Evil, Theodicy and Evolutionary Theory. Old arguments facing new data.

The Neo-Darwinian ‘orthodoxy’ poses a serious threat to more traditional ways of reflection on the place of humans in nature, the nature and role of morality, the purpose of life and the aim of the cosmic process. Not only classical theism, but all sorts of non-reductionist ways of thinking are affected by the dominance of Darwinism as the world-view of scientifically educated people in the Western World. Within this worldview the problem of evil can be seen as a linchpin around which other fundamental issues revolve. The Darwinian insistence on so-called «evolutionary evil» is framed therein by two other challenges, namely the setting of biological altruism in opposition to moral realism and the emphasis on the randomness of the outcomes of natural selection, depriving the evolutionary process of any orientation towards particular ends. This work is an attempt to deconstruct, through an in-depth analysis of the paradigm of Darwinian main stream thinking, the traditional assumption to the opposition of the theistic and the evolutionary worldviews. My contention is that, when taken apart from the methodological and ontological constraints of Darwinism, evolutionary theory provides an antidote to, rather than an exacerbation of, the «problem of evil». Three master arguments of Christian thinkers of the past are chosen for their relatedness to the problem of evil, thereby offering resources to counter all three Darwinian challenges and undergoing transformations through the confrontation with Darwinian insights.