How does the Christian response to the problem of evil contrast with that of other worldviews? Most attempts at answering the problem of evil either present a straightforward account of the truth claims of Christianity or defend a minimalist concept of God. This book is different. Inside, you'll examine four worldviews' responses to the problem of evil. Then, you'll hear the author's argument that Christian theism makes better sense of the phenomenon of evil in the worldâ€"equipping you to reach an informed conclusion. This book's unique approachâ€"integrating worldviews with apologetics with theologyâ€"will give you a better understanding of the debate surrounding the problem of evil, in both philosophy and theology. Learn to think cogently and theologically about the problem of evil and Christianity's ability to answer its challenges with Worldviews and the Problem of Evil as your guide.

Of all the issues in the philosophy of religion, the problem of reconciling belief in God with evil in the world arguably commands more attention than any other. For over two decades, Michael L. Peterson’s The Problem of Evil: Selected Readings has been the most widely recognized and used anthology on the subject. Peterson's expanded and updated second edition retains the key features of the original and presents the main positions and strategies in the latest philosophical literature on the subject. It will remain the most complete introduction to the subject as well as a resource for advanced study. Peterson organizes his selection of classical and contemporary sources into four parts: important statements addressing the problem of evil from great literature and classical philosophy; debates based on the logical, evidential, and existential versions of the problem; major attempts to square God's justice with the presence of evil, such as Augustinian, Irenaean, process, openness, and felix culpa theodicies; and debates on the problem of evil covering such concepts as a best possible world, natural evil and natural laws, gratuitous evil, the skeptical theist defense, and the bearing of biological evolution on the problem. The second edition includes classical excerpts from the book of Job, Voltaire, Dostoevsky, Augustine, Aquinas, Leibniz, and Hume, and twenty-five essays that have shaped the contemporary discussion, by J. L. Mackie, Alvin Plantinga, William Rowe, Marilyn Adams, John Hick, William Hasker, Paul Draper, Michael Bergmann, Eleonore Stump, Peter van Inwagen, and numerous others. Whether a professional philosopher, student, or interested layperson, the reader will be able to work through a number of issues related to how evil in the world affects belief in God.

How can we talk about evil? How can we make sense of its presence all around us? How can we come to terms with the sad fact that our involvement in doing or enabling evil is an interminable aspect of our lives in the world? This book is an attempt to engage these questions in a new way. Written from within the complicated reality of Israel, the contributors to this book forge a collective effort to think about evil from multiple perspectives. A necessary effort, since psychoanalysis has been slow to account for the existence of evil, while philosophy and the social sciences have tended to neglect its psychological aspects. The essays collected here join to form a wide canvas on which a portrait of evil gradually emerges, from the Bible, through the enlightenment to the Holocaust; from Kant, through Freud, Klein, Bromberg and Stein to Arendt, Agamben and Bauman; using literature, history, cinema, social theory and psychoanalysis. Talking about Evil opens up a much needed space for thinking, in itself an antidote to evil. It will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and scholars and students of philosophy, social theory and the humanities.

"Evil is the most serious of our moral problems. All over the world cruelty, greed, prejudice, and fanaticism ruin the lives of countless victims. Outrage provokes outrage. Millions nurture seething hatred of real or imagined enemies, revealing savage and destructive tendencies in human nature. Understanding this challenges our optimistic illusions about the effectiveness of reason and morality in bettering human lives. But abandoning these illusions is vitally important because they are obstacles to countering the threat of evil. The aim of this book is to explain why people act in these ways and what can be done about it."—John Kekes The first part of this book is a detailed discussion of six horrible cases of evil: the Albigensian Crusade of about 1210; Robespierre's Terror of 1793–94; Franz Stangl, who commanded a Nazi death camp in 1943–44; the 1969 murders committed by Charles Manson and his "family"; the "dirty war" conducted by the Argentinean military dictatorship of the late 1970s; and the activities of a psychopath named John Allen, who recorded reminiscences in 1975. John Kekes includes these examples not out of sensationalism, but rather to underline the need to hold vividly in our minds just what evil is. The second part shows why, in Kekes's view, explanations of evil inspired by Christianity and the Enlightenment fail to account for these cases and then provides an original explanation of evil in general and of these instances of it in particular.

This text examines evil in the context of a post-metaphysical world, a world that no longer believes in a God. The question of how and why God permits evil events to occur is replaced by the question of how and why humans perform evil acts.

The genesis of evil. The book of Genesis recites the beginnings of the cosmos and its inhabitants. It also reveals the beginning of evil. Before long, evil infests God's good creation. From there, good and evil coexist and drive the plot of Genesis. In Evil in Genesis, Ingrid Faro uncovers how the Bible's first book presents the meaning of evil. Faro conducts a thorough examination of evil on lexical, exegetical, conceptual, and theological levels. This focused analysis allows the Hebrew terminology to be nuanced and permits Genesis' own distinct voice to be heard. Genesis presents evil as the taking of something good and twisting it for one's own purposes rather than enjoying it how God intended. Faro illuminates the perspective of Genesis on a range of themes, including humanity's participation in evil, evil's consequences, and God's responses to evil.

* Interdisciplinary focus captures insights from theology, philosophy and psychology * Clearly separates natural, personal, and social evil * Allows readers to wrestle with the nature and dynamics of evil