The problem of evil concerns the contradiction, or apparent contradiction, between the reality of evil on the one hand, and religious beliefs in the goodness and power of God or of the Ultimate on the other. In a very general classification, the religions of the world have offered three main types of solution: (1) There is the monism of the Vedanta teachings of Hinduism, according to which the phenomenal world, with all its evils, is maya, or illusion. A confused echo of this doctrine is heard in contemporary Western Christian Science, which affirms that "evil is but an illusion, and it has no real basis. Evil is a false belief" (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, auth. ed., Boston, 1934, p. 480:23,24). Considered as a response to the problem of evil as stated above, this view is defective in that it redescribes the problem but...