Disease and the Problem of Evil | Prof. Stephen C. Meredith

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2025

⏱️ 60 minutes

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Summary

Professor Stephen Meredith explores the problem of evil, particularly in the context of disease, examining philosophical and theological perspectives, including those of Aquinas, Leibniz, and Voltaire, while also considering biological factors like genetics and evolution.

This lecture was given on November 7th, 2024, at Indiana University.

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About the Speaker:

Stephen Meredith is a professor at the University of Chicago’s Departments of Pathology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and Neurology. He is also an associate faculty member in the University of Chicago Divinity School. He has published more than 100 journal articles, focusing on the biophysics of protein structure. Much of his work has been the application of solution and solid-state NMR to the study of amyloid proteins associated with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease. He has also published articles on literature and philosophy in diverse aspects of medical humanities and bioethics. His teaching includes courses to graduate students in biochemistry and biophysics, medical students, and undergraduates and graduate students in the humanities, including courses on James Joyce’s Ulysses, St. Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, Dostoevsky (focusing on Brothers Karamazov), Thomas Mann and David Foster Wallace. He is currently working on a book examining disease and the theological problem of evil. Other current writing projects include a study of James Joyce and the problem of evil.

Keywords: Boethius, Disease, Evil, Leibniz, Original Sin, Problem of Evil, Sickle Cell Anemia, Theodicy, Thomas Aquinas, Voltaire

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Tomistic Institute podcast.
0:06.2	Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.
0:12.7	The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.
0:19.3	To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at to mysticinstitute.org.
0:25.0	This is an outline of the talk.
0:27.4	I'm going to start with a couple of anecdotes.
0:30.3	I talk a little bit about sickle cell anemia.
0:33.2	Take a first look at the problem of evil and then ask whether or not we should philosophize,
0:38.8	and then go back to the problem of evil because my answer to that is yes.
0:43.3	And I'll give a brief survey of various approaches that people have taken to the problem of evil,
0:49.9	ending up with one, which is called the privative view of evil. And this has to do with what we
0:57.7	mean when we use a state of being verb like is. And that'll get us into a little Aristotle and
1:05.2	Thomas Aquinas talking about essences and accidents. And then we'll go and talk about disease and the privative theory of
1:13.2	evil. Now, I have to say that when we talk about disease, we are talking about a natural evil,
1:19.6	as it is sometimes called, also sometimes called a metaphysical evil, and Thomas Aquinas used
1:27.3	the word Pina, P-O-E-N-A, which can be translated
1:31.5	from the Latin as either pain or punishment.
1:34.8	We will not really be talking about moral evil or what Thomas Aquinas called culpa.
1:41.6	Or not very much, anyway.
1:44.3	Okay, then we'll talk about the topic of disease and original sin,
1:49.6	and in particular, what do we think about original sin in the era of biology?
1:57.0	Talk a little bit about evolution, animal pain,
	...

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