CONN 352 | Paradise Lost: Literature, God, and the Problem of Suffering

This course studies literary, philosophical, and theological responses to the problem of suffering, mainly as it relates to questions about God¿s existence, human purpose, the nature of creation, and how we define good and evil. If God exists, how can evils be explained? How does one reconcile claims of God¿s goodness and justice with the observable facts of evil and suffering in the world? The fundamental premise of the course is that researching, exploring, and articulating responses to the problem of suffering make up an essential stage of our journey on this earth, regardless of whether one is an atheist or agnostic, Christian or Buddhist, SBNR (spiritual but not religious) or a ¿done.¿ Students explore a wide range of texts from a number of eras and cultures, including selections from the Bible, literary works such as John Milton¿s Paradise Lost, and Fyodor Dostoevsky¿s Brothers Karamazov; philosophical works by Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Nel Noddings, as well as philosophers of science such as Stephen Hawking and Richard Feynman; and theologians like David Kraemer, Marilyn McCord Adams, and Simone Weil.