Humanities Homework Help

Livingston’s chapter, he

focuses on Theodicy: “Justifying the ways of God” in the face of

the chaos and evil in the world, and he hints that theologians and

philosophers have wrestled with justifying God’s goodness and

omnipotence in the face of suffering and evil in the world.

Epicurus (Epikouros) above, a Greek non-Christian philosopher,

captures the contradictions and ironies in this wrestling. Other ancient

religions, Zoroastrinianism, Mithraism, Manichaeism, and Gnosticism,

answered the core question of why evil exists including it in creation,

evil as a natural condition of earthly life, along with a promise of an

eventual cosmic victory of Light over Darkness. This theme of the

need for world redemption is also found in Christianity and Islam.

For Hinduism, the laws of cause and effect explain how karma

(and suffering) accumulate, but no one gets off the hook or can put

theblame elsewhere. Each soul embodied in human form has

consciousness, freedom, and responsibility. The Hindu deities

and gurus can provide some relief through prayer and religious

counsel, but when things get out of balance, the individual has

responsibility for restoring balance and rescuing oneself

from evil consequences, and the recommended course of

action is fulfilling the dharma of one’s social and family

responsibilities, even if that entails performing “evil” caste

duties such as killing others if you are a soldier or accumulating

defilement if you are a street sweeper or funeral conductor.

Buddhism has the same terms of cause and effect and karma

in the swirl of samsara as THE essential human problem (dukka

or suffering); we all suffer from it unless we find enlightenment

and release through following the Eightfold Path.

1) From your reading this week, please summarize the main

difference in monotheistic religions and Eastern religions concerning

‘theodicy’? Which theodicy do you find most meaningful to you? Why?

2) What answers to the monotheistic approach does the Book of Job

provide? Is Job’s suffering justified? Is Elie Wiesel’s suffering in NIGHT

justified?

Encountering Evil

3) Which of the views on the causes and effects of evil works best

for you? Is evil essentially a deity/cosmogony problem or a human

problem? Are natural disasters (floods, famines, volcano eruptions,

earthquakes, Tsunamis, tornados, extreme weather events) and

human-caused disasters (wars, genocides, famines, climate change,

hunger, distribution of resources) also a God-problem? In other

words, what does the sacred, the Creator, the Creation have to

say about major causes of large-scale human suffering? Is such

suffering inevitable? Preventable? How does this discussion

impact religious world view?