Nick Trakakis’s research while affiliated with Deakin University and other places

A doutrina do carma, conforme elaborada nas tradições religiosas hindu, budista e jainista, oferece um poderoso relato explicativo das grandes questões humanas e, em particular, do sofrimento humano aparentemente imerecido. Whitley R. P. Kaufman (2005) tem razão em apontar que em alguns pontos, como o sofrimento de crianças, a ocorrência de desastres naturais e a possibilidade de salvação universal, a teoria do carma parece, pelo menos inicialmente, muito mais satisfatória do que a tentativas feitas para resolver o problema perene do mal por escritores que trabalham dentro das tradições teístas principais do judaísmo, cristianismo e islamismo. Kaufman, pensamos, também está correto ao destacar a falta de análise crítica dada pelos filósofos da religião contemporâneos (analíticos ou anglo-americanos) à teoria do carma, pelo menos em comparação com o volumoso corpo de trabalhos produzidos nos últimos anos sobre o problema teísta do mal. O recente artigo de Kaufman nesta revista, portanto, é bem-vindo como um passo para corrigir esse desequilíbrio na literatura, e no processo que contribui para remover o viés teísta ocidental de grande parte da filosofia da religião contemporânea. Por outro lado, pensamos que Kaufman infelizmente fez pouco para promover o entendimento geral da doutrina do carma e a maneira como essa doutrina é apresentada como uma resposta ao problema do mal. Kaufman oferece seis objeções à teoria do carma. Acreditamos não apenas que todas essas objeções falham em seu objetivo declarado, mas que a forma de proceder de Kaufman, sua metodologia, ajuda a explicar por que suas críticas à teoria do carma não são bem-sucedidas.

Theodicy, the enterprise of searching for greater goods that might plausibly justify God’s permission of evil, is often criticized on the grounds that the project has systematically failed to unearth any such goods. But theodicists also face a deeper challenge, one that places under question the very attempt to look for any morally sufficient reasons God might have for creating a world littered with evil. This ‘anti-theodical’ view argues that theists (and non-theists) ought to reject, primarily for moral reasons, the project of ‘justifying the ways of God to men’. Unfortunately, this view has not received the serious attention it deserves, particularly in analytic philosophy of religion. Taking my cues from such anti-theodicists as Kenneth Surin, D.Z. Phillips and Dostoyevsky’s Ivan Karamazov, I defend several reasons for holding that the way of thinking about God and evil enshrined in theodical discourse can only add to the world’s evils, not remove or illuminate them.

2007 by University of Hawai‘i Press 533 religions, but it clearly has no place within nontheistic religions. That is why Barry Whitney’s comprehensive bibliography on theodicy has so few entries relating to the doctrine of karma (Whitney 1993).3 Kaufman is not unaware of this problem, but states in response that ‘‘it would be a great mistake to insist on an unnecessarily narrow formulation of the problem of evil, in particular one that assumes an ethical monotheist religion’’ (p. 17). However, this is to confuse the project of offering a theodicy with the much broader project of offering a response to the problem of evil. Although a theodicy can be offered as a solution to the theistic problem of evil, it may be of little or no use in relation to other varieties of the problem of evil. It would be more appropriate, therefore, to speak of karma as an explanatory account of the existence of evil and suffering, rather than as a theodicy or a moral justification for the actions of a benevolent God.4 Second, Kaufman conceives of the doctrine of karma not only as a theodicy, but also as a ‘theory’ in the sense of a fully developed philosophical account of the presence of evil, or, as he puts it, ‘‘a complete, systematic theory of the origins and explanation...

God is thought of as hidden in at least two ways. Firstly, God's reasons for permitting evil, particularly instances of horrendous evil, are often thought to be inscrutable or beyond our ken. Secondly, and perhaps more problematically, God's very existence and love or concern for us is often thought to be hidden from us (or, at least, from many of us on many occasions). But if we assume, as seems most plausible, that God's reasons for permitting evil will (in many, if not most, instances) be impossible for us to comprehend, would we not expect a loving God to at least make his existence or love sufficiently clear to us so that we would know that there is some good, albeit inscrutable, reason why we (or others) are permitted to suffer? In this paper I examine John Hick's influential response to this question, a response predicated on the notion of ‘epistemic distance’: God must remain epistemically distant and hence hidden from us so as to preserve our free will. Commentators of Hick's work, however, disagree as to whether the kind of free will that is thought to be made possible by epistemic distance is the freedom to believe that God exists, or the freedom to choose between good and evil, or the freedom to enter into a personal relationship with God. I argue that it is only the last of these three varieties of free will that Hick has in mind. But this kind of freedom, I go on to argue, does not necessitate an epistemically distant God, and so the problem of divine hiddenness remains unsolved.

In this exchange, Peter Coghlan and Nick Trakakis discuss the problem of natural evil in the light of the recent Asian tsunami disaster. The exchange begins with an extract from a newspaper article written by Coghlan on the tsunami, followed by three rounds of replies and counter-replies, and ending with some final comments from Trakakis. While critical of any attempt to show that human life is good overall despite its natural evils, Coghlan argues that instances of natural evil, even horrific ones, can be justified as the unavoidable by-product of a natural system on which human life and culture depends. Trakakis, however, rejects this view, counselling instead a degree of skepticism about our ability to construct a plausible theodicy for horrific evil.

I begin my third reply by answering some of the criticisms raised by Tierno against theodical attempts to account for the pervasiveness of moral evil. I then take the discussion to a meta-philosophical level, where I question the very way of thinking about God and evil implicit in Tierno’s critique and in much contemporary philosophy of religion.

This paper examines an evidential argument from evil recently defended by William Rowe, one that differs significantly from the kind of evidential argument Rowe has become renowned for defending. After providing a brief outline of Rowe’s new argument, I contest its seemingly uncontestable premise that our world is not the best world God could have created. I then engage in a lengthier discussion of the other key premise in Rowe’s argument, viz., the Leibnizian premise that any world created by God must be the best world God can create. In particular, I discuss the criticisms raised against this premise by William Wainwright as well as Rowe’s attempt to meet these criticisms. The Wainwright-Rowe exchange, I argue, highlights some insuperable difficulties in Rowe’s challenge to theism.

In this reply I argue that Durston's defence of his argument from the complexity of history ought to be unacceptable to the theist as it undermines not only common theistic attitudes towards God, such as gratitude and praise, but also the rationality of our ordinary moral practices.