In This Scene from Dostoevsky's the Brothers Karamazov, Ivan Karamazov

question 8

Multiple Choice

In this scene from Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan Karamazov explains to his pious younger brother, Alyosha, a Christian monk, why he cannot accept God. Ivan's impediment to full devotion to God is the problem of evil. He declares that there is untold, unfathomable suffering in the world-suffering such as that of a little child who is tortured, mutilated, and murdered by a ruthless general for no reason. God allows this suffering, but no adequate justification or explanation can be given why God would permit such evil.
-According to Ivan, to achieve a higher, cosmic harmony

• A) everyone must suffer.
• B) no one should suffer.
• C) children should not have to suffer.
• D) even children should suffer.

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Definitions:

Adaptive Evolution

The method by which populations adapt to their surroundings by evolving genetic characteristics across generations.

Environmental Change

Any alteration in the conditions of an environment, due to natural processes or human activities, that can affect the organisms living within it.

Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium

A rule that indicates the frequencies of alleles and genotypes in a population will stay unchanged over generations if there are no other factors driving evolution.

Allele Frequencies

The relative frequency of different variants (alleles) of a particular gene in a population, which can change over time due to various evolutionary pressures.