Daily Archives: 17/06/2012

“Most animals are fated to an agonising death.” “The sheer horror so frequent in the biological world has seemed to make Christianity unintelligible and even offensive.” “[A world] which seems at best to be utterly indifferent and at worst implacably malevolent.” These are all quotes from Christians dealing with a theodicy of natural evil. I have commented on natural evil before, largely on the question of whether the natural world is “fallen” and, specifically, on the history of that doctrine. See for example here,  here   and here. I have pointed out that fallen nature is a relatively recent doctrine, even before evolutionary theory raised the stakes. Nevertheless theodicy of some … Continue reading →