Perkins Colloquium

October 27, 3:30pm - 5:30pm
Mānoa Campus, Sakamaki Hall C-308 Add to Calendar

The Problem of Evil Beyond Theism The classical problem of evil centers on a question about God: if God is all powerful and perfectly good, why is the world God creates imperfect? That is, why would such a God allow the existence of evil?

In the paper, I argue that this question should be seen as just one particular manifestation of a broader issue. Across almost all world religions, one finds the claim that good people end up rewarded and bad people are punished. This claim has no intrinsic connection to theism, as it can be made in terms of karma or even in terms of natural causality.

If we take the empirical basis of the problem of evil to be the fact that that bad things sometimes happen to good people or that bad people sometimes end up with flourishing lives, then this problem exists for many religions and in many cultural contexts.

This paper attempts to describe and categorize responses to this basic problem across a number of traditions, particularly in Chinese philosophy. I argue that the problem of evil ultimately expresses the tension between human values and the fact that the world seems indifferent to them.

Everyone is welcome to attend. For disability access information, please call 956-8649.


Ticket Information
Free

Event Sponsor
Philosophy Department, Mānoa Campus

More Information
Arindam Chakrabarti, (808) 956-8649, philo@hawaii.edu, http://hawaii.edu/phil/

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