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The Grand Inquisitor story tells about an innocent man who is imprisoned and judged, while Zosima’s anecdote of the murderer tells about a guilty man who is goes free and is forgiven.
In these chapters, Dostoevsky creates a powerful and disturbing symbol of the problem of free will in religious belief. Without the security of miracles, people are left to their own devices, to choose either faith or doubt. The choice to doubt or disbelieve can be based on a model of rational evidence, but the choice to believe must be more mystical, based on a positive feeling of meaning and profundity that is often at odds with the world as we usually experience it.