Trigger Happy

Shoot first, ask questions later

- STEVEN POOLE

The problem of theodicy (from the Greek for “divine justice”) is often considered central in religious thought. How does a supposedly all-powerful and benevolent God allow the suffering and evil that we see all around us in the world? Various answers have been suggested. Perhaps God is dedicated to allowing humans their free will, so that all evil stems from their misuse of it. But this does not seem to justify the suffering of, say, babies or wild animals. Perhaps suffering is actually good; it’s just that we humans can’t understand why. (A particularly disgusting response, in my view.) Perhaps God is not all-powerful but in an eternal struggle with the forces of evil that rule the material world (the Manichean heresy). Or perhaps God does not exist.

Such debates have been going on for thousands of years and show no signs of being resolved any time soon. But I was reminded of them when I saw two recent stories in Private Eye that made me suspect that videogames, too, have their own problem of theodicy. If you create a virtual world, to what extent are you responsible for the evil that may occur within it?