problem. I just reloaded and it worked fine. Everyone else seems to be able to get the whole thing. How odd.
SisyphusRedeemed 1 year ago
@SisyphusRedeemed I reloaded it twice. I'm watching this again now, after a few hours and it's working.
You're a great reader.
ChristopherSEAY123 1 year ago
Great reading.
ShallowBeThyGames 1 year ago
I prefer the "the Idiot" personally, but "the grand inquisitor" is pure art, as a chapter it makes the rest of the novel pale by comparison.
TheLummer66 1 year ago
@TheLummer66 I saw a stage production of "The Idiot" once, but haven't read it, mean to some day. "Rebellion" is the passage right before "The Grand Inquisitor."
SisyphusRedeemed 1 year ago
I've not read this YET, but this echos things in my own mind. However I don't see this as grounds for atheism, I see this as a demand for true rebellion..
When will mankind truly become accountable for it's own evils?
beastxeno 1 year ago
@beastxeno I agree, it's not really an argument for atheism. Ivan says that he accepts the existence of God (as did Dostoevsky). What Ivan rejects is the 'justice' of God.
SisyphusRedeemed 1 year ago
@SisyphusRedeemed
Do you suppose the "justice of God" is not evident because god hasn't happened yet?
beastxeno 1 year ago
@beastxeno Well, what I think is probably less interesting that what Ivan thinks. Ivan says that even if the 'justice of God' does happen later on, he still refuses to accept it. The problem is insoluble: nothing could truly justify the suffering of children, and even if 'the majesty of God' somehow changes his mind in the future, he thinks that changing his mind would be wrong. That's why he 'returns the ticket' right now.
SisyphusRedeemed 1 year ago
@SisyphusRedeemed
I understood that immediately, and I think Ivan is justified in his stance on it.
But having been one of those children, I think I'm a bit biased.
Ironically I returned my ticket some years ago.
Still I want to thank you, I'm not sure I would've come across this book on my own. I now fully intend to read it.
beastxeno 1 year ago
@SisyphusRedeemed If you would like to have a good vomit then see how apologist Lee Strobel explains why God lets natural disasters happen.
Search: Why God Allows Pain and Suffering - Lee Strobel
Or if you really want to be disgusted see his reasons for a loving God sending people to hell.
Search: How Can A Loving God Send People To Hell? - Lee Strobel
And also search: Won't Good, Moral, Ethical People Go to Heaven?
Apologetics is morally bankrupt.
GuyMontag92 1 year ago 2
@GuyMontag92 Could you summarize his arguments so I won't have to vomit?
calvinhobbesliker2 1 year ago
@calvinhobbesliker2 He says roughly as follows: "The reason why God allows natural disasters is because when we (whoever that is) told God to back off he partially obliged."
As for Hell: "There are no good, moral, ethical people. God sends people to Hell because they think they are the center of the universe."
GuyMontag92 1 year ago
@SisyphusRedeemed
"even if the 'justice of God' does happen later on, he still refuses to accept it."
Agreed. The "justice" metered out later doens't change the fact that the children suffered.
SiriusMined 1 year ago
@SisyphusRedeemed: So only a evil pragmatist would choose to create a harmonious world where everyone is happy for the cost of 1 child's death or temporary suffering? Would you not kill 1 person to save 10,000? 100,000? 1 Million? Guess i am the only bastard.
einstini15 1 year ago
@einstini15 I don't think that's the implication. Ivan is trying to get Alyosha to realize that a perfect and loving God would not do this, that true moral perfection wouldn't use a child in this way. It's not an argument for an absolute deontological constraint against harming children; it's an argument against the idea that perfect love, benevolence and power is compatible with using children in that way.
SisyphusRedeemed 1 year ago
Wow you are a great reader. I'm going to have to check this one out real soon, thanks.
refuckulate420 1 year ago
@refuckulate420 Thanks. I stumbled at a few places. There are audiobook versions read by professional actors who do a much better job than I.
SisyphusRedeemed 1 year ago
Beautiful reading Sisyphus. It was those long, sleepless nights of contemplation regarding the suffering of the innocent (and to some degree I agree with Ivan, to hell with the adults, they have eaten their apple), and the sum totality of the evil in the world, and this book, perhaps above all else, that are responsible for my atheism. Dostoyevsky was a tortured soul and never has the reality of such suffering been so painfully articulated in the pages of literature.
LudditeRomantic 1 year ago