Editing Problem of evil (section)

===Animal suffering===
{{Main|Wild animal suffering|Evolutionary theodicy}}
In response to arguments concerning natural evil and animal suffering, Christopher Southgate, a trained research biochemist and a Senior Lecturer of Theology and Religion at the [[University of Exeter]], has developed a "compound evolutionary theodicy."<ref name="Robert John Russell">{{cite journal |last1=Russell |first1=Robert John |title=Southgate's Compound Only-Way Evolutionary Theodicy: Deep Appreciation and Further Directions |journal=Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science |date=2018 |volume=53 |issue=3 |pages=711–726 |doi=10.1111/zygo.12438 |s2cid=150123771 |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/zygo.12438}}</ref>{{rp|711}} Southgate uses three methods of analyzing good and harm to show how they are inseparable and create each other.<ref name="Christopher Southgate"/>{{rp|128}} First, he says evil is the consequence of the existence of good: free will is a good, but the same property also causes harm. Second, good is a goal that can only be developed through processes that include harm. Third, the existence of good is inherently and constitutively inseparable from the experience of harm or suffering.<ref name="Christopher Southgate"/>{{rp|41–46}}

[[Robert John Russell]] summarizes Southgate's theodicy as beginning with an assertion of the goodness of creation and all sentient creatures.<ref name="Christopher Southgate">{{cite book |last1=Southgate |first1=Christopher |title=The Groaning of Creation: God, Evolution, and the Problem of Evil |date=2008 |publisher=Westminster John Knox Press |isbn=9780664230906}}</ref>{{rp|15}} Next Southgate argues that Darwinian evolution was the only way God could create such goodness. "A universe with the sort of beauty, diversity, sentience and sophistication of creatures that the biosphere now contains" could only come about by the natural processes of evolution.<ref name="Robert John Russell"/>{{rp|716}} [[Michael Ruse]] points out that [[Richard Dawkins]] has made the same claim concerning evolution:

{{blockquote|Dawkins{{nbsp}}[...] argues strenuously that selection and only selection can [produce adaptedness]. No one{{snd}}and presumably this includes God{{snd}}could have gotten adaptive complexity without going the route of natural selection{{nbsp}}[...] The Christian positively welcomes Dawkins's understanding of Darwinism. Physical evil exists, and Darwinism explains why God had no choice but to allow it to occur. He wanted to produce design like effects (including humankind) and natural selection is the only option open.<ref name="Robert John Russell"/>{{rp|714}}}}

According to Russell and Southgate, the goodness of creation is intrinsically linked to the evolutionary processes by which such goodness is achieved, and these processes, in turn, inevitably come with pain and suffering as intrinsic to them.<ref name="Robert John Russell"/>{{rp|716}} In this scenario, natural evils are an inevitable consequence of developing life.<ref name="Robert John Russell"/>{{rp|716}} Russell goes on to say that the physical laws that undergird biological development, such as thermodynamics, also contribute to "what is tragic" and "what is glorious" about life.<ref name="Robert John Russell"/>{{rp|715}} "Gravity, geology, and the specific orbit of the moon lead to the tidal patterns of the Earth's oceans and thus to both the environment in which early life evolved and in which tsunamis bring death and destruction to countless thousands of people".<ref name="Robert John Russell"/>{{rp|717–718}}

[[Holmes Rolston III]] says nature embodies 'redemptive suffering' as exemplified by Jesus. "The capacity to suffer through to joy is a supreme emergent and an essence of Christianity... The whole evolutionary upslope is a lesser calling of this kind".<ref name="Holmesredemption">{{cite journal |last1=Holmes Rolston III |first1=Holmes Rolston III |title=Does Nature Need To Be Redeemed? |journal=Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science |date=1994 |volume=29 |issue=2 |pages=205–229 |doi=10.1111/j.1467-9744.1994.tb00661.x |hdl=10217/36766 |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9744.1994.tb00661.x|hdl-access=free }}</ref> He calls it the 'cruciform creation' where life is constantly struggling through its pain and suffering toward something higher. Rolston says that within this process, there is no real waste as life and its components are "forever conserved, regenerated, redeemed".<ref name="Holmes Rolston III">{{cite journal |last1=Rolston III |first1=Holmes |title=Redeeming A Cruciform Nature |journal=Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science |date=2018 |volume=53 |issue=3 |pages=739–751 |doi=10.1111/zygo.12428 |hdl=10217/196986 |s2cid=149534879 |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/zygo.12428|hdl-access=free }}</ref>
 
Bethany N. Sollereder, Research Fellow at the Laudato Si' Research Institute at Campion Hall, specializes in theology concerning evolution; she writes that evolving life has become increasingly complex, skilled and interdependent. As it has become more intelligent and has increased its ability to relate emotionally, the capacity to suffer has also increased.<ref name="Bethany N. Sollereder">{{cite book |last1=Sollereder |first1=Bethany N. |title=God, Evolution, and Animal Suffering: Theodicy without a Fall |date=2018 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=9780429881855}}</ref>{{rp|6}} Southgate describes this using [[s:Bible (King James)/Romans#Romans 8|Romans 8:22]] which says "the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth" since its beginning. He says God responds to this reality by "co-suffering" with "every sentient being in creation".<ref name="Robert John Russell"/>{{rp|716–720}}

Southgate's theodicy rejects any 'means to an end' argument that says the evolution of any species justifies the suffering and extinction of any prior species that led to it, and he affirms that "all creatures which have died, without their full potential having been realized, must be given fulfillment elsewhere".<ref name="Christopher Southgate"/>{{rp|63}} Russell asserts that the only satisfactory understanding of that "elsewhere" is the eschatological hope that the present creation will be transformed by God into the New Creation, with its new heaven and new earth.<ref name="Robert John Russell"/>{{rp|718–720}}

====Critique====

=====Heaven=====
In what Russell describes as a "blistering attack by [[Wesley Wildman]]" on Southgate's theodicy, Wildman asserts that "if God really is to create a heavenly world of 'growth and change and relationality, yet no suffering', that world and not this world would be the best of all possible worlds, and a God that would not do so would be 'flagrantly morally inconsistent'."<ref name="W. Wildman">{{cite journal |last1=Wildman |first1=William J. |title=Incongruous Goodness, Perilous Beauty, Disconcerting Truth: Ultimate Reality and Suffering in Nature |journal=Physics and Cosmology: Scientific Perspectives on the Problem of Natural Evil|editor1-last=Murphy|editor1-first=Nancey C.|editor2-last=Russell|editor2-first=Robert J.|date=2007 |pages=267–294}}</ref>{{rp|290}}<ref name="Robert John Russell"/>{{rp|724}}

Southgate has responded with what he calls an extension of the original argument: "that this evolutionary environment, full as it is of both competition and decay, is the only type of creation that can give rise to creaturely selves".<ref name="Christopher Southgate"/>{{rp|90}} That means "our guess must be that though heaven can eternally preserve those selves subsisting in suffering-free relationship, it could not give rise to them in the first place".<ref name="Robert John Russell"/>{{rp|720}}<ref name="Christopher Southgate"/>{{rp|90}}

=====Randomness=====
{{ill|Thomas F. Tracy|qid=Q107183389}} offers a two-point critique: "The first is the problem of purpose: can evolutionary processes, in which chance plays so prominent a role, be understood as the context of God's purposive action? The second is the problem of the pervasiveness of suffering and death in evolution".<ref name="Thomas F. Tracy">{{cite journal |last1=Tracy |first1=Thomas F. |title=Evolutionary Theologies and Divine Action |journal=Theology and Science |date=2008 |volume=6 |issue=1 |pages=107–116 |doi=10.1080/14746700701806106 |s2cid=144846652 |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14746700701806106|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

According to [[John Polkinghorne]], the existence of chance does not negate the power and purposes of a Creator because "it is entirely possible that contingent processes can, in fact, lead to determined ends".<ref name="PolkinghornetoTracy">{{cite journal |last1=Polkinghorne |first1=John C. |title=Evolution and Providence: A Response to Thomas Tracy |journal=Theology and Science |date=2009 |volume=7 |issue=4 |pages=317–322 |doi=10.1080/14746700903239445 |s2cid=144281968 |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14746700903239445|url-access=subscription }}</ref>{{rp|317–318}} But in Polkinghorne's theology, God is not a "Puppetmaster pulling every string", and his purposes are therefore general.<ref name="PolkinghornetoTracy"/>{{rp|317}} [[Francisco J. Ayala]] adds that this means "God is not the explicit designer of each facet of evolution".<ref name="Francisco J. Ayala">{{cite book |last1=Francisco J. Ayala |first1=Francisco J. Ayala |title=Darwin's Gift to Science and Religion |date=2007 |publisher=National Academies Press |isbn=9780309102315 |edition=illustrated, reprint}}</ref><ref name="Robert John Russell"/>{{rp|714}} For Polkinghorne, it is sufficient theologically to assume that "the emergence of some form of self-conscious, God-conscious being" was an aspect of divine purpose from the beginning whether God purposed humankind specifically or not.<ref name="PolkinghornetoTracy"/>{{rp|317–318}}

Polkinghorne also links the existence of human freedom to the flexibility created by randomness in the quantum world.<ref name="J. C. Polkinghorne">{{cite book |last1=Polkinghorne |first1=John C. |title=Quarks, Chaos & Christianity Questions to Science and Religion |date=2005 |publisher=Crossroad Publishing Company |isbn=9780824524067 |page=4}}</ref> Richard W. Kropf asserts that free will has its origins in the "evolutionary ramifications" of the existence of chance as part of the process, thereby providing a "causal connection" between natural evil and the possibility of human freedom: one cannot exist without the other.<ref name="Richard W. Kropf">{{cite book |last1=Kropf |first1=Richard W. |title=Evil and Evolution: A Theodicy |date=2004 |publisher=Wipf and Stock Publishers |isbn=9781725211445}}</ref>{{rp|2, 122}} Polkinghorne writes this means that "there is room for independent action in order for creatures to be themselves and "make themselves" in evolution, which therefore makes room for suffering and death.<ref name="PolkinghornetoTracy"/>{{rp|318–319}}

{{blockquote|A world in which creatures 'make themselves' can be held to be a greater good than a ready-made world would have been, but it has an inescapable cost. Evolutionary processes will not only yield great fruitfulness, but they will also necessarily involve ragged edges and blind alleys. Genetic mutation will not only produce new forms of life, but it will also result in malignancy. One cannot have the one without the other. The existence of cancer is an anguishing fact about creation but it is not gratuitous, something that a Creator who was a bit more competent or a bit less callous could easily have avoided. It is part of the shadow side of creative process... The more science helps us to understand the processes of the world, the more we see that the good and the bad are inextricably intertwined... It is all a package deal.<ref name="PolkinghornetoTracy"/>{{rp|318}}}}

====Other responses to animal suffering and natural evil====
Others have argued:
* That natural evils are the result of the [[fall of man]], which corrupted the perfect world created by God.<ref>Linda Edwards, ''A Brief Guide'' (Westminster John Knox, 2001), 62.</ref> Theologian [[David Bentley Hart]] argues that "natural evil is the result of a world that's fallen into death" and says that "in Christian tradition, you don't just accept 'the world as it is'" but "you take 'the world as it is' as a broken, shadowy remnant of what it should have been." Hart's concept of the human fall, however, is an [[atemporal fall]]: "Obviously, wherever this departure from the divine happened, or whenever, it didn't happen within terrestrial history," and "this world, as we know it, from the [[Big Bang]] up until today, has been the world of death."<ref>{{cite web |url=https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/p/a-gregorian-interview |access-date=14 March 2023 |title=A Gregorian Interview |last=Hart |first=David Bentley |date=12 March 2023 |publisher=Leaves in the Wind |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230314140228/https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/p/a-gregorian-interview |archive-date=14 March 2023 |quote=[Starting at 1:13:08:] Moral evil has no essence of its own, so it can only exist as a fabrication of the will continuing to will defectively. And according to tradition, even natural evil is the result of a world that's fallen into death. Somehow, that too follows from the creation of moral evil. So in Christian tradition, you don't just accept 'the world as it is.' You take 'the world as it is' as a broken, shadowy remnant of what it should have been. But obviously wherever this departure from the divine happened, or whenever, it didn't happen within terrestrial history. Now, plenty will argue: 'Oh no. It really happened within history.' No, it really didn't. This world, as we know it, from the Big Bang up until today, has been the world of death.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first1=David Bentley |last1=Hart |year=2005 |title=[[The Doors of the Sea|The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?]] |location=Grand Rapids, Michigan |publisher=Wm. B. Eerdmans |pages=22, 69 |isbn=9780802829764 |quote=The Christian belief in an ancient alienation from God that{{nbsp}}[...] reduced cosmic time to a shadowy vestige of the world God truly intends.{{nbsp}}[...] Something far more glorious than the pitiable resources of fallen time could ever yield.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first1=David Bentley |last1=Hart |author-link=David Bentley Hart |year=2020 |chapter=The Devil's March: Creatio ex Nihilo, the Problem of Evil, and a Few Dostoyevskian Meditations |title=Theological Territories: A David Bentley Hart Digest |location=Notre Dame, Indiana |publisher=Notre Dame Press |pages=79–80 |isbn=9780268107178 |quote=The fall of rational creation and the conquest of the cosmos by death is something that appears to us nowhere within the course of nature or history; it comes from before and beyond both. We cannot search it out within the closed totality of the damaged world because it belongs to another frame of time, another kind of time, one more real than the time of death.{{nbsp}}[...] It may seem a fabulous claim that we exist in the long grim aftermath of a primeval catastrophe—that this is a broken and wounded world, that cosmic time is a phantom of true time, that we live in an umbratile interval between creation in its fullness and the nothingness from which it was called, and that the universe languishes in bondage to the "powers" and "principalities" of this age, which never cease in their enmity toward the kingdom of God—but it is not a claim that Christians are free to surrender.}}</ref>
* That forces of nature are neither "goods" nor "evils". They just are. Nature produces actions vital to some forms of life and lethal to others.<ref name="Claudia Card">{{cite book |last1=Card |first1=Claudia |title=The Atrocity Paradigm A Theory of Evil |date=2005 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780195181265 |page=5}}</ref> Other life forms cause diseases, but for the disease, hosts provide food, shelter and a place to reproduce which are necessary things for life and are not by their nature evil.<ref name="Patricia A. Williams"/>{{rp|170}}
* That natural evils are the result of [[natural laws]]<ref>{{cite book | last = Polkinghorne | first = John | author-link = John Polkinghorne | title = Belief in God in an Age of Science | publisher=Yale Nota Bene | year = 2003 | location = New Haven, CT | page = 14 | isbn = 978-0-300-09949-2 }} and also See esp. ch. 5 of his ''Science and Providence''. {{ISBN|978-0-87773-490-1}}</ref> Williams points out that all the natural laws are necessary for life, and even death and natural disaster are necessary aspects of a developing universe.{{refn|group=note|"When stars burn, explode and die, the heavy elements are born and distributed, feeding life. When the first living organisms die, they make room for more complex ones and begin the process of natural selection. When organisms die, new life feeds on them... the sources of [natural] evil lie in attributes so valuable that we would not even consider eliminating them in order to eradicate evil."<ref name="Patricia A. Williams"/>{{rp|169, 179}}}} 
* That natural evils provide humanity with a knowledge of evil which makes their free choices more significant than they would otherwise be, and so their free will more valuable<ref>[[Richard Swinburne]] in "Is There a God?" writes that "the operation of natural laws producing evils gives humans knowledge (if they choose to seek it) of how to bring about such evils themselves. Observing you can catch some disease by the operation of natural processes gives me the power either to use those processes to give that disease to other people, or through negligence to allow others to catch it, or to take measures to prevent others from catching the disease." In this way, "it increases the range of significant choice... The actions which natural evil makes possible are ones which allow us to perform at our best and interact with our fellows at the deepest level" (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) 108–109.</ref> or
* That natural evils are a mechanism of divine punishment for moral evils that humans have committed, and so the natural evil is justified.<ref>Bradley Hanson, ''Introduction to Christian Theology'' (Fortress, 1997), 100.</ref>