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Poetry can contribute to theological and philosophical reflection. In this paper, we concentrate our attention on Esaias Tegner's poignant depiction of melancholy, or what we call "existential suffering" in his poem Spleen. We argue the poem can be interpreted as showing that the distinction between theoretical and existential problems of suffering is less clear-cut than often presupposed and that theorizing about the meaning of suffering can have a role to play even when people are experiencing great existential suffering and despair. Based on the speaker's existential struggles in Spleen, we also formulate the novel concept of a hopeful theodicy, a concept we think can be of use more broadly in future research on problems of suffering and theodicy.

Agnostics as well as theists should answer evidential arguments from evil, at least when confronted with them. In this paper, I answer such an argument by appealing to sceptical agnosticism. A sceptical agnostic is not only undecided about the existence of a perfectly good and omnipotent God, but also believes that we cannot make any judgement about whether or not seemingly gratuitous evil probably is gratuitous. I argue that such agnosticism has several advantages compared with sceptical theism.

Philosophers of religion have traditionally focused their attention on belief in God and assessed such belief in terms of it having some epistemic status like“rationality” or “probability”, or indeed by determining whether or not it constitutes knowledge. In this paper, I focus my attention on the non-doxastic attitude of hope and formulate reasons for whether or not we should hope for God. In light of these reasons, I formulate hopeism as a research programme according to which we should develop concepts of God by starting with the question of what type of being would be worthy of our utmost hope. I compare this view with belief-based concepts of God, such as perfect being theism and what I call worship-worthiness theism. Arguably, the greatest benefit of choosing hopeism is that it is inclusive. Most atheists as well as agnostics and theists can endorse the view. I also suggest a number of directions in which hopeism can be developed.

Proponents of religious non-doxasticism standardly aim to show how a commitment to traditional religion can be rational in the absence of religious belief. We demonstrate how the non-doxastic framework can be given a much wider application. In a study on Swedish semi-secularity, sociologist Ann af Burén has discovered a pattern where subjects simultaneously entertain naturalistic and supernatural explanations of extraordinary events. We reject Burén's interpretation of these people as irrational and compartmentalized and offer a contrasting non-doxastic reading in which the subjects involved are fully rational in their belief-less engagement with significant supernatural possibilities.

Lidande och ondska utgör realiteter i vår värld som vi människor, oavsett gudstro och livsåskådning, på något sätt måste förhålla oss till.

Samtidigt är det ett anmärkningsvärt faktum att så mycket av den religionsfilosofiska litteraturen fokuserat på frågan om hur en allgod och allsmäktig Gud kan tillåta lidande.

I denna antologi angriper ett antal välinsatta forskare ämnet med syftet att vidga perspektiven. Hur ska man se på lidande utifrån ett feministiskt perspektiv? Utgör lidande ett problem för en ateist eller en agnostiker? Hur kan en person som tror på karma och återfödelse hantera problem med lidande och ondska? Detta är bara några av de frågor som diskuteras kring detta tidlösa ämne.