Earthquakes and Evil The problem with theodicy

Tim MiddletonChristians in Science Student Conference 2014

Earthquakes and EvilThe problem with theodicy

Before…

Lepsy Fault, Kazakhstan

… and after

Lepsy Fault, Kazakhstan

http://www.googleearth.com

40 mm/a

Tibet

Beijing

Identifying faults from space

Images of the Daluoshan Fault in northern China from the Worldview satellite

Looking at faults in the field

Liulengshan Fault, northern China

Modelling faults on a computer

Greg Houseman, University of Leeds

12th January 2010 Haiti Earthquake

Roger Bilham, Nature , 18 February 2010

Fall and Expulsion from Garden of Eden

Fall and Expulsion from Garden of Eden

Wikimedia Commons

Fall and Expulsion from Garden of Eden

Wikimedia Commons

What is theodicy?

• Justifying God

• Omnipotence• Omnibenevolence• Omniscience

Leibniz: ‘the best of all possible worlds’

Shattering the European Enlightenment

The Ruins of Lisbon – copper engraving - Wikimedia Commons

Voltaire: ‘Poem on the Lisbon Disaster’

“These women, these infants heaped one upon the other, these limbs scattered beneath marbles; the hundred thousand unfortunates whom the earth devours, who—bleeding and torn, still palpitating, interred beneath their roots—end their lamentable days without comfort, amid the horror of their torment!”

Voltaire’s Candide

A history of “theodicy”

Data from Google Ngram

1859: publication of The Origin of Species?

Darwin’s letter to Asa Gray

Tennyson’s In Memoriam

Two types of evil

• Moral evil• Natural evil

Four possible theodicies

• Evil is necessary• A cosmic fall• An angelic fall• Kenosis and the price of freedom

Four possible theodicies

• Evil is necessary• A cosmic fall• An angelic fall• Kenosis and the price of freedom

The necessity of plate tectonics?

An Irenaean theodicy

What’s wrong with a vale of soul-making?

Death Valley, USA

Four possible theodicies

• Evil is necessary• A cosmic fall• An angelic fall• Kenosis and the price of freedom

An Augustinian theodicy

Fall and Expulsion from Garden of Eden

Benjamin West’s The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise

Four possible theodicies

• Evil is necessary• A cosmic fall• An angelic fall• Kenosis and the price of freedom

Bruegel’s The Fall of the Rebel Angels

Four possible theodicies

• Evil is necessary• A cosmic fall• An angelic fall• Kenosis and the price of freedom

Questioning omnipotence

Epistemic distance—an analogy

Dostoyevsky: The Brothers Karamazov

The problem with theodicy

• Rational and intellectual• Not pastoral and personal

Gabriel Marcel: the problem with theodicy

“But evil which is only stated or observed is no longer evil which is suffered: in fact, it ceases to be evil. In reality, I can only grasp evil in the measure in which it touches me—that is to say, in the measure in which I am involved, as one is involved in a lawsuit.”

So what are we to do?

• Compassion• The example of Christ

R. S. Thomas: The Prisoner

Questions for discussion

• Do you find any of the theodicies I’ve outlined convincing?

• Do you agree with Ivan Karamazov?• Is theodicy just an intellectual anaesthetic?• To what extent is a rational defence of evil

important to Christian living?