Dr. Marc Gafni

So we have to talk about value.

how you can talk about God and have evil in the world.

Now, that's not a small, that's not a small question.

And anyone who gives a banal explanation to that or quickly jumps to answer it with a well-worked out, you know, precise formula, you should walk away from the table.

Because it's not precise and it's not well worked out and it's infinitely painful.

And there's something called theodicy.

And theodicy is how we hold the God who is good

In the face of evil.

And there's an entire world of theodicies in the medicine lineages.

There's a world of theodicies in the monotheistic faiths, right?

In the pagan faiths, there's a, everyone has theodicies, right?

That's not a, so here's the thing.

No theodicy stands in the face of burning children, right?

All theodicies are obscene in the face of burning children.

But here's the thing.

The reason burning children are obscene is because there's God.

Mm-hmm.

If there's no God, meaning there's no field of value, there's no intimate universe, there's no essential inherent harmony in the universe that should be, there's an ought in the universe, right?

God creates an ought.

And that's what Dostoevsky meant.