Animal Suffering and the Problem of Evil - Tapa dura

Animal Suffering & the Problem of Evil really is a very clever work, cleverly structured and cleverly delivered. And so, this readers jolting first impression of the incredible impossibility of the task Hoggard Creegan had set for herself became tempered towards a realisation of the infinite possibility that she points to in her explorations of evolutionary history, the workings of God, and the shadows that are shot through, or borrowing from Hoggard Creegans quotation of Haught, his beautifully articulated phrasing, seeded deep in its fertile subsoil with limitless possibility (106). There is vital, new ground here. (Yael Klangwisan, Laidlaw College)

For such a heavy topic the book itself is remarkably concise and lucid. (Andrew Sheperd, Stimulus)

Recommended. (C.A. Barnsley, CHOICE)

Nicola Hoggard Creegan offers a compelling examination of the problem of evil in the context of animal suffering, disease, and extinction and the violence of the evolutionary process. Using the parable of the wheat and the tares as a hermeneutical lens for understanding the tragedy and beauty of evolutionary history, she shows how evolutionary theory has deconstructed the primary theodicy of historic Christianity―-the Adamic fall―-while scientific research on animals has increased appreciation of animal sentience and capacity for suffering.

Animal Suffering and the Problem of Evil responds to this new theodic challenge. Hoggard Creegan argues that nature can be understood as an interrelated mix of the perfect and the corrupted: the wheat and the tares. At times the good is glimpsed, but never easily nor unequivocally. She then argues that humans are not to blame for all evil because so much evil preceded human becoming. Finally, she demonstrates that faith requires a confidence in the visibility of the work of God in nature, regardless of how infinitely subtle and almost hidden it is, affirming that there are ways of perceiving the evolutionary process beyond that 'nature is red in tooth and claw.'