Includes bibliographical references (p. 266-280) and index.

Evil and evolution : Darwin and the brutalities of nature -- Natural history without religion -- The voyage and the emerging conviction of natural selection -- Nature's cruelty : philosophical and religious implications -- Darwin's struggle with theodicy -- Does evolution necessitate atheism? -- Evolution as religion : Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath -- Evolution and the God of classical metaphysics -- Providence and purpose after Darwin -- Metaphysical impatience and emerging purpose -- Summary -- Evil, ethics, and evolutionary psychology -- Evolutionary psychology, sociobiology, and Darwinian anthropology -- Darwin and ethics -- From Darwin to evolutionary psychology -- The controversial issue of altruism -- Aggression and reproductive competition -- Evolutionary psychology and religion -- Determinism and transcendence : the central problem -- Original sin and evolutionary psychology -- Summary -- Evil and the psychoanalytic tradition -- Freud's gradual turn to the death instinct -- Freud, evil, and religion -- Tillich, Niebuhr, and Freud -- Erich Fromm and human destructiveness -- "Life lovers" and "death lovers" -- Fromm's syndrome of decay -- Fromm and Tillich on estrangement and healing -- Ernest Becker : evil and the denial of death -- Fear of death and evil -- Does Becker exaggerate our narcissism? -- Summary -- Human potential and human destructiveness : the psychology of hate -- Threat, anxiety, and reactive thinking -- The role of egocentricity -- Reactive offenders and psychopaths -- Mental distortion and enemy making -- The other side of hate -- Hate and the shadow -- Jesus, Paul, and the shadow -- The Jekyll and Hyde story -- Varieties and transformations of hate -- Reasons for hate -- The first experience of hate -- Hatred, absolutes, and the "evil imagination" -- Purifying our hatred -- Evaluating these three theories of hate -- Summary -- Ordinary people and malevolent circumstances : the social context of evil -- Destructive obedience -- How much do social-psychology experiments tell us about evil? -- The breakdown of self-regulation -- Social critiques of excessive individualism -- Summary -- Individual and systemic evil : should one be privileged over the other? -- Sin reaffirmed : Langdon Gilkey and Shantung compound -- Niebuhr, anxiety, and sin -- Pride and self-obsession -- From the anxious individual to the corrupt system -- Original violence : Marjorie Suchocki's objection to Niebuhr -- The shift from the individual to the social in pastoral care -- A Niebuhrian response to feminist and liberation charges -- Summary -- Concluding thoughts -- Twelve major convictions -- An open-ended issue.