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Only Way Theodicy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 March 2020
This chapter is focused on versions of Only Way Theodicy, according to which Darwinian evolution was the only means by which God could have created a sufficiently valuable world. In short, creation by Darwinian means was the only way of world making open to God. The author gives reasons for skepticism towards this “only-way” intuition about God and creation. He then considers several prominent examples of the approach, and he concludes that none of them identifies evolutionary goods that either outweigh or defeat the evolutionary evils that scientists have unveiled. However, the evolutionary goods identified do generate partial justification for evolutionary evils, and they should be taken into serious account in the controversy. Further, he proposes that one version of this theodicy – John Haught’s version – is more promising than the others, for it calls attention to aesthetic properties of evolution that can become part of a different sort of theodicy, not built on an “only-way” ethical intuition, but rather on an aesthetic analogue for God.
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