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Earthquakes and Evil The problem with theodicy

Earthquakes and Evil The problem with theodicy. Tim Middleton Christians in Science Student Conference 2014. Before…. Lepsy Fault, Kazakhstan. … and after. Lepsy Fault, Kazakhstan. Beijing. Tibet. 40 mm/a. http://www.googleearth.com. Identifying faults from space.

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Earthquakes and Evil The problem with theodicy

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  1. Earthquakes and EvilThe problem with theodicy Tim Middleton Christians in Science Student Conference 2014

  2. Before… Lepsy Fault, Kazakhstan

  3. … and after Lepsy Fault, Kazakhstan

  4. Beijing Tibet 40 mm/a http://www.googleearth.com

  5. Identifying faults from space Images of the Daluoshan Fault in northern China from the Worldview satellite

  6. Looking at faults in the field Liulengshan Fault, northern China

  7. Modelling faults on a computer Greg Houseman, University of Leeds

  8. 12th January 2010 Haiti Earthquake Roger Bilham, Nature , 18 February 2010

  9. Fall and Expulsion from Garden of Eden

  10. Fall and Expulsion from Garden of Eden Wikimedia Commons

  11. Fall and Expulsion from Garden of Eden Wikimedia Commons

  12. What is theodicy? • Justifying God • Omnipotence • Omnibenevolence • Omniscience

  13. Leibniz: ‘the best of all possible worlds’

  14. Shattering the European Enlightenment The Ruins of Lisbon – copper engraving - Wikimedia Commons

  15. 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!”

  16. Voltaire’s Candide

  17. A history of “theodicy” 1859: publication of The Origin of Species? Data from Google Ngram

  18. Darwin’sletter to Asa Gray

  19. Tennyson’s In Memoriam

  20. Two types of evil • Moral evil • Natural evil

  21. Four possible theodicies • Evil is necessary • A cosmic fall • An angelic fall • Kenosis and the price of freedom

  22. Four possible theodicies • Evil is necessary • A cosmic fall • An angelic fall • Kenosis and the price of freedom

  23. The necessity of plate tectonics?

  24. An Irenaean theodicy

  25. What’s wrong with a vale of soul-making? Death Valley, USA

  26. Four possible theodicies • Evil is necessary • A cosmic fall • An angelic fall • Kenosis and the price of freedom

  27. An Augustinian theodicy

  28. Fall and Expulsion from Garden of Eden Benjamin West’s The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise

  29. Four possible theodicies • Evil is necessary • A cosmic fall • An angelic fall • Kenosis and the price of freedom

  30. Bruegel’sThe Fall of the Rebel Angels

  31. Four possible theodicies • Evil is necessary • A cosmic fall • An angelic fall • Kenosis and the price of freedom

  32. Questioning omnipotence

  33. Epistemic distance—an analogy

  34. Dostoyevsky: The Brothers Karamazov

  35. The problem with theodicy • Rational and intellectual • Not pastoral and personal

  36. 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.”

  37. So what are we to do? • Compassion • The example of Christ

  38. R. S. Thomas: The Prisoner

  39. 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?

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