Philosophy Bites (podcast)

In Buddhism, nirvana is a transcendent state in which there is neither suffering, desire, nor sense of self. It is the final goal of Buddhism and a person in this state has escaped the effects of karma and the cycle of death and rebirth. I believe that if we look past the supernatural and transcendental aspects of Buddhism and investigate its philosophical wisdom, we can be guided through the complex modern world. There are three marks of existence in Buddhism, and one of these is dukkha, which means suffering, or dissatisfaction. Buddhists believe that suffering arises because of craving, so to escape suffering we must change our relationship with desire. 

This is easier said than done, primarily because humans are hardwired to be dissatisfied. However, Buddhists use meditation techniques to move past this. In our modern world full of genius advertising and stress, I believe that a Buddhist approach is invaluable. Meditation cultivates a calmer mind which could make us more productive and compassionate as a society. Arguably, our consumerist culture is not doing the environment any favours, so I see Buddhism’s rejection of craving as something we should be aiming for. Therefore, I think we should aim to develop a deeper understanding of the world through a Buddhist lens, although not necessarily for the purpose of transcending the physical world.

Does the existence of evil disprove the existence of an omnibenevolent and omnipotent god?

I do not think the existence of a god can be wholly proven or disproven. However, I think that the problem of evil makes the existence of an all-loving, all-powerful god unlikely. The reason I think this relates more to the evidential problem of evil than the logical problem of evil. There are various arguments which make the logical problem of evil weaker than the evidential one, such as the idea that evil serves the purpose of making the good stand out. 

However, the quantity of evil seems to suggest that if there is a god, he cannot be both omnipotent and omnibenevolent because otherwise, he would have prevented at least some of this evil. The argument that there is evil because God gave us free will does not work because it does not explain the origin of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. We did not choose the movements of tectonic plates. Furthermore, I think the argument that evil is simply the absence of good, suggesting that evil does not exist, is just a play on words. People suffer and we can see this with our own eyes. This means that the existence of an all-powerful, all-loving God is unlikely and the arguments for why there must be a god, such as the design argument and the cosmological argument, do not indicate that this god must be omnipotent or omnibenevolent.