Saturday, February 28, 2015

The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For Truth and The Meaning of Human Life: The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For T...

The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For Truth and The Meaning of Human Life: The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For T...: The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For Truth and The Meaning of Human Life: LEE STROBEL The Case for a Creator Full documenta...

Friday, February 27, 2015

The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For Truth and The Meaning of Human Life: LEE STROBEL The Case for a Creator Full documenta...

The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For Truth and The Meaning of Human Life: LEE STROBEL The Case for a Creator Full documenta...

LEE STROBEL The Case for a Creator Full documentary


Why Philosophy (2)(2) Philosophy is the Love of Wisdom! www.dpl21.com

Why Philosophy?
A quite popular book now, written by V. E. Frankl, bears the title: Man’s Search for Meaning. In this book the author relates his life in Nazi concentration camps and summarizes his observations of men and women in those most brutal and hellish camps ever designed by man for man’s victims. The basic message and conclusion of Frankl’s life is that the search for meaning, the need to have some meaning, is the most central and absolutely first and basic need in every human being. Perhaps the best description of man is > a searcher for meaning <. Give some meaning to human life and men will gladly give their lives for it, but take away this assurance of meaning of man’s existence and man must commit suicide, go insane, degenerate slowly and die anyway. This is true for every human life. Anything we do or suffer is done or suffered because it is somehow meaningful or seems to contain meaning for us. Without this belief in meaning of our lives there is no real human existence. This quest for meaning can be expressed in many ways but all of them can be reduced to the search for worth, importance, value of life.

“Is life worth living? What is the end of it all?” Without meaning man cannot survive and conversely, he will endure almost anything including torture, sufferings, humiliation and death as long as he sees some meaning in it.

“To lose one’s life is a little thing and I shall have the courage to do so if it is necessary, but to see the meaning of this life dissipated, to see our reason for existing disappear, that is what is unbearable. One cannot live without meaning.”

Albert Camus

The absolute demand for meaning in life is so basic and strong that those who experience an existential vacuum, that is blindness to meaning of life, can think of only one thing:  suicide. The awareness that life should be without meaning cannot be accepted seriously.

 

Leo Tolstoy when he was fifty and at the top of his literary fame, experienced a deep anguish that life actually may have no meaning at all. This deep anxiety ruined completely his desire for living.

“The force which drew me away from life was stronger, fuller and more general than wishing. It was a force like the former striving for life, only in an inverse sense. I tended with all my strength away from life. The thought of suicide came as naturally to me as had come before the ideas of improving life. …All that happened to me when I was on every side surrounded by what is envisioned to be complete happiness.
…I could not ascribe any sensible meaning to a single act, or to my whole life.
… The terror of the darkness was too great, and I wanted as quickly as possible to free Leo Tolstoy, myself from it by means of a noose or a bullet…”

My Confessions.

Tolstoy is only example. Each human being, because he or she is human, has this imperative hunger for meaning in the very center of his consciousness.

[1]Human existence, yours and mine and everybody else’s, is problematic. For the human mind literally everything is a problem:  everything is a question mark. All questions human beings ever asked from the very appearance of the thinking man in the universe, are related to the question of the meaning of existence. Without meaning we cannot live and anything that can give meaning to my existence, to human existence is extremely worthwhile and extremely important. Since my experience of existence is a mystery, a problem, and since I am a human being, I must think and search for meaning. There is no escape from this under the penalty of not being authentically human. If I do not decipher meaning for my existence I perish, and after my mental suicide I shall fall beneath the level of human life. But this search for meaning is exactly philosophy. Everyone therefore is a philosopher simply because he is human. Philosophy is simply:  man thinking. This philosophizing is a mode of living.

[2] Philosophy is a thing that must be done. It is as necessary as life itself. By the very fact that I am “thrown into” existence and live this existence as a human being I must philosophize, since, as Socrates remarked “An unexamined life is not worth living.” Each one of us wants necessarily to make life as meaningful as possible. This was true, is true and will be true about every human being and mankind as a whole. Each generation and each individual must go through this quest for meaning by himself or his life will appear a wasted, absurd tragedy leading nowhere. William James remarked very much to the point when he said, “Probably to almost everyone here, every one of us, the most adverse life would seem well worth living, if we only could be certain that our bravery and patience with it were germinating and eventuating and bearing fruit somewhere… (William James: Is Life Worth Living?).”

Each one of us has one existence only. This life which is given to me I must live myself. I myself must also make my life meaningful. The quest for my personal meaning is therefore a lonely search, which must be done by me, and only by me, alone. Since life without meaning I cannot bear – I must fill it with my personal meaning. I must live my life, not somebody else’s, and therefore the meaning of my life is unique to me, as I am a unique person. Philosophy is a personal attitude towards life as a whole, and the universe (all that exists) as I see it, and live it. It is a constant growth in developing my vision of me, the world in which I exist, and the meaning, which I try to realize and accomplish. This reflective-living-thinking is a heroic attempt to gain the vision of the whole experience of my adventure of existence as a human being. To live, we must think or perish, and therefore everyone is a philosopher by the very fact that he lives.

“Philosophy is first of all, philosophizing, and philosophizing is undoubtedly a way of living – as is running, falling in love, playing golf, growing indignant in politics and being a lady in society.”[3]

(Ortega y Gasset, What is Philosophy?)

I said that everyone is a philosopher simply because he lives as a human being. As Ortega remarks, philosophizing is a way of living. Everything we do in our lives has some conscious or subconscious motive, a reason why we do it, a reason why we believe something. A reason why we feel this way, a reason why we are what we are. This is our philosophy. There is no life without it. Not a human life at any rate. Our life and our thinking, feeling and believing, our ways of behaving do not grow out of nothing. We are born into a definite – fated – environment. The childhood period is the time when we are molded almost entirely by the immediate world, and people closest to us. Those influences, and their name is legion, are all powerful. They make us what we are in the most true meaning of the word. As children, we imitate, and we believe, what the people in our immediate environment tell us. We do not have enough power of though and reflection to make the choice yet. Without criticism we accept the  ways of living and acting in the small and narrow little world of our childhood. Our psyche, our behavior, our reactions, our beliefs are all taken in good faith from this small world of our birth and early upbringing. It must be this way. There is no other possibility open to us at this stage of our life.

But gradually we grow up: little by little. Our horizon of experience widens. We see more of the world, we meet different and new people. We learn that people live and think in very many different ways, and that our own way is not the only one possible. We start to compare, criticize, evaluate and very often we have to go through disillusionment, pains and doubts.

We realize that truth is not something that is ready made, waiting for us.

 

We realize that people differ profoundly
in ways of living
in ways of understanding the meaning of life
in their beliefs about themselves, the world, meaning of their lives.

 

It seems that there is hardly one truth to which everybody could agree.  Examples are many:

 

1.         Knowledge – Human knowledge is open to infinite progress.
1.         Human knowledge is an illusion. A person really cannot have any certain knowledge at all.
2.         Man – Man is the crown of all reality. He is destined to eternal bliss.
2.         Man is an accidental byproduct of the blind forces of matter.
3.         Meaning – All life is meaningful.
 
3.         The appearance of humans is ultimately meaningless.  Life is absurd.
4.         God – There is an Infinite Divine Creator.
4.         There is no God.
5.         Immortality – Death is only a transition to a fuller and better existence.
5.         Death is the ultimate end of human existence, the inevitable absurd ending of an absurd life. There is no afterlife.

 

Views, beliefs, visions of reality change in history and along individual lifetimes… It seems that truly everything is flowing, as Heraclitus taught.

Different traditions, customs, powers and institutions claim our allegiance and try to win us for their own causes. Our childhood’s naïve safety-feeling vanishes. We are awakening to reality , to ourselves. We cannot live someone else’s lives or take someone else’s beliefs and values uncritically. But we also realize that amid this confusion many people do not even truly try to examine their lives. They live sometimes their lives through without truly evaluating, examining themselves. They never grow up to authentic, reflective maturity. They lack the courage to think for themselves. We are tempted to join them. It is risky and frightful and painful to decide to be fully oneself,  to truly start searching for one’s own personal meaning, one’s own personal philosophy. Why is this so? Because every growth is painful. The basic conditions here are:

(a) Determination for disciplined reflection


(b) Passion for
truth 
(c)    Courage; the capacity to face the unknown and to risk yourself, your so-called “security” of the “now”.
There is no way out. The very fact of our being alive in the world forces us to find our place in it, to decide what we shall believe, and what we will do with our lives. We said before that everyone is a philosopher simply because he is human and he lives. Each one of us however, is exposed to the temptation of an un-authentic  living.
This un-authentic life happens whenever we do not decide at some point of our life to start truly the search, the personal search for our own meaning for own philosophy of life. It is extremely easy to fall into the trap of un-authentic existence. It happens  automatically, unconsciously to us. Although we know that an unexamined life is not worth living, we may for irrational motives evade the facing of the basic problems of our existence. False concepts of security, emotional ties to unexamined values, and beliefs, ingrained prejudices, sloth of mind, lack of courage, to be fully oneself – all those factors are tremendous obstacles in our development towards our own philosophical life. Thus many people drift along as slaves of customs, fads and prejudices of their times, and are carried by time to their graves. The “common man” or the “faceless man” sells his time, his labor, his soul to powers and institutions and ideologies or mythologies which he really does not know. Nor does he care to know. This selling of himself provides him with false feelings of security, with false meaning of life. It is false because it has never been examined in depth. It has never been faced in an honest effort towards a true vision of the totality of the human experience of existence. Ultimately, it is something alien, imposed from outside.
An unexamined life is not worth living because it is a living in quasi-authenticity. Such a life ultimately leads to disillusionment, meaninglessness and tragic frustration. It cannot lead anywhere else.
To exist in the world as a human being means constant risking of oneself, constant deciding what we are, what we believe, what we do. There’s no escape since even if we evade making a decision we make a decision. We decide not to decide and that is a decision. Everyone is responsible at least to himself for his existence.
Since philosophy is essentially thinking and searching for the meaning of our lives, it must be done by everyone for himself, for the way we think determines the way we act and live and die.
To philosophize
is to explore life.
It means breaking free
to ask questions.
It means resisting easy answers.
To philosophize
is to seek in oneself
the courage to ask
painful questions.
J. Christian
 
“The end of philosophy is not that we may know what men have thought, but what the TRUTH of things is.”

Thomas Aquinas
Philosophy is the love of wisdom.
Its object is search for truth.
Wisdom is the art of happiness
and
TRUTH is the way to it.








[1]                      
[2]                      
[3]                      

The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For Truth and The Meaning of Human Life: Why Philosophy? (1) (2) Philosophy is the Love of ...

The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For Truth and The Meaning of Human Life: Why Philosophy? (1) (2) Philosophy is the Love of ...:    WHY   PHILOSOPHY? The Human Situation – The necessity of meaning in life – the problematic nature of human existence – a thing th...

Why Philosophy? (1) (2) Philosophy is the Love of Wisdom .www.dpl21.com


   WHY  PHILOSOPHY?

The Human Situation – The necessity of meaning in life – the problematic nature of human existence – a thing that must be done by everyone – to have a human life we must philosophize. To live is to find meaning in this world and to decide what we shall be, what we shall believe, what we shall do with the life given us.

 

“To sensitive spirits of all ages life is filled with cruel contradictions and bitter ironies. Human experience is capricious and our finite minds are not able to see enough of life at one time for us to know for sure what is going on. We see only fragments of life and never the whole …  Just under the surface of the active human enterprise implicit in all we think and do there lies the eternal question: What is the meaning of existence?”

J. S. Christian

Our life is a perennial surprise. The very fact that you and I exist at all is a continual surprise. But there is more to it. This life we are given, or are thrown into, is full of cruel contradictions and it does not lack the element of tragedy. Only a complete fool can live or rather vegetate and not see that we are appearing on the scene together with a host of other beings of all sorts: the universe, completely unprepared. We are not told beforehand that we are going to live. Nobody asks us whether we want it or not. Thus we are ‘thrown into existence’ willy nilly to be always puzzled by this “thrownness “and finally merge into the mystery of death. Mystery is our origin, mystery is our life and mystery is our death.

From the Unknown we emerge, in an unknown we exist, and we go into an unknown. We are given few moments of surprised existing only to disappear into another sea of the mysterious past… Very soon we realize that we are imprisoned in many ways. We are ‘boxed in’ for few moments of time which is given to us – our lifespan. It is short and there is no escape from this prison of time. We are also imprisoned in space, because we are body – whatever this means – and every body is imprisoned in space. This spells our limitations:  very little time in little space. We cannot do anything about it. We are doomed to be carried towards an end and we do not even know when this end will come. As Heidegger would say, we are “beings unto death.” Our experiences are so short and limited that it seems to be ridiculous to try to know, what is going on really. Then there are the contradictions we face:  our absolute desire for “happiness” and the cruel disappointments, the frustrations. We realize that the brief moments of satisfaction leave us only thirstier, more dissatisfied. All our dearest strivings are often smashed against the inexorable wall of suffering, misunderstandings, cruelty of life and its transitoriness. Everything moves fast in-between our fingers: we cannot catch any moment of our existence. It will pass. So will we. The desire for more experience is denied. I have only this: my few moments of my existence and no more. I live now at this time, in this country, in this spot of the world. All this is given to me only once. I do not have much to say here. This is the element of fate in my existence.

My awareness is limited, my mind is limited, my knowledge is painfully small, and my whole existence seems to be a brief awakening to mystery without enough time or possibility to get a closer look…

This is the riddle of my life. The basic fact of my thrownness and brief co-existence with the world. The world will not let me rest for a while. I am someone who sees and loves, hates and desires this world. I move within it, I suffer it, I fight it… My life is given to me. It is finding myself in the world for a little surprised awareness. I am carried by this mysterious passing, which we call time, towards the unknown…

This wonderful surprise of my bare and puzzling existence. This is my life. I am in it, I am it. I am my life. This is my human situation. It is exciting and mysterious, it is painful and sweet, it is comical and also tragic. It is wonderful, that is full of wonder! For yours and mine basic experience is wonder and surprise! Everything is a problem for a human being.

Being what we are, we want to know. All men by nature desire to know, said Aristotle many centuries ago. To be human means to ask. A stone does not ask questions. It exists without knowing that it exists. In a way of speaking it exists only for me, but not for itself.

It is radically different with humans. Enclosed in everything we do, suffer or experience in any way whatever – at the very roots of each moment of my existence – consciously or subconsciously there is the eternal question of all humankind :  What is the meaning of existence?

The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For Truth and The Meaning of Human Life: Finality and Intelligence. Is the Universe Designe...

The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For Truth and The Meaning of Human Life: Finality and Intelligence. Is the Universe Designe...: F i n a l i t y  a n d  I n t e l l i g e n c e.  Is the Universe Designed?               By Leszek Figurski The end of philosop...

Love Your Enemies

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The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For Truth and The Meaning of Human Life: The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For T...

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Thursday, February 26, 2015

The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For Truth and The Meaning of Human Life: The Existence of Good God Part (1) (3) L.Figurski...

The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For Truth and The Meaning of Human Life: The Existence of Good God Part (1) (3) L.Figurski...:                   There is no question that the most   ancient   and the greatest obstacle   to belief in God is the existence of evi...

The Existence of Good God Part (1) (3) L.Figurski


       

         
There is no question that the most  ancient  and the greatest obstacle  to belief in God is the existence of evil. When it is said  “the problem of evil” it sounds  abstract, but suffering and evil  is as real as the existence of the universe.  Evil seems to be omnipresent and far more powerful  than the good. Suffering and hardships,  man’s inhumanity to other heartbreaks  and  unjust social structures, hunger  and widespread poverty, and other  acts against humanity lead people to the conclusion that God does not exist. One must simply be an atheist.  Where is God? Why God does not care? If God exists then  why He  does not help? The history of this world  is an  inconceivable story, of suffering and death    indicating  the absence of God.  The question must be  analyzed on the existential and logical level , but  one must remember always  the emotional , personal and concrete experience of evil  in individual lives.
 
            Rabbi Harold Kushner in his  book:  “ When Bad Things Happen to Good People”    gives a  vivid illustration of possible reaction to evil when it is experienced on personal level. Although it is impossible to agree with his conclusion , one must acknowledge the fact that  abstract analysis of evil, it’s existence  and  concrete personal experience  are two different ways of approaching the question. When unexpected tragedy strikes in personal life  humans  simply lose their balance and accuse God of  extreme cruelty and unnecessary evil which seems to be  absolutely incomprehensible. This is how people become atheists usually  for personal emotional reasons.
                Very often   the problem seems to be beyond solution  because of   false notions  such as : the concept of being , the notion of  God , the nature of man.The plan of God relative to man and the  freedom  of the human being facing God, the  universe and God’s relationship to man. For the atheist the problem of evil  does not exist. The atheist  rejects  any notion of God  and also any  human privileged position within  the context  of the evolution of the universe. The atheist simply  has no problem here . The universe is somehow self-existing, something happens in it, passes away  and that is all.  An atheist  does not expect anything. Any kind of existence beyond  the space-time is rejected. Man is  one of the  billions of entities  of the universe. There is nothing extraordinary about   existence.  The human being  is  thrown into existence. He does not know why he/she exists,  and what for does he exist. Life seems full of misery: aging , sickness, suffering and death. Life is finally  blown  out like  a  candle.   One could  say that man    pops up into existence , exists for a  short time  and disappears. According to the atheist  this is how the things are. Do not ask why, what for, do not  complain or  curse  life and misery because there is no point of asking such questions and   there is nobody listening. The universe is  neutral to what happens, how it happens and why it happens. The immense spaces of the cosmos are empty and indifferent to man.
            This attitude  is a dogmatic and unproved  assumption  of  those  who do not bother  to justify it in any way and  accept the views   of atheism  even if it violates  and  neglects  the   most fundamental principles of logic and experience.
           
The problem of the existence of evil  is only  a serious problem for a believer in God. Not only of any god  like  the pantheistic god,   or the deistic god  or even  a god who  is  on the same level  as the evil god  like  the Persian  notions of Ahriman and Ormuzd. The  God of Judeo Christian theism  is radically different  from any other. This is why the  theist faces the obvious  seemingly  unsolvable  situation, as below: 

1. God exists .
2. God is all good  and  omnipotent.
 3. But evil  both natural and man-made  exists too.
Conclusion: (a)  God  cannot exist.
(b) Either He cannot  abolish evil, then He is not omnipotent, or  
(c) He does not  want to abolish evil then He is evil too.
Our knowledge of God begins with the  surprise  that something exists. It is the Leibnizian     question  : why is there anything at all rather than nothing. The existence  of  any being must be  somehow intelligible to the human mind.  From analysis of a finite being  the mind moves to the idea of contingency  and causality. There must be  one being which is self-existing  that is  existence is  it’s very essence . This way the mind arrives at the existence of  the Prime Mover , the First Cause, and Designer of  the Universe. This is  the philosophical notion of God. The problem of God’s existence  must be separated  from the problem of  the existence of  evil in the world.  Those  are two separate  questions. Quite often  the distinction is not acknowledged . People say   “…    if evil exists God does not exist…” The idea is the following: An all good and Omnipotent God  cannot allow any evil whatsoever to exist. This conclusion  does not follow at all. God is Omnipotent, immaterial absolutely transcendent and perfect. In Himself God is completely infinitely happy  and therefore He did not create the universe, for any other reason,   but only  to share  in some form his goodness with His creatures. Being good  is  always the very root of any perfection and value of any  kind. Nothingness does not exist therefore  cannot be known or created in any way. Even the minimum degree of any perfection or value must be   good and the product of good. Therefore  God being  infinite  is infinitely good  and His  creation  must be good. This is why St. Augustine expressed the question very simply:  “…If God does not exist why so  much good, and if  God exists  why so much evil?...”  God’s perfection and His  Omnipotence enable God to create all finite beings “… out of nothing…” This expression however must be properly understood. It  means  that  nothing existed,  but God the creator alone. The power of His creative word was enough  to let existence be given  to what was not existing.    God is completely happy in Himself and in absolute independence and freedom . It follows that  God did not have to create a universe. He did not need  to call non existent entities into being . Ultimately there is only one reason why  God called the  universe into  existence: to share  in some way His happiness with His creatures. The personal God   let persons be. God being good cannot  intent directly evil  in any form.
3This brings the analysis  to the  important  question :  what is evil?
Thomas Aquinas  defined evil  as lack of perfection which ought to belong to some being. For example   a stone has no vision because the stone has no power to see   and  therefore  it  is not evil but absence of vision in a human  is evil because normally vision belongs to the  human nature. Being is first in existence and evil is parasitic  on a being which is in itself good, but  limited  and deprived of some  perfection. It follows that  God  by creating  finite beings  did not intend evil, however by creating humans, He   indirectly allowed the possibility of abuse of  freedom given to man.  Freedom of choice  is the expression of the nature of man  created as a person       capable of  own choices.
 Without free choice  humans  simply would not be  human beings. They would be  manipulated things only. As such  there would not exist any moral value or responsibility  of any kind . Freedom of choice gives man independence and self-determination. Man can  reject  God’s offer and ignore   God’s  directions.  This is the essence of sin and spiritual decay. It is a positive  rebellion and rejection  of  God. In the first Chapter of Genesis there is the story of  the  rebellion against God. Sin and evil became  part of  man’s existence destroying his relationship to God, to other people  and also making man a slave of sin. Evil seems to be more attractive , more effective  and far better in practice  than  the directions given by God. Evil becomes  all pervasive and  omnipresent. This is visible  in all aspects of human existence , all social systems , even  within the closest human relationships in families. As  mentioned above evil  is parasitic on the good. It  destroys  man himself and       brings death, moral corruption.
  Moral evil  can be compared to leprosy. It attacks  the spiritual life of man and  deprives the person of the ability to recognize the difference between moral evil and moral good. Man recognizes clearly the difference between moral evil and moral good  but  with time  and repeated  silencing his conscience he loses the ability  to  feel the difference of moral activities and  he continues to live quite often in  complete blindness  to the obvious evil in which and with which he habitually lives day by day. Moral values simply  become unimportant and considered nonexistent. What remains is  self-centeredness , self-interest and  the competition  by all means  in the fight for survival and material gain.
Once this happens  man is practically enslaved by  the power of evil and   becomes  accustomed to it. Evil becomes normal way of living.  It is now a habitual way of  thinking and decision making and creating temporal idols in human life. Man loses  the ability  and  desire for change  because change requires an  awakening to  evil governing one’s life. It requires  strong and deliberate decision   to begin  a new life in freedom and according to the plan of God.  But that is exactly  what man does not want  because he does not want to surrender to  God’s will. Freedom of choice  is  like double edged sword. It can cut both ways. However it is the greatest gift  given to human’s by the Creator. Man is an image of God.
 God  cannot  create evil in any way . God is goodness itself . By  giving  man freedom of choice  God  created  the possibility  of manmade evil . This is  why human beings are afraid of their own great calling: to be eternal participants of divine life as chosen children of God who is Omnipotent Love.
Summary of  the above points:  1.God did not create evil but only good. 2.Man as a creature of an all good God was created also good  because  he is called the image of God. 3. Human freedom of choice  is necessary condition  of  being a person. 4.Freedom  of choice  involves the possibility of choosing evil. This is the very condition of true freedom.  5. Man   rebelled against the will of God,  chose disobedience,  and  became  infected with  evil,  hostile to God,  and to other humans  losing  the clarity of vision of his own nature and destiny . 6.     Evil and sin  multiplied and became man’s  habitual way of living. The image of  God became disfigured,  tarnished and   poisoned, infected towards sickness unto death.(S. Kierkegaard)  7. Only God can  liberate  man  from  the deadly slavery of sin.  8. God is the God of freedom and liberty and He respects  the freedom of man,  even   if  man   turns against Him  and can opt for eternal loneliness without God.   9.      God  desires  the salvation of all men  from enslavement to evil.
The real question   is   the co-existence  of evil and God . Usually the   problem  is      formulated as follows:
1.If  God exists  evil cannot  exist.
2. Evil does exist.
3. Therefore  God does not exist.
   Existence of God  is  evidently  proved  by  the  nature of the universe  and  the  demand  of the First Cause ,  the  Intelligent Designer  of  the universe and the First Mover of the dynamism observable  in the world. Those proofs are metaphysically certain on their own , independently on other  problems. Therefore  the problem of God’s existence  is  separate from the fact of the existence of evil. The real question is whether  God  and evil can co-exist. The  answer to this problem of co-existence  of God and evil  is in the affirmative, yes God exists and evil exists too. Why is this  so?
    God being all good  cannot  directly create   evil  but since He wanted to have free and responsible persons  He opened  the possibility of choosing evil. This explains why evil and God co-exist. So  the first part  of the syllogism : if evil exists God does  not exist is  false.
    It can be  asked  why  did God create  the universe and human beings at all. The    answer seems clear:  God did not have to create the universe at all  because being God, He is perfectly happy and did not have any need to create. The motive for creation can  only be love.   God wanted to share  His own happiness with  conscious , responsible free persons  capable of   loving answer to his  love  and  participating in  some way  in His divine nature   even for eternity .  Man’s  personality and his free choices  are the necessary conditions for fulfilling  the vocation  to be a  living image of God. Man is  a responsible  creator of his  destiny because it depends  on the way he responds to God.  This    is the burden of responsibility for one’s own free decisions. Responsibility is understood as  real burden and everyone must try to grow up towards being responsible for his own  decisions and actions. By  decision and action  humans shape their own character . Sadly enough    history of humanity  shows  the depth of man’s depravity.  One would not exaggerate by saying that it is written in blood and horror.  The depth of human depravity  makes man far worse  than other animals. The saying of Thomas Hobbes ”homo homini lupus” – man is the wolf to the other man remains painfully true.              

God’s plan cannot be frustrated  by human evil .  God did not give up on humanity and  revealed His will and plan  for humans.
            Man in his rebellion against God is  enslaved in his own evil and is  inclined to  worship  human made idols which temporarily may fascinate him  only to lead to final frustration.
           

The concept that this life here and now  is destined for  human happiness is a misunderstanding. The problem of  coexistence of God and evil  has it’s roots in 

the fundamental  vision of life, the nature of the universe  and  the meaning and destiny of human life. The adequate solution of the problem is given in the context of Christianity in a very special way. Human life can be understood adequately within the Christian dogma.  The basic errors and distortions enter  when  life  is  conceived as   the time from  conception to the moment of physical death. In such view that is all man is given. It  is all of his existence . Eternity existed before man’s birth,  he lives for a short time  without   any direction or meaning of his life and he dies forever. This creates  the anxiety  and the  fear  which dominates his life. Man is not certain practically of anything at all.  He does not know  what the others will do to him  and  subconsciously  as Thomas Hobbes said, …man considers everyone else as potential enemy against whom he must arm himself   and he is not even certain how much time is left for him before the inevitable death. Man does not put his hope in God  but in  whatever   he can accumulate  of material values , popularity , power over others  and climbing the social ladder . In everything  he does  he wants to be first and he would eliminate anyone in the fierce  fight for survival. Objective moral values in  such  existence  are obstacles to  his success. They would  limit  his  self-adoration and pride. Consequently  man creates his own  values which make it  easier for him to dominate others. The language  of such people  becomes completely devoid of any  moral good or evil . Instead  words are used completely morally neutral such as like  productive, effective  progressive, scientific  and so forth. Man greedily acquires many things not because he really needs them but to impress others with his  possessions   and show that  his material goods  are far better  and more valuable than those of others. For example he would buy an expensive new car not because he needs one, but to feed his vanity. Life becomes  a constant competitive effort to outshine others. It is deprived of honest , true human relationships and  it becomes selfish , short and finally ending in death.

This is the evil created by man himself in his falsely understood  nature of life which  becomes one dimensional , horizontal and ultimately frustrating . The evil  described above  is not only situated in the very soul and spirit of man , but according to the Bible, nature itself, that is the world in which man lives is also affected by the fall and hostility. According to the words of St. Paul: It is yearning for liberation. The universe follows it’s own ways of development from the beginning  and  becomes also a dangerous place  to live in : diseases, old age, all kinds of suffering and the inevitability of death are all part of the human experience.

            If  looked upon in the above described way  the world  seems to be a very difficult  place to be born into and  there are those who accuse  God  of cruelty and  unloving despotism and  hostility to man. In Dostoyevsky’s book “The Brothers Karamazov,” Ivan , the brother of Alyosha    says the following:  “If in this world which you think God made even one small child  suffers and cries  then the world is not worth living and I myself give the ticket back.” There is  seemingly too much  pain   and  disappointment in this world and  many people  lose their faith in a loving and good God . When suffering and pain become overwhelming some commit suicide. As discussed before, God is all good and God cannot directly create evil , and He did not . Evil  originated in the  hostility and rebellion of man against  the plan and commandments of God. The Will of God seems to be an intrusion, and a burden from outside. It seems to suffocate man  and  his imaginary independence  Briefly speaking  God  is not  wanted. For many people God  has no place nor meaning in their lives , they live  as if God does not exist,  and they do not bother even to know  anything about God , His existence and His plans for humanity . The fascination  of  pleasures of this life and their  successes in this or that area  and   the constant hunger for entertainment of all sorts does not leave much time for  deeper reflection and search for truth.  Man becomes deeper and deeper alienated from God and other people  and does not even  question  the fundamental  issues of existence. The evil  perpetrated by humans in history is beyond any description. But man does not want  to accept  the  obvious  fact of  the evil done by  man and  the responsibility  for it . Man blames always either God  other people , the circumstances of his life  or anything else but himself.  The Grand Inquisitor  in his accusations against  Christ whom he recognized in the streets and ordered  to be arrested for creating a tumult  gests more and more excited and finally he completely dumbfounded by Christ silently  kissing him    shouts: Go away ,go away and never come back, never! The Grand Inquisitor  could not  forgive Christ that He gave freedom of conscious to men.God respects human freedom. Man is   endowed with immortal soul and destined  for eternal  life.