Материал: The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion by John Hinnells

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two assumed premises/assumptions appear to be these: (a) an omnipotent God could create any world, and (b) an omnibenevolent God would prefer a world without evil over a world with evil. Given these two claims, (1) and (2) would be logically incompatible. However, it turns out that

(a) and (b) need not be true, even on a classical theistic account. It could be that a world which has creatures with free will is more valuable than a world which has no free creatures. And it could be that such free creatures cannot be caused or determined to do only what is morally right and good – even by God. If this is so, in order for God to create beings who are capable of moral good, God had to create beings who are capable of moral evil as well. If this scenario is a logical possibility (and it seems to be so), then assumption (a) is not necessarily true: God cannot create just any world. Furthermore, assumption (b) is not necessarily true either. For all we know, God could use evil to achieve some good end. As long as (a) and (b) are possibly false, the conclusion of the argument is no longer necessarily true, and so it loses its deductive force. This response to the logical argument from evil is called a defense, which is distinguished from a theodicy. A defense is an attempt to demonstrate that anti-theistic arguments from evil, such as the one just mentioned, are unsuccessful on their own terms. A theodicy, on the other hand, is an attempt to justify God given the evil in the world. Both defenses and theodicies have been used by theists in responding to the various problems of evil.

However, even granting that the logical problem of evil has been rebutted, this does not solve every problem related to evil for the theist. One of the most discussed problems in recent times is the evidential problem of evil in which it is argued that the vast amount and horrific nature of the many evils which exist make it unlikely or improbable that an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God exists.

When assessing arguments of this sort, some important questions for consideration are these: what is the claim probable or improbable with respect to? And what is the relevant background information with respect to the claim? For example, the plausibility of the claim “God’s existence is improbable with respect to the evil in the world” considered alone may well be very different from the plausibility of the claim “God’s existence is improbable with respect to the evil in the world” when considered in conjunction with, say, one or more of the arguments for God’s existence noted earlier. Furthermore, the theist can offer other hypotheses which may raise the probability of evil given God’s existence. For example, the major theistic traditions affirm the belief that God’s purposes are not restricted to this earthly life but extend on into an afterlife as well. In this case, there is further opportunity for God to bring moral good out of the many kinds and varieties of evil in this life. Thus the full scope of the considerations and evidences for and against theism may well raise the probability of God’s existence above that of taking into account only a part.

Besides theistic considerations of evil, non-theistic religions have also offered accounts of its nature and existence, specifically with respect to suffering, and for Hindus and Buddhists these considerations are rooted in karma and reincarnation. In its popular formulations, reincarnation is the view that the conscious self transmigrates from one physical body to the next after death. Each human being has lived former lives, perhaps as another human being or maybe even as another kind of organism. Reincarnation is connected to the doctrine of karma. Karma (Sanskrit for “deed” or “action”), as typically understood within Hinduism and Buddhism, is a concept of cause and effect in which all actions are shaping past, present, and future events. It is, in effect, the idea that one reaps the good and bad consequences of her or his actions, either in this life or in another.

Those who affirm reincarnation and karma often point to a difficulty they see with the theistic religions: it seems exceedingly unfair that one child is born healthy into a wealthy,

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loving family, for example, whereas another child is born sickly into a poor, cruel environment. If there is a Creator God who brought these two persons into the world, such a God seems to be unloving and unjust. However, if the two children are reaping the consequences of actions they performed in previous lives, this seems to provide a justification for the inequalities. The effect of one’s karma determines the circumstances of our past, present, and future lives; we reap what we sow.

A number of objections have also been raised against the doctrine of karma. For one, does it really offer a plausible explanation for the inequalities found in this life? According to the karmic law of cause and effect, a person’s present life circumstances are explained by her actions in a previous life. And her life circumstances in that life are explained by her life circumstances in a life previous to that one. And so on indefinitely. So the solution we hoped for regarding inequalities seems to never come to an end; it ends up being relegated to the dustbins of the infinite past. Furthermore, does it really seem fair that when a person who has lived a long life dies and is reincarnated, she must start all over again as a baby with her maturity, life experiences, wisdom, and memories completely gone? As with the theistic replies to evil, they may be helpful at some level, but they nevertheless leave one with less than complete solutions to the variety of problems of evil.

The field of philosophy of religion is flourishing and expanding in new and exciting directions. Beyond those areas noted, there are many other significant currents emerging and developing as well, including feminist and continental approaches to philosophy of religion, emphases on religion and the environment, race and ethnicity, science and faith, religious experience, and religious rites.

Bibliography

Adams, Marilyn McCord. Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999.

A careful analysis of evil and the goodness of God.

Anderson, Pamela Sue. A Feminist Philosophy of Religion: The Rationality and Myths of Religious Belief. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.

A prolegomenon to feminist philosophy of religion in the Anglo-American context.

Anselm of Canterbury ([1077–1078] 1962) St. Anselm: Basic Writings. LaSalle, IL: Open Court Publishing.

Includes Anselm’s Proslogium, which contains his famous ontological argument.

Bowker, John. Problems of Suffering in Religions of the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.

An elucidation and comparison of the varying perspectives of evil and suffering as understood within the world religions.

Craig, William Lane. The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1980.

Analyzes the cosmological arguments of thirteen major proponents.

Davis, Stephen T. Christian Philosophical Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Discusses central topics in philosophical theology, including creation, revelation, the Incarnation, resurrection, redemption, karma and Grace.

Everitt, Nicholas. The Non-Existence of God, London: Routledge, 2004.

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Hume, David. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Second edition. Richard H. Popkin, ed. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 1998.

A classic critique of the design argument.

Meister, Chad. Introducing Philosophy of Religion. London: Routledge, 2009.

A concise introduction to many of the central topics in philosophy of religion; includes diagrams, charts, and other pedagogical features.

Taliaferro, Charles. Evidence and Faith: Philosophy and Religion since the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

An excellent and accessible overview of philosophy of religion from the modern period to the present; focuses on developing views of faith and evidence.

Chapter 8

Religious studies

Donald Wiebe

The problematic idea of religious studies

Including the notion of ‘religious studies’ as one discipline among many for description and analysis in a volume like this suggests that there is broad agreement among those who study religion in the modern Western university as to the meaning of the term. Unfortunately, this is not the case. There is a vast literature committed to providing an understanding of the nature and value of the enterprise, but, as I shall show, there is little agreement to be found among those who have put their hand to the task. Not only is the term ‘religious studies’ ambiguous with respect to the enterprise it designates, but the very idea of ‘a discipline’ is itself vigorously contested; and it is quite obvious that whether or not religious studies can justifiably be called a discipline depends wholly upon the understanding of ‘discipline’, which is operative. As one scholar has put it, the term is used with more passion than precision (Benson 1987: 91). There is, moreover, considerable debate about the nature of the modern university within which ‘religious studies’ as ‘a field of study’ exists, so that to equate ‘religious studies’ with ‘the academic study of religion’ provides little – if any – clarification as to the nature or structure of this venture beyond information about its institutional location. Indeed, depending upon the assumptions one makes about the raison d’être of the modern university, there is no guarantee that ‘religious studies’ as ‘the academic study of religion’ can even be clearly differentiated from the scholarly study of religion carried on in other institutions, including religious institutions. It is no surprise, therefore, that some who have attempted to set out the meaning of the term ‘religious studies’ have remarked that perhaps the clearest thing that can be said about it is that it ‘appears to be the designation of choice for the academic study of religion in the college and university setting’ (Olson 1990a: 549). There is, perhaps, equal agreement that this designation for the study of religion, ‘legitimated’ by virtue of inclusion in the curriculum of the university, came into use only after the Second World War; primarily since the 1960s. Providing a singular, overarching definition of ‘religious studies’ as it is carried out in the modern university, therefore, is hardly possible; at the very least, such an exercise is unlikely to be either persuasive or helpful. To understand ‘religious studies’ is to understand the diverse and nuanced way in which the term is used. And in a sense, one must follow the principle that to understand a concept it is important to be familiar with its history. This is not to say that no generalization is possible, but it does require that a thorough knowledge of the debate over the use of the term is essential before proposing one use of the concept over another. Much of this essay, therefore, will consist of a critical examination of the diverse ways in which the notion is