Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Livre De Lyon, Lyon, 2025
This book sets out to explore one of the most
pressing and difficult questions at the intersection
of philosophy, theology, and evolutionary biology:
the persistence of gratuitous evil in a world shaped by
evolutionary processes. In recent decades, evolutionary
theodicies have emerged as a popular attempt to reconcile
the reality of natural history with belief in a benevolent
God. These theodicies often portray evolution as a divinely
granted form of autonomy—a space of freedom where
creation is allowed to unfold in openness, unpredictability,
and creativity. Within this framework, suffering, predation,
and death are sometimes interpreted as unfortunate but
necessary conditions for the flourishing of life as a whole,
or even as instruments for the eventual enrichment and
perfection of creatures. Yet this interpretive strategy,
however sophisticated, raises serious philosophical
difficulties. At the heart of the issue lies the distinction
between suffering that can be explained or instrumentalized
for some greater purpose and what may rightly be called
gratuitous suffering: pain and loss that seem to serve no
constructive end, that yield no compensatory good, and
that, from the perspective of the creature undergoing them,
remain irreducibly destructive. The experience of wild
animals provides the most striking example.
Countless nonhuman creatures across evolutionary
history have endured injury, starvation, parasitism, disease,
and violent death without any possibility of their suffering
being integrated into a narrative of growth, redemption,
or moral development. To suggest that such suffering is
justified merely because it contributes to the unfolding
drama of evolution risks trivializing the phenomenological
reality of pain. This book therefore argues that evolutionary
theodicies, despite their appeal, fail to adequately account
for the reality of gratuitous evil. To describe evolution as
the “pathway” of creation is not, in itself, problematic;
what is problematic is the attempt to treat every instance
of suffering as somehow subsumed under a greater good.
When theological reflection reduces the sheer weight of
animal suffering to an abstract necessity of progress, it
not only obscures the depth of the problem but also risks
undermining the seriousness of moral and metaphysical
inquiry. Gratuitous evil cannot simply be explained away
as an inevitable byproduct of divine generosity in granting
autonomy to creation. It remains ontologically distinct,
resistant to justification, and haunting in its persistence.
In examining these questions, this book invites the reader
to consider what it truly means to confront the suffering
of nonhuman creatures within an evolutionary cosmos. If
theology is to remain intellectually honest, it must resist
the temptation to gloss over the sheer gratuity of such
suffering. Instead, it must grapple with the possibility
that some forms of pain cannot be reconciled within the
framework of a neat teleology or a tidy narrative of greater
goods. By doing so, we open the door not only to a more
truthful account of evolution and evil but also to a deeper,
more sober reflection on the mystery of creation itself.
So I argue that evolutionary theodicies misunderstand
gratuitous evil in the world and emphasizes that while
evolution serves as a pathway for the development of
creatures, it cannot justify gratuitous suffering within this
process. Evolutionary theodicies interpret evolution as the
autonomy granted by God, allowing for the openness of
the universe and the enhancement of creatures. This work
asserts that justifying the phenomenological suffering of
animals based on a greater good is theoretically unsound.
Therefore, the work maintains that evolutionary theodicies
fail to adequately address the concept of gratuitous evil,
which remains ontologically distinct, particularly when
examining it through the lens of wild animal suffering.