Both Red and Green but Religiously Right: Coping with Evil in a Religion of Nature

Abstract

The problem of evil of which Mary Midgley speaks is not just the rela tively narrow theoretical one familiar to us in the West of how conceptu ally to reconcile an alleged absolute goodness and power of God with the rampant evil in the world, but the much broader existential one, applicable everywhere, of how to interpret, respond to, and cope with the presence and power of evil in daily life. It is the problem of how to find courage and strength in the face of the relentless perils, sufferings, and losses experienced on an everyday basis by the world's creatures, and with full awareness of the threat of abrupt calamities that can wreak havoc in the natural world and pose dire threats to human well-being. This existential problem of evil is also posed by the struggle with dark propensities to evil that lurk within every human breast, are entrenched in the institutions of human societies, and can and frequently do cause incalculable and pervasive harm for humans, for nonhuman forms of life, or for the natural environment as a whole. Evils or threats and tendencies to evil menace us from without and within, and if powerfully experienced or deeply reflected upon, they have the potential to reduce us to hopelessness and despair. A business of all religions?if not, as I firmly believe, their principal business?is to point the way beyond this brooding hopelessness and despair and to provide us with visions, goals, and resources to live positive and meaningful lives. We live in a world of natural laws. Were it not so, there would be no world and no we. There would be only chaos. Not only do such laws provide the large measure of stability, predictability, and dependability without which no creature could exist or have hope of survival, but natural laws provide a neces