Is Nature Ever Evil

Can nature be evil, or ugly, or wrong? Can we apply moral value to nature? From a compellingly original premise, under the auspices of major thinkers including Mary Midgley, Philip Hefner, Arnold Benz and Keith Ward, Is Nature Ever Evil? examines the value-structure of our cosmos and of the science that seeks to describe it. Science, says editor Willem B. Drees, claims to leave moral questions to aesthetic and religious theory. But the supposed neutrality of the scientific view masks a host of moral assumptions. How does an ethically transparent science arrive at concepts of a 'hostile' universe or a 'selfish' gene? How do botanists, zoologists, cosmologists and geologists respond to the beauty of the universe they study, reliant as it is upon catastrophe, savagery, power and extinction? Then there are various ways in which science seeks to alter and improve nature. What do prosthetics and gene technology, cyborgs and dairy cows say about our appreciation of nature itself? Surely science, in common with philosophy, magic and religion, can aid our understanding of evil in nature - whether as natural catasrophe, disease, predatory cruelty or mere cosmic indifference? Focusing on the ethical evaluation of nature itself, Is Nature Ever Evil? re-ignites crucial questions of hope, responsibility, and possibility in nature.

Is Nature Ever Evil?, considers the different ways in which reality is understood between the disciplines of ethics, religion and science focusing on the ethical evaluation of nature itself.

When human beings do horrifying things, are they evil? By exploring such popular literature as The Talented Mr. Ripley , Dante's Inferno , The Turn of the Screw , and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , Koehn illustrates that the roots of human violence are not true evil but a symptom of our failure to really know who we are. It is this lack of understanding of ourselves that can lead humans to perform horrifying deeds, rather than 'evil' itself. This is a deep look into human nature, its beauty and its failings. The Nature of Evil offers an insightful and engaging exploration at a time when we are all struggling to understand the roots of violence and suffering.

Is the evolutionary process intelligently designed? If so, why did the Creator choose such an evil-infested means to create the biosphere? What is the intrinsic nature of evil itself? Is natural evil necessary? Is evil compatible with the existence of God? Will the world's evils ever be totally redeemed? What place does humanity occupy in the cosmic scheme of things? Evolution and the Problem of Natural Evil attempts to answer these and other timeless questions by proposing a bold new conceptual synthesis that aggressively marries the tenets of modern developmental psychology to the basic concepts of classical theism. The end result of this novel approach is deeply encouraging, insofar as it places the problem of evil, as well as the general fate of human existence, in a much larger and more optimistic context than has traditionally been imagined.

This work examines the nature of good and evil. Set at a time when violence has replaced moral, religious and philosophical concerns, the author places evil back where it belongs, in nature and in our lives. Lyall Watson is also the author of Supernature.

This Companion offers a state-of-the-art contribution by providing critical analyses of and creative insights on the problem of evil.

The crimes of Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, Dennis Rader, and other high-profile killers are so breathtakingly awful that most people would not hesitate to label them evil. In this groundbreaking book, renowned psychiatrist Michael H. Stone-host of Discovery Channel's former series Most Evil-uses this common emotional reaction to horrifying acts as his starting point to explore the concept and reality of evil from a new perspective. In an in-depth discussion of the personality traits and behavior that constitute evil across a wide spectrum, Dr. Stone takes a clarifying scientific approach to a topic that for centuries has been inadequately explained by religious doctrines.Basing his analysis on the detailed biographies of more than 600 violent criminals, Stone has created a 22-level hierarchy of evil behavior, which loosely reflects the structure of Dante's Inferno. He traces two salient personality traits that run the gamut from those who commit crimes of passion to perpetrators of the worst crimes-sadistic torture and murder. One trait is narcissism, as exhibited in people who are so self-centered that they have little or no ability to care about their victims. The other is aggression, the use of power over another person to inflict humiliation, suffering, and death.Stone then turns to the various factors that, singly or intertwined, contribute to pushing certain people over the edge into committing heinous crimes. They include heredity, adverse environments, violence-prone cultures, mental illness or brain injury, and abuse of mind-altering drugs. All are considered in the search for the root causes of evil behavior.What do psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience tell us about the minds of those whose actions could be described as evil? And what will that mean for the rest of us? Stone discusses how an increased understanding of the causes of evil will affect the justice system. He predicts a day when certain persons can safely be declared salvageable and restored to society and when early signs of violence in children may be corrected before potentially dangerous patterns become entrenched.Michael H. Stone, MD (New York, NY) is professor of clinical psychiatry at the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons. He is the author of ten books, most recently Personality Disorders: Treatable and Untreatable, and over two hundred professional articles and book chapters. He is also the host of Discovery Channel's former series Most Evil and has been featured in the New York Times, Psychology Today, the Christian Science Monitor, CNN, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, the New York Post, the London Times, the BBAC, and Newsday, among many other media outlets.

Whether expressed in theological or secular terms, evil poses a problem about the world's intelligibility. It confronts philosophy with fundamental questions: Can there be meaning in a world where innocents suffer? Can belief in divine power or human progress survive a cataloging of evil? Is evil profound or banal? Neiman argues that these questions impelled modern philosophy. Traditional philosophers from Leibniz to Hegel sought to defend the Creator of a world containing evil. Inevitably, their efforts--combined with those of more literary figures like Pope, Voltaire, and the Marquis de Sade--eroded belief in God's benevolence, power, and relevance, until Nietzsche claimed He had been murdered. They also yielded the distinction between natural and moral evil that we now take for granted. Neiman turns to consider philosophy's response to the Holocaust as a final moral evil, concluding that two basic stances run through modern thought. One, from Rousseau to Arendt, insists that morality demands we make evil intelligible. The other, from Voltaire to Adorno, insists that morality demands that we don't.