should God exist, might have a divine purpose—to purge and to test the human race. What Ivan cannot stomach is a God who has given adult humans the freedom to inflict suffering on children. Ivan is not so much saying: take away God and everything is permitted; he is saying that he knows that God does not exist, and that is why adults have the freedom to abuse children. To demonstrate this circumstance, Ivan tells Alyosha that he has made a journalistic collection of atrocities, “certain interesting
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