The Meaning of Theodicy

Since G. W. Leibniz transliterated the fusion of two Greek words “Θεός” (God) and “δίκη” (justice) into French as théodicée, and used the term as a philosophical vindication of God, variations on this core sense have developed over time broadly taking the meaning of defending God's power and justice in the face of evil. Often, in the contemporary philosophy of religion literature, a general distinction is made between a defense and a theodicy where the former is an argument establishing the logical compatibility between evil and God (however implausible that argument really is) and the latter is an overarching framework with which to make sense of and explain in general (or specific) terms the reasons behind the adverse material and experiential outcomes generated by evil in the world (Chowdhury 2021, pp. 22–24). Michael Murray and Michael Rea neatly explain the difference as follows:

The difference between a “defense” (mentioned earlier) and a “theodicy” is roughly this: a theodicy aims to set out a believable and reasonably comprehensive theory about why God might have permitted evil of the amount and variety we find in our world, whereas a defense aims merely to provide a possible reason – without concern for its believability – why God might permit evil. A defense, in other words, aims just at demonstrating the possibility of God's coexisting with evil, whereas theodicy aims at something like a full justification for God's permission of evil. (Murray & Rea 2008, 170)

In light of this broad meaning of theodicy, the sense in which I am using “evolutionary theodicy” (ET) in the article is simply an extension of that broad meaning:

(ET) An evolutionary theodicy is an account that attempts to adequately explain how the evolutionary problem of evil is compatible with ‘God’ as defined by a system of theology T where the account meets a set of doctrinal, hermeneutical, axiological and doxological (or other) criteria C as defined by, derived from and consistent with the axioms of that theology.

On the meaning of “evolutionary problem of evil” I am referring to in ET, see “The Evolutionary Problem of Evil” below. By “system of theology” I am broadly referring to a body of accepted and established beliefs and teachings considered to be internally consistent and coherent by an adherent either inferred via rational reflection (like logical entailments of certain beliefs) or derived from the agreed on authoritative sources of a theology (or a combination of both). By “criterion” I simply mean the set of relevant and significant derivatives like the doctrines, ideas, ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, hermeneutics, and so on that are derived from and are expressions of the underlying body of beliefs and teachings of the respective system of theology. I call an ET “thin” if C in T is weakly met and call it “thick” if C in T is robustly met. Let me briefly unpack this ET distinction of thin and thick. Suppose when it comes to disability theodicies (giving reasons why it is that God allows persons to be afflicted with specific mental and physical challenges) that I adopt a Sunnī theological system. Suppose as well that I offer divine retribution as an explanation for why it is that persons of disability suffer such challenges and then argue that this explanation is consistent with Qur’ānic verses like Q. 4:79, “whatever good comes to you is from God but what comes to you of evil is from your own selves.” Suppose further that I reason as follows: If God punishes people for doing bad acts like sins and my disability is clearly something bad, then my disability must be God's way of punishing me (Chowdhury 2021, 34–38). In this instance, I may be giving a general interpretation and a set of inferences that seems congruent with a specific theological doctrine or moral principle (like sins are punished by God); but it would not be a rigorous one as it fails to reflect other fundamental theological doctrines or moral principles like disability being explained as a test, or trial, or a means of enabling character‐building, virtue‐exemplification, attaining divine proximity, is cognitively therapeutic, serves a greater‐good, is redemptive and a host of other possible explanations that have numerous Qur’ānic verses and Prophetic ḥadīths establishing them (Chowdhury 2021, 39–66). So, thin theodicies are reductively simplistic and fail to capture a broader ambit of doctrines, notions, principles, and other derivatives within the theological system. This is different from a thick theodicy that does meet more theological elements and components that is nuanced and complex as well as thorough in its explanation.

If we take ET and apply it to the case of my proposed evolutionary theodicies for Muslim theists discussed in detail below (section “Evolutionary Theodicies”), such that we could call them “Islamic” (the adjective to be explained shortly) evolutionary theodicies, it would be defined in general terms as: how it is that––given God's selection of evolution––a Muslim explains the possible reasons behind why or attempts to makes sense of the magnitude of inescapable suffering, pain, predation, death, waste, pestilence, parasitism, selfishness, disaster, blindness, and extinction inherent in nature are properly reconciled with the characterization of a transcendent, absolutely powerful, knowledgeable, loving, just, and compassionate Being ³ as represented or captured in the Qur’ān and Ḥadīth—the foundational sources of Islam—and that reconciliation is consistent with the fundamental theological doctrines inferred from the revealed data of the Qur’ān and Ḥadīth. It is primarily because of this description that is behind the reason why I may add the adjective “Islamic” to qualify the theodicies I am proposing. Another reason for adding “Islamic” (albeit in a more loose way) is if a particular theodicy can be found in or derived from the ideas, precepts, beliefs, and arguments of a specific Muslim theologian, philosopher, or thinker. If this appellation of “Islamic” is seen as redundant or not entirely justified, dispensing with it would make no difference to the theodicies. My claim is only that the theodicies I am proposing have conceptual basis within or genealogy to the revelatory sources of Islam (my focus being on the Qur’ān) and the axioms of a system of theology based on these sources and not that they are necessarily uniquely Islamic because other religious traditions may have identical or overlapping theodicies (cf. Akbas 2013).

Given this description of ET applied to the Islamic theological context, I am assuming—contrary to antitheodicists ⁴ —that theodicy is a viable theological enterprise and a positive undertaking. I am also assuming that theodicies must not be mere abstract philosophizing involving far‐fetched logical thought‐exercises; rather, they must be a body of explanations that restore coherence in the destabilizing face of evil in a way that is meaning‐making. By “meaning‐making” I broadly mean how some explanation—in this case theodicies—offers a framework by which to conceptualize and emotionally construe instances of evil and suffering so they are intelligible and congruent with on the one hand axiological principles espoused by a sacred scripture and human experience of the world. This complex process is referred to by Mark Scott as “navigation,” a metaphor being a ship in a violent storm attempting to navigate the trying waters (Scott 2012, 8–22). In this context, the treacherous water is the evolutionary problem of evil, the ship is the religious tradition of Islam and the understanding that attempts to “navigate” the waters are the various theodicies based on its theological system. Arguably, to what extent meaning‐making can be achieved by theodicies is a live debate and one that cannot be entertained here but it remains a desideratum.

The Evolutionary Problem of Evil

With the definition of an ET thus outlined, it is necessary to explain the very issue at hand being addressed by the theodicy. The evolutionary problem of evil—sometimes dubbed the “Darwinian problem of evil” after Charles Darwin (1809–1882), or more generally the problem of natural evil—is a subset of the larger intractable and perplexing question of the Problem of Evil (Schneider 2020, 1–55). Broadly, philosophers and theologians have stated that the Problem of Evil (see the numerous articles in McBrayer & Howard‐Snyder 2013) is an attempt to explain the alleged incompatibility between the following statements:

• 1.

  God is an absolutely powerful, all‐knowing, and benevolent being.

• 2.

  Evil exists.

This formulation has its clear antecedent in Islamic theological discussions. Abū Ḥāmid al‐Ghazālī (d. 505/1111), for example, framed the problem as follows:

Perhaps you will ask, “What is the meaning of God's being ‘compassionate’ (raḥīm) and ‘the most compassionate of the compassionate’ (arḥam al‐rāḥimīn)? A compassionate person does not see someone afflicted, injured, tormented, and ill without rushing to remove that from him, if he is able to remove it. Now God is able to ward off every misfortune and to avert all poverty and grief and to remove every sickness and every injury. But the world overflows with sicknesses, tribulations, and calamities. He is able to remove all of them and yet, He leaves His servants in travail to disasters and misfortunes.” (al‐Ghazālī 2003, 64, translated in Ormsby 1984, 252; cf. al‐Ghazālī 1992, 55) ⁵

Although my aim here is neither to present nor assess how this alleged incompatibility of evil and suffering with core Divine attributes in its various logical formulations and polemical permutations has been addressed by Muslim scholars and contemporary theists alike, it is worth noting that philosophers (particularly atheist ones) have generally recognized that the logical (or formal) challenge of the problem of evil has been met with considerable sophistication and success by philosophical theists (owing to among others Plantinga 1974, 7–58; although on this, see Moore, 2017). This optimistic conclusion, many argue, is by no means automatically extendable to the Darwinian problem of evil that specifically charges the theist with explaining why God has allowed immense and continuous pain and suffering and much more in the biosphere through natural selection before there were any human beings (Stewart‐Williams 2010, 103–27). It must be noted, however, that Darwin's anguish and outrage had antecedent echoes within early Islamic literature. The fifth‐century Hijrī/eleventh‐century CE Syrian poet and sceptic Abū ’l‐Aʿlā al‐Maʿarrī (d. 449/1057), for example, raised the problem of God's lack of apparent compassion and mercy in failing to intervene in the predatory acts of stronger animals over weaker ones. He decries:

Since it is stated that the creator is merciful and compassionate, why does the lion spring to attack gentle creatures that are neither harmful nor robust? And how many have perished through snakebite, including many famous people! (Why) do hawk and falcon swoop upon the grain‐gleaning bird? The grouse leaves her thirsting chicks and sets out early to reach water which she would carry to them in her craw, but a hawk finds her far from them and devours her. So her chicks perish of thirst. (Yāqūt 1993, 1:343‐344, and translated in Ormsby 1984, 26) ⁶

Al‐Maʿarrī is known to have abandoned eating meat for forty years and defended at length the prohibition of causing nonhuman animals pain and suffering, arguing that it defied divine wisdom (ḥikma) to permit their consumption or to treat them unethically (Yāqūt 1993, 1:295‐357). Thus, the problem was acutely felt even within discussions during the classical period of Islamic theology and literature. ⁷ When Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859, in it he characterized the natural world as replete with the struggle for existence (echoing al‐Maʿarrī’s observation) that included waste, predation, selfishness, suffering, death, and even extinction of species. He suggested that the progressive development from brute man to intelligent creatures occurred in the wake of a long antecedent arc of supposedly meaningless death and suffering in nature. This conclusion came in the context of a picture of the natural world drawn up by geologists and biologists of the nineteenth century that increasingly challenged the depiction of a God who designed creation held in the prior two centuries (Chowdhury 2021, 100–1). This emerging shift in the natural sciences led Darwin himself to eventually question not the existence of God per se but the idea of God as wise Creator (Attfield 2006, 121–22; Stewart‐Williams 2010, 54–72). He wrote to a friend the Harvard botanist Asa Gray (d. 1888) shortly after going public with his theory:

There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Icheumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that the cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed. (Darwin 1985, 8 and 224 cited in Ruse 2017, 89. On the correspondence between Darwin and Gray see Sollereder 2010, 417–32)

Darwin could not fathom why a wise and benevolent being would factor into His providential plan a process that was so destructive and wasteful. ⁸ Elsewhere in his autobiography he bemoans, “a being so powerful and so full of knowledge as a God who could create the universe, is to our finite minds omnipotent and omniscient, and it revolts our understanding to suppose that his benevolence is not unbounded, for what advantage can there be in the sufferings of millions of the lower animals throughout almost endless time?” (Barlow 1958, 90). Darwin as a result descended into a form of skeptical deism relegating God's role in the cosmos to the periphery (Corey 2000, 79; Guessoum 2011, 287). Darwin's maneuver to distance God from the evil in nature was an inevitable outcome of his alienation from the notion of a wise, providential and intelligent God. Cornelius Hunter explains how “positing natural selection operating in an unguided fashion on natural biological diversity was Darwin's unique solution.” Thus, “Darwin's theory of evolution was very much a solution to the problem of natural evil ‐ a theodicy.” In other words, “Darwin solved the problem by coming up with a natural law that he argued could account for evil. Natural selection, operating blindly on a pool of biological diversity, according to Darwin, could produce nature's carnage and waste.” This, “theodicy” however, was to have an implication like “God was unnecessary,” that is, “one could still believe in God, but not in God's providence.” By “separating God from creation and its evils meant that God could have no direct influence or control over the world.” He may have created the world, but since its creation, it “has run according to impersonal natural laws that may now and then produce natural evil” (Hunter 2001, 11–18). Given this, committed theists who believe in evolution as a fact about the world (evolutionary theists) are challenged by the Darwinian problem of evil in terms of why a benevolent God would allow so much pain, suffering, and death to nonhuman sentient creatures in nature and whether the biological evolutionary processes were necessary to serve the wise purposes God had for these creatures and indeed human beings when they finally emerged because of the incredible waste and horror that arises from it (Keltz 2020, 1–33; Schneider 2020, 1–47; Southgate 2008, 1–17). Philosopher of biology David Hull succinctly captures the problem in this way:

The problem that biological evolution poses for natural theologians is the sort of God that a darwinian version of evolution implies . . . The evolutionary process is rife with happenstance, contingency, incredible waste, death, pain and horror . . . Whatever the God implied by evolutionary theory and the data of natural history may be like, He is not the Protestant God of waste not, want not. He is also not a loving God who cares about His productions. He is not even the awful God portrayed in the book of Job. The God of the Galápagos is careless, wasteful, indifferent, almost diabolical. He is certainly not the sort of God to whom anyone would be inclined to pray. (1991, 485–86)

If this is the case, then what ultimate restitution is there for this suffering, death and waste? Hull's remark highlights a core cluster of charges that bring out a deep tension between God as a benevolent, powerful, wise, and just Creator with the reality of Darwinian evolution. In the next section, I will formulate two arguments to formally frame the evolutionary problem of evil for the Muslim theist and then propose responses to them in the section “Evolutionary Theodicies.” Let me first turn to the arguments.

Two Arguments for the Evolutionary Problem of Evil

Having set out the broad thrust of the evolutionary problem of evil in the previous section, I will state two deductive arguments that attempt to undermine the compatibility between God as absolutely powerful, loving, all‐knowing, merciful, wise, and just with the existence of evolutionary evil. They are:

1. The Argument from No Disvalues (AND):

• 1.

  If God is a benevolent and value‐loving Creator, He would not create a world containing E‐disvalues.

• 2.

  This world contains immense E‐disvalue.

• 3.

  Therefore, God is not a benevolent and value‐loving Creator.

2. The Argument from Outweighing Values (AOV):

• 1.

  If God is a benevolent and value‐loving Creator, He would desire to create a world outweighed by value.

• 2.

  This world contains immense E‐disvalue that outweighs any value.

• 3.

  Therefore, God is not a benevolent and value‐loving Creator.

According to both arguments, specific disvalues arise from God's creation of the world and His selection of evolution through natural selection. By “disvalues” it is generally meant perceived negative facts, a lack of good or bad consequence arising from something or a depreciated state of affairs. In this evolutionary context, it includes facts such as mass extinction, predation, death, pestilence, selfishness, suffering, parasitism, and unnecessary waste. I have called these facts “evolutionary disvalues” or “E‐disvalues” for short. These E‐disvalues seem incompatible with a characterization of a deity worthy of total worship—especially a deity who desires value (contrary to disvalue defined above) such as beauty, goodness, ingenuity (aesthetic values), flourishing, complexity, diversity, efficiency, and order (systemic values) or instruction, inspiration, guidance, and illumination (pedagogical values). AND makes the categorical claim that God would not have any reason to create a world with E‐disvalues and so when we observe the natural world and do find a huge distribution of such disvalues, it must mean God is not a value‐loving Creator of the world. Thus, it would perhaps have been better for God not to have created the world at all via evolution than to have created it as there would not be any justifiable reason for why He would. We could state the additional premise to AND as:

• (2a)

  There would be no justifiable reason a benevolent and value‐loving Creator would have for allowing E‐disvalues in the world.

Assumption (2a) is about divine motives. God's action must not be guided by anything that would result in bad but the natural world appears replete with bad states of affairs for creatures. AOV on the other hand makes less of a categorical claim; it states that God in creating the world, would desire to enable values to outweigh disvalues but by observing the natural world we can only infer and conclude that the quantity, profusion, and intensity of E‐disvalues far outweigh any values. Thus, if God really did want good for all His creatures in nature, He would also want to create a world where more of that good was procured. We could state the assumption for this argument as follows:

• (1b)

  A benevolent and value‐loving Creator would want to prefer a world with outweighing values in order to optimize the goods for creatures than a world that does not.

Indeed, (1b) assumes a welfare model of divine action in that God's actions are guided by optimization of welfare or goods in creatures. Hence, if creaturely goods are procured by systemic, aesthetic, and pedagogical values, then preferring more of those values must mean more goods are optimized for creatures. Yet, it is the contrary that appears to be observed in nature. Therefore, both arguments bring into question divine goodness and fairness on the basis of the observed reality of disvalue brought about in the natural world. ⁹ Undoubtedly, in addition to (2a) and (1ʹb) there can be (and are) other plausible assumptions to both arguments but it will not be possible to survey the entire scope of these assumptions as that would require a monograph in itself. For the purposes of this article, I will restrict by responses both with their respective assumptions (2a) and (1ʹb).

Educative Theodicy

The first of the three theodicies is a type of educative theodicy. This kind of theodicy explains how evils such as pain and suffering are permitted by God in order to allow understandings to be acquired by human beings that they would not have otherwise gained. In the context of the evolutionary problem of evil, God's justification for creating a world permitting E‐disvalues is for specific theologically educative ends like allowing human beings to attain a better understanding of God's “beautiful names” (asmā’ Allāh al‐ḥusnā) so that they can have an enriched and informed appreciation of His character and better realisation of His greatness and worthiness of worship leading to Him being properly praised and glorified and His commandments implemented. Proper love, worship, obedience, and submission to God is—according to the Qur’ān—the raison dētre for human beings existing (Q. 51:56 and al‐Māwardī 1992, 5:375). As an example, in order for human beings to better understand dimensions of God's names like al‐bāri’ (the Producer), al‐ḥakīm (the Wise), al‐khāliq (the Creator), al‐muḥyī (the Life‐giver), al‐mumīt (the Life‐taker), al‐muṣawwir (the Fashioner), and al‐razzāq (the Sustainer) and how they are interrelated (on these names see al‐Ghazālī 1992, index), they require exemplifications of those names. E‐disvalues may be a means by which glimpses or facets of these names of God are brought to light. The exemplification (and thereby appreciation) is captured through disvalues securing theological values (Zeni 2020, 219–22, 333–38). So long as this is a plausible reason, the claim in AND above that God would not want to create a world with E‐disvalues and the assumption that He would have no justifying reason to is just too strong to rule out any counterexamples. Let me take the example of the E‐disvalue of biological death to explain the point further. God created the world ex nihilo and set up its ecological systems based on a plan and originated the evolutionary processes for life to emerge and end. Each item of creation has been determined according to specifically endowed forms, properties, and configurations based on unimaginable ingenuity and aesthetic inventiveness with an overall wise purpose governing this creative and sustaining activity. These realities and phenomena provoke utter wonder, awe, and admiration in us and when linked to contemplating how God's names relate meaningfully to them, we gain a deeper understanding of their significance and how they point toward and provide for the conceptual apparatus to construct an idea of God's character so we can understand Him and come to know Him. When we examine death within the evolutionary purview, for example, we can appreciate God's wisdom, power, and imagination in how His knowledge and judgment conceives of a specific natural process to occur with its intended effects and ends and His power enables it. Biological species have evolved anatomically (in their organs, instincts, and structures) to consume other creatures. This cycle involving predators nourishing themselves and their offspring upholds the system in nature for the prolongation and diversification of life. Rolston famously described how “the cougar's fang has carved the limbs of the fleet‐footed deer, and vice versa” (2006, 134). Each creature in the biosphere not only contributes energy and resources to the entire ecosystem when it perishes, it in fact helps enable its species to reach greater levels of adaptive peak. Rolston suggests that “there are sorts of creation that cannot occur without death, and these include the highest created goods. Death can be meaningfully put into the biological processes as a necessary counterpart to the advancing of life” (2015, 49). Details of this point are further elaborated in the next theodicy. As a point to note here, the understanding that biological behavior is integral to the overall systemic functioning of nonhuman species based on wise‐purposes in God's creation is not an entirely novel idea. Muslim scholars in the past have long acknowledged and wondered at the exquisite and exacting balance in nature and specifically the animal kingdom with all its operational activities (Chowdhury 2021, 92–97). They understood as well how evil may be accounted for by a kind of “theodicy of divine names,” that is, perceived adverse states of affairs are illustrations of or manifestly point toward any number of divine epithets. Ibn Qayyim al‐Jawziyya has written extensively on this notion of evil as purposeful and revealing of God's beautiful names (see al‐Jawziyya 2017, 130–63; Hoover 2010). One statement in his book al‐Shifā’ al‐ʿAlīl for example it reads:

Among [these wise purposes] is that among His names is the Wise (al Ḥakīm). Wise purpose (ḥikma) is among His attributes ‐ Glory be to Him. His wise purpose necessarily entails putting everything in its place, which [place] is not befitting for anything else. [His wise purpose] required creating the opposites and singling out rulings, attributes and particularities for each one of them that were not befitting for any other. Can wise purpose be completed in any other way?! The existence of this kind belongs to the completion of wise purpose just as it belongs to the perfection of power. (Translation from Hoover 2010, 130)

The opposite of life is death and so their complement belongs to God's proper placement of things in the natural world. I will return to Ibn Qayyim below when expounding my aesthetic theodicy. Therefore, it is not valid to claim that God ought not to create a world with E‐disvalues because He could not possibly have any justifying reason to permit them because a counterexample to that is E‐disvalues could be theologically pedagogical—human beings can come to learn and appreciate a relevant set of God's names and thereby come to know Him better and thereby worship Him in a more enriched way.

Ecological Theodicy

The second of the three cohort of theodicies is an ecological theodicy (Attfield 2017, 84–89; Tokarski 2019, 157–74; Wynn 1999, 106–55). On this theodicy model, naturalness (the state of nature “red in tooth and claw”) is ultimately holistically good. E‐disvalues are in fact disguised values. According to the second premise of AOV, E‐disvalues in the world outweigh any values and thus ought not to be created by God with the assumption (1ʹb) that God would prefer a world with outweighing goods over any other. This may be too hasty. It is arguable that value in fact, predominates nature. The Qur’ān explicitly states how God has set up the “balance” (mīzān) in the heavens and the earth—including nature and the environment—and warns human beings not to disrupt this balance (Q.55:7‐9) because it is vulnerable to the adverse consequences arising from human choices, actions, and interventions. The ecological theodicy foregrounds wholes like ecosystems, animal populations, and biotic communities and insists on their balance and proper functioning as overall values served by particular disvalues. The disvalues arising out of the millions of years from evolutionary processes are actually disguised or transmuted values or they are a necessary part of a greater or higher system of value. Extinction, for example, is actually a good. Given the system of natural selection, extinction is necessary in order to enable new species to evolve and for biodiversity in the environment to properly develop. Thus, from the arc of geological history, more than 3.5 billion years, there has been more species arrival than departures (Attfield 2017, 80–81). Parasitism, as another example is widely acknowledged as having an immense human, economic, and conservation toll, but nevertheless their eradication would not be entirely beneficial. For one, parasites account for approximately half or more of the diversity of all living things. Second, there would be highly altered community and ecosystem stability. Third, there would likely be many species’ extinctions. Fourth, there would be a diminished diversity of species traits brought about by sexual reproduction and fifth, there would be loss of transferal of genetic material between species important for facilitating evolutionary change (Holt 2010). Waste is a third example. It might seem from merely a local perspective that most species producing surplus offspring is wasteful. However, this might be a short‐sighted judgment. The surplus offspring when viewed from an ecosystemic context may be a necessary condition for mutational advancement. Another way surplus of the young in species is not wasteful is how the excess margin becomes a sustenance stream for other creatures. The surplus of the rabbit young become food for the coyote. Nature's abundance sustains populations of creatures enabling them to evolve and flourish in their environments (Wynn 1999, 106–7). As a related note, Ibn Qayyim al‐Jawziyya remarked how excess was in fact a sign of God's magnanimity. He comments:

Since His magnanimity and grace are vaster than the needs of the creation, it is inevitable that much of what is existent remains unused. For instance, consider the light of the sun: the well‐being of animals cannot occur without it, yet it shines in many places in excess of where humans and animals are in need of it. It is likewise for the rain, plants and the rest of His blessings. Nevertheless, the presence of even these [excesses] is not devoid of wisdoms, benefits, lessons and proofs. (al‐Jawziyya 2017, 127)

Finally, to recall the problem of predation, death, and suffering are necessary elements in the development of life, that is, its progress and advancement (Kowalsky 2017, 7–9). When a wolf hunts a deer, on one level this is a negative outcome for the deer (death) but on another positive level, it is nourishment for the wolf, keeping it alive. Nothing in this species interaction is lost because the nutrients and energy are transferred from the deer to the wolf. Scaling up a little to the species level, the selective pressures involved in predation arising from the evolutionary mechanism contributes to species development because their interaction in predation helps them acquire skills and techniques contributing to higher values such as species adaptation and prolongation. The deer, for example, may become faster and more agile and in response, the wolf may become more intelligent and cooperative. Scaling up even further, predation may lift the pressure of deer on the environment like allowing plants to regenerate and grow and thereby allow for forms of life to emerge (Tokarski 2019, 158–60). In this way, Rolston describes how evils can be reappreciated as elements in procuring the production of ever greater goods or value like species augmentation, prolongation, or biodiversity (Kowalksi 2006, 145–50). He states:

Overall the myriad individual passages through life and death upgrade the system. Value has to be something more, something opposed to what any individual actor likes or selects, since even struggle and death which are never approved, are ingredients used instrumentally to produce still higher intrinsic values. […] This can seem in morally wild disregard for their individuality, treating each as a means to an end. But the whole system in turn generates more and higher individuality. Problem solving is a function of the system too as it recycles, pulls conflicts into harmony, and redeems life from an ever‐pressing death. (Rolston 1983, 197–98)

Therefore, although there is a perceptible experience of E‐disvalues in the natural world, on reappraisal, there is a greater or holistic good that is ensured based on higher systemic scales, for example, order, stability, and harmony and this broader systemic perspective offers an explanation for such disvalues. A world then with E‐disvalues may be that which is preferred by God because on the higher systemic scales, it secures greater (or perhaps optimal) good for biological creatures (al‐Jawziyya 2017, 125–26).

Aesthetic Theodicy

The final member of the cohort of theodicies I propose is a type of aesthetic theodicy (cf. Tallon 2013; Schneider 2020, 137–63). This kind of theodicy utilizes authors, ideas, works, categories, and values within the discipline of philosophical aesthetics to shed light on evil and God's providence. More specifically, it considers how artistic works (e.g., plays or paintings) and their genres (like tragedy or horror) can illuminate the problem of evil question and enhance and enrich the theodicy discussion (Tallon 2013, 5–14 and 23–28). Aesthetic theodicies foreground aesthetic categories for consideration over moral categories; the latter more generally dominating our discussion, examination, assessment, and resolution of evils. Aesthetic theodicies then demand us to rethink and perceive differently suffering and its place and role and in the context of theology and cause us to see things in a different light. God on this view is analogous to an artist and the world He created is akin to an artefact governed by consideration of the aesthetic. The sense in which I am utilising “aesthetic” for this theodicy (cognizant of the aesthetic theodicy just described) is by taking my cue from Ibn Qayyim al‐Jawziyya's theological deliberations and the aesthetic theory of the ugly of the German philosopher and critical theorist Theodor Adorno (1903–1969). Turning to Ibn Qayyim al‐Jawziyya first, he is perhaps the first pre‐modern Muslim scholar who explicitly and extensively expounds on the possible wise‐purposes behind God creating Iblīs (Satan) and his army (Ibn Qayyim offers 15 arguments) and why that serves moral purposes, that is, it is value‐oriented (al‐Jawziyya 2017, 130–38; Hoover 2010, 127–34). Due to the need for space, I cannot elaborate on the details of Ibn Qayyim al‐Jawziyya's account (for which see Hoover 2010, 113–27). However, the point here to be taken from him is that even with God's creation of Iblīs as a type of metaphysical fulcrum of evil, darkness, ugliness, and accursedness, there are latent goods because Iblīs is integrated into the scope of God's providence for humanity that includes His masterplan of how evil will be ultimately defeated. Ibn Qayyim argues that God's wisdom reveals itself in His creating and enabling value polarity like good and bad, heaven, and hell and light and darkness. This also includes beauty and ugliness (al‐Jawziyya 2017, 131–32; Hoover 2010, 129). Picking up this insight, God's creation of the world, nature and the environment therefore would be like a “double helix” of aesthetic polarities. Each aesthetic “strand”—beauty and ugliness—is intertwined and held together by God's powerful and imaginative decree. The idea of there being duality, pairing, and contrast are clear motifs in the Qur’ān (Q. 36:36). Moving on to Adorno, and again noting that space does not permit me to set out the complex strands of his aesthetic theory, his reflections on the ugly help mediate some insights on the theodicy issue. Adorno in his Aesthetic Theory, attempts at a reconstruction of the European modern art movement. Although his study of beauty prominently figures in his analysis, he also devotes attention to negative aesthetics that includes exploration of the aetiology, function, and significance of the ugly (nonbeautiful) in art. An important strand in Adorno's aesthetic violence of the ugly is that he sees it as something oppositional, that is, either resistant to and a dissent from the notion of manufactured standards of the beautiful or enhancing the beautiful in some respect. One angle of his analysis on twentieth‐century social structures of power and the “culture industry” arising from it is that this industry attempts to regulate aesthetic tastes and taboos of the people by constructing a “status quo”—the social order—about what is beautiful by sublimating the ugly to a secondary consideration. What is ugly is reasoned to be disruptive and dangerous to this regulated status quo. According to Adorno, it was the task of modern art to oppose the culture industry and defy the sublimation of the non‐beautiful, to allow it to remain as it is (Hohendahl 2013, 79–100). Telescoping now to the evolutionary problem of evil, we could say that: (1) the natural world is analogous to “musical harmony” and “consonance” of a musical score and (2) all E‐disvalues are analogous to “dissonance” or “discord” in that musical score—but nonetheless a necessary one—because it foregrounds the apparent antibeautiful (the ugly) for theological consideration in its own right. In God configuring E‐disvalues as an oppositional part of nature's life course, He is perhaps seeking to break the uncritical conceptual hegemony of the beautiful that human beings impose when making their aesthetic assessment of nature and the environment and thereby suffer from aesthetic blindsight. The beautiful is a component of God's artistry and so is the apparent nonbeautiful. The latter is neither disruptive of nor a threat to the artistry of God and ought not to be excised from the linguistic categories we use to frame and explicate our understanding of God and the world. In E‐disvalues then there is the aesthetic capture of the nonhuman world and ought to be embraced by the Muslim theist for what it is.

Summary Claims

The evolutionary theodicies proposed above explain why God may permit E‐disvalues and establish how He is a value‐loving Creator. The summary claims of those proposals are:

• 1.

  Although the biological realm is a place of disvalues such as pain, death, extinction, geological evil, suffering, and distress, these disvalues in the world are a means by which specific attributes or names of God like being Creator and Sustainer are manifested in order to cognitively illuminate appreciation of God in human beings.

• 2.

  The evil of pain, suffering, and death through the evolutionary process of nonhuman animals in the prehuman and posthuman eras serve a greater good whether that is having a value‐seeded world, biodiversity, ecological balance, species flourishing (or any other value‐added reason like free will).

• 3.

  The fact of the evolutionary behavior of nonhuman animals over time is a part of the overall aesthetics of God's creation and therefore part of His imaginative and creative production reflecting such attributes as power, knowledge, wisdom, mercy, imagination, majesty, and greatness.

Table 1 below summarizes the three proposed theodicies.