Zygon

Abstract. This essay examines various contemporary artistic responses to climate change. These responses encompass multiple media and diverse philosophical and emotional forms, from grief and resignation to resistance, hope, and poignant celebration of spiritual value and natural beauty. Rejecting much of the terminology of current theory, the author considers the artworks in relation to interrelated and arguably unjustly discredited aesthetic and theological categories, namely the sublime and the beautiful as well as the via negativa, the latter adapted from Thomas Aquinas by theologian Matthew Fox. Art’s power is seen largely as the ability to “humanize” the science by rendering it emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually relatable to individuals. The broken relationship between humanity and nature seems related to the need for a renewed religious sense of integration with, and belonging to, the cosmos, something in the bringing about of which art might play a pivotal role.

Key Words: Anthropocene, art, beauty, climate change, nature, oceanic feeling, religion, science, spirituality, the sublime, technology, truth.

Abstract. Can a technological culture accommodate spiritual ex-perience and spiritual thinking? If so, what kind of spirituality? I explore the relation between technology and spirituality by construct-ing and discussing several models for spirituality in a technological culture. I ...

The problem of evil is one of the most difficult and protracted problems for the trio of Abrahamic faiths that uphold the classical conception of an “omni-competent God”—omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. In its standard formulation in the literature, the existence or character of God is brought into direct contention with the existence of evil. One subset of this problem, reinvigorated by recent discussions within the intersection between the philosophy of religion and philosophy of science, is the evolutionary problem of evil or the “Darwinian problem of evil.” This article analyzes this subset of the evolutionary problem of evil hitherto unexplored in any depth within contemporary Islamic theology and proposes some possible evolutionary theodicies that Muslim theists can utilize based on core doctrines and other precepts of the Qur’ān as well as ideas developed within contemporary evolutionary theism and environmental ethics. In this way, the article offers a contribution to the currently small but growing body of theodicy literature within contemporary Islamic ethics and environmentalism.