Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

And so Ivan trounces Eliosha regularly when they have discussions about, for example, whether or not God exists.

And I started with this discussion with the proclamation that

absent or present, we wrestle with God.

Ivan does something famous in this book.

He mounts what's probably the most powerful argument ever offered in the literary domain for the atheist claim.

And he does it essentially on moral grounds, interestingly enough.

He tells this story that Dostoevsky actually took out of a Russian newspaper about this four-year-old girl who had tyrannical, terrible, brutal, psychopathic, tyrannical parents.

And one night to punish their daughter, they locked her in the outhouse.

And this was Russia, and it was like 40 below.

And

She froze to death during the night while she was screaming to be released, and that became a scandal in Russia, and it was a well-publicized event, well-publicized horrifying event, as the torturous death of a child is self-evidently, we hope, a moral crime, though we seem to be committing an awful lot of those recently.

And Dostoevsky uses that event as an argument that Ivan puts forth about the, I would say, about the iniquity of existence, essentially.

And he asks, Ivan asks his brother, you know, if this God you believe, you believe to be a moral being, is willing to torture even one child to death,

Regardless even if that holds up the whole world.

Is that something you yourself would do?

That's what he asks his brother.

And Eliosha has no idea what to say.

Because what do you say to a question like that?

And Ivan says to his brother, I know you wouldn't do that.

But the God that you claim exists and that is good and that you worship apparently does.