GOD AND EVIL

CEM Joad (author of "God and Evil", was an active, crusading atheist who changed after experiencing the “evil at large in the world” during World War II. He has explained the change thus, in his own words:

".... the conclusions of the intellect deny that the orthodox God of the religious hypothesis - omnipotent and benevolent, could have been the creator of the world; and deny it precisely because of the fact of evil. But if the intellect denies what the heart demands, what then? [...] perhaps the deadlock is a sign of, perhaps it is even a punishment for, intellectual arrogance...

The considerations which have set my mind working again on the problems of religion are of an emotional order [...].the emotions are those connected with inadequacy. The life that lacks religion lacks, so I have come to feel, fullness and roundness, and the desire to find that true which I have always believed to be false, to know something of that which I have thought to be unknowable grows as the years pass by. One is dismayed by the evil at large in the world and in oneself, depressed and humiliated by the inadequacy of one's efforts to cope with it, humiliated then by the inadequacy of one's own self.

It is from precisely such a feeling of humiliation that, religious writers have often urged, the search for and need of God, take their rise. What is more, the seeker who is inspired by such a mood may not be wholly without hope of succeeding in his quest. For alienated by intellectual pride , they have assured us, God draws nearer to those who approach Him in humbleness of spirit."
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My own change from disbelief in my younger days to starting on the path of self-enquiry was aided by a reading of this book and later, other writings and attending discourses. At the root of the problem is the hard fact that if one does not become aware of the limitations of the logical mind and allows it to have dominance over oneself, it will never be possible to reconcile the existence of God with the prevalence of evil and develop Faith. This same ever-questioning mind is also capable of changing into a silent one with deeper and different perception of the world, through contemplation and meditation.
I have only made a beginning in this life - much later than present day youngsters who commence the walk on the spiritual path much earlier. I hope that these late efforts will carry me through to the next life as assured by Shri Krishna to Arjuna in the Gita and as envisaged in the following statement about re-birth by John D Barrow: "Perhaps, the end of life in the universe is really just like turning off your computer, and then turning it on later on — the same information stored. But, I don't know."
Seems similar to the Hindu Vasana theory, of tendencies carried over from one birth to the next. We are free to delete, modify, add, erase and start afresh every time and any time.

Oprah, Elie Wiesel, problem of God Evil
Oprah's interview with Elie Weisel, is published at: http://www2.oprah.com/omagazine/200011/omag_200011_elie_b.jhtml.
An extract, in which Wiesel reiterates his acceptance of God, inspite of his traumatic experience:

Oprah: Where are you and God with each other these days?

Elie Wiesel: We still have a few problems! But even in the camps, I never divorced God. After the war, I went on praying to God. I was angry. I protested.
I'm still protesting—and occasionally, I'm still angry. But it's not because of the past, but the present. When I see victims of a tragedy—and especially children— I say to God,
"Don't tell me that you have nothing to do with this. You are everywhere—you are God."
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If we read our Puranic stories, we notice that God took avatars (literally - came down to earth) *after* atrocities by evil tyrants had happened. In the famous Gita Slokam "*yadaa yadaa hi dharmasya glaanir bhavati*" Krishna assures only that whenever Adharma prevails over Dharma, He comes down to restore the balance in favour of Dharma. There is no explanation as to why adharma was allowed to prevail, in the first instance.
The problem baffling all genuine seekers (not those who merely question to satisfy their intelligent ego), is the obtrusiveness of evil and the absence of a logical explanation for its power and its existence in an universe that owes its origin and existence to God, who is portrayed/ postulated as omnipotent and benevolent. If Elie Weisel could accept God's presence with Faith, why can't we too?

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A few relevant Quotes:
We might well pray for God to invade and conquer us, for until He does, we remain in peril from a thousand foes. We bear within us the seeds of our own disintegration. The strength of our flesh is an ever present danger to our souls. Deliverance can come to us only by the defeat of our old life. Safety and peace come only after we have been forced to our knees. So He conquers us and by that benign conquest saves us for Himself.-A. W. Tozer

Whatever be our conception of the universe we must, it is obvious, start somehow; we must begin with something; and the something with which we begin, from the very fact that we do begin with it, must itself be without explanation, since, if something else were invoked to explain it, then the "something else" must needs be logically prior to that which it is invoked to explain. Thus the "something" being explained by a logically prior "something else" could not have been ultimate. -- C. E. M. Joad, in God and Evil

Some day you will read in the papers that D. L. Moody of East Northfield, is dead. Don't you believe a word of it! At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now; I shall have gone up higher, that is all, out of this old clay tenement into a house that is immortal -- a body that death cannot touch, that sin cannot taint; a body fashioned like unto His glorious body. I was born of the flesh in 1837. I was born of the Spirit in 1856. That which is born of the flesh may die. That which is born of the Spirit will live forever. ... Dwight Lyman Moody

If we consider the lives of people who believe in God, we so often find that they make good sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, employers, and employees -- they have many individual virtues; but they have no way of life other than that which has been imposed upon them by their environment. It is their sociological conditions, their social class, their neighbourhood, their national characteristics, rather than their spiritual faith, which determine their outlook and values: they are an overwhelming demonstration that it is the economic conditions and background of one's life which determine what one is and what one will think. This is an intolerable condition, and so long as it persists we shall not be able to make any impact on the world, because it will be abundantly clear that it is the world which is making its impact upon us. ... Douglas Rhymes, in "The Place of the Laity in the Parish"

When anger enters the mind, wisdom departs. -- Thomas à Kempis

When you have come to the edge of all the light you have
And step into the darkness of the unknown
Believe that one of the two will happen to you
Either you'll find something solid to stand on
Or you'll be taught how to fly!” -- Richard Bach

IGNORANCE IS BLISS?

"Where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise" - Thomas Gray

The oft-quoted mantra of 'Ignorance is bliss' is a clever but specious quip. It has raised the status of Ignorance to a pseudo-virtue. Many are quite fond of quoting it to justify to themselves their general indifference to all things religious/scriptural. But the quote is actually a statement of sad and profound irony. It appears at the end of a poem by Thomas Gray titled "Ode on a distant prospect of Eton College":

• To each his sufferings: all are men,
  Condemned alike to groan;
  The tender for another's pain,
  Th' unfeeling for his own.
  Yet, ah! why should they know their fate,
  Since sorrow never comes too late,
  And happiness too swiftly flies?
  Thought would destroy their Paradise.
  No more; where ignorance is bliss,
  'Tis folly to be wise.

The "Ode" by Thomas Gray is a poem of great moral despair and it ends with those famous lines on a deeply ironical note. It was written at a time when England was in the throes of great economic and social turmoil caused by the advent of the Industrial Revolution. The poet was reflecting upon the many ills and injustices that were bedeviling his country but of which his countrymen, the silent and thoughtless, seemed utterly ignorant. The line "Where Ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise" actually was meant to describe the attitude of the young but ignorant English masses of those times. They had really "no sense of ills to come"; they didn't seem to know "their fate". They busied themselves only with the humdrum, day-to-day cares of personal life and livelihood. They did not seem to "care beyond today", believing that any thought of the Beyond would only "destroy their (petty, private) paradise" (an apt description, perhaps, of the non-voting population every where).