The problem

The thermostat is set to 67 degrees, but it feels like it could be twice as much as that. 

The question I set out my four guests was, I thought, simple. "What is evil?" I asked, by trustworthy black and white composition book ready to write down the wisdom I was sure would flow from these great minds. 

Instead I got blank looks. Fyodor slurped at his coffee, and Augustine merely stared at his, fighting the bitter aftertaste. I passed the sugar. 

That was two hours ago. They said we needed to define other things first, but we've been arguing about what should be defined first. 

Augustine was the first. "We should define first what good is, God." 

"No," says Fyodor firmly. "It's not about God, it's about why people do evil." 

"Why God lets evil happen—" And so on. Augustine is insistent on theodicy. David just nods and smiles while Augustine talks, and then shows how God cannot exist because—much to Augustine's chagrin—evil does exist. Mackie is jumping in his seat, and with every argument David pulls out Mackie gets increasingly more ecstatic. Dostoevsky doesn't speak. Apparently, he wants to be the one with the last word.



(Probably some definitions wouldn't be bad here. Theodicy is "the vindication of divine goodness and providence in view of the existence of evil." The problem, of course, is what is Evil?)