presentation of YHWH ... Child sacrifice appears to be a native and normative
element of Judahite religious practice" (p. 318).
26. Quoted by Hoffner (Laws of the Hittites, p. 1).
27. Roth, Law Collections, pp. 76-77.
28. Numbers: Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 5 (Waco, TX: Word
Publishers, 1984) p. 65.
29. Ibid, p. 67.
30. Ethics without God (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1992).
his chapter is about sentient nonhuman animals, all of them, both
domesticated and those in the wild. Typically the animal kingdom in its most
loosely stated definition includes every living thing in distinction from the plant
kingdom.' In this world they suffer, sometimes horribly, because of the natural
law of the jungle, as well as at the hands of human beings. Upon the supposition
of Darwinian evolutionary biology, this suffering is natural. It's what we should
expect to find. But upon the supposition of Christian theism, this is not what we
should expect to find. I'll argue that the existence of animal suffering cannot be
reconciled with the Christian faith and is one of the strongest reasons to reject it.
WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?
In 1859 when Charles Darwin published his work, On the Origin of Species, the
world learned how all life is interconnected through the evolutionary process of
natural selection, stretching back billions of years in time. From Darwin's
detailed scientific investigations we learned that humans are directly related to
other animals, especially to chimpanzees, who share 98.5 percent of our exact
genetic makeup. We are not special to earth's ecosystem either. We depend on
each other. It could no longer be said, except in the ignorant Bible-thumping
pulpits of the world, that we were created instantaneously by divine fiat on one
day of a divine workweek.
Rehearsing his own process from being a Christian to agnostic, Charles
Darwin laid out what I'm calling the Darwinian Problem of Evil. In his
autobiography he wrote:
That there is much suffering in the world no one disputes. Some have
attempted to explain this in reference to man by imagining that it serves for
his moral improvement. But the number of men in the world is nothing
compared with that of all other sentient beings, and these often suffer
greatly without any moral improvement. A being so powerful and so full of
knowledge as a God who could create this universe, is to our finite minds
omnipotent and omniscient, and it revolts our understanding to suppose that
his benevolence is not unbounded, for what advantage can there be in the
suffering of millions of the lower animals throughout almost endless time?
This very old argument from the existence of suffering against the existence
of an intelligent First Cause seems to be a strong one; whereas ... the
presence of much suffering agrees well with the view that all organic beings
have been developed through variation and natural selection.'
This argument is expanded upon by Christopher Hitchens, who states it with
rhetorical flare. Based upon the claim that "at least 98% of all species on this
tiny speck of a planet made only a few hesitant steps 'forward' before
succumbing to extinction," Hitchens asks: "What kind of designer or creator is
so wasteful and capricious and approximate? What kind of designer or creator is
so cruel and indifferent?"3 Hitchens also argues that we not only have the
problem of nonhuman animal suffering up until to the first Homo sapiens. We
also have the problem of human animal suffering up until God decides to reveal
himself to them and/or to do something about it.4 It's all part and parcel of the
whole Darwinian Problem of Evil.
Richard Dawkins also reminds us that this problem does not just refer to the
evolutionary past. The problem still faces us every single day; he writes:
It is better for the genes of Darwin's ichneumon wasp that the caterpillar
should be alive, and therefore fresh, when it is eaten, no matter what the
cost in suffering. Genes don't care about suffering because they don't care
about anything. If Nature were kind, she would at least make the minor
concession of anesthetizing caterpillars before they are eaten alive from
within. But Nature is neither kind nor unkind. She is neither against
suffering nor for it.... The total amount of suffering per year in the natural
world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute it takes me to
compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive; others
are running for their lives, whimpering with fear; others are being slowly
devoured from within by rasping parasites; thousands of all kinds are dying
of starvation, thirst and disease.... The universe we observe has precisely
the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no
purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.5
But there is even more. Human beings rule over the animal kingdom with an
iron fist. Almost every kind of living creature is eaten as food by at least some of
us on the planet. The history of the clash between the lower animals and us has
been devastating to them. We have killed them just for the sake of hunting for
sport. We've killed them for their trophy heads, hunted them for their ivory tusks,
and/or trapped them for far. We've experimented on them in grotesque ways,
often even dissecting them while they were still alive. We've abused them for our
own entertainment through cock fights, bull fights and dog fights. We have
crammed them into small pens for what's called "intensive farming techniques."
Some fish we like to eat so fresh that we cook their bodies and eat them while
they are still alive and gasping for oxygen.
There is a new awareness in the last few decades that we shouldn't
unnecessarily harm animals, even to the point where vegetarianism and
veganism are becoming alternative lifestyles. With this new, humane awareness
toward animals, Christian people must now come to grips with what their God
purportedly said in the Bible about the relationship of man to beast. They must
do this, according to Paul Waldau, the director of the Center for Animals and
Public Policy at Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, because:
"Treatment of nonhuman animals is a critical element in assessing any religious
tradition's views of other animals."6 If God is perfectly good, he should've been
crystal clear that his followers must treat the lower animals kindly. But this is not
what we find in the Bible. In fact, it's pretty much the reverse.?
THE PHILOSOPHICAL STANDARDS
The problem of such intense and ubiquitous animal suffering calls for a Christian
answer. The kind of answer considered satisfactory will depend on what kind of
standard of proof seems acceptable when answering it. What standard of proof
should the theist meet in answering this problem? The most important standard
is called a theodicy. Christian philosopher Alvin C. Plantinga describes a
theodicy as an attempt "to tell us why God permits evil." This is a strong answer
> if satisfactory, for when the theodi-cist is done making her case there would be
little left to explain. In contrast to a theodicy Plantinga argues for what he calls a
defense. In a defense "the aim is not to say what God's reason is, but at most
what God's reason might possibly be."'
I'm looking for an adequate theodicy, not a defense, when it comes to this
problem, one that offers up rational explanations for why there is so much
intense animal suffering if a perfectly good and omnipotent God exists. Such a
theodicy need not explain everything, but it should explain a great deal. A
defense merely suggests that something is possible. But that is too low to be
accepted as any kind of standard at all. Christians continually want to talk about
what is possible rather than what is probable, and they resort to this standard far
too many times in defense of their faith to make their faith probable. But atheist
philosopher Keith Parsons doesn't let this go unchallenged: "...for every evil that
exists, a sufficiently clever theist might be able to imagine a scenario, no matter
how farfetched, wildly implausible, or outrageously ad hoc, that if it were true,
would justify God's permission of that evil." Continuing on, he argues that a
Christian argument "must do more than show that the world's evils are possibly
justified; it must give plausible grounds for thinking that in fact they are
justified." Then with some flare Parsons concludes: "Without an adequate
theodicy, arguing for God's existence will be like arguing that the earth is flat.
Vast quantities of contrary data will either have to be ignored or dealt with in an
arbitrary and ad hoc fashion." 9
Michael J. Murray, a Christian professor of philosophy at Franklin and
Marshall College, tries to steer a middle ground between a theodicy and a
defense and offers a third kind of standard. He rejects the standard of a theodicy,
because that standard is too high, which is par for the course. But he also rightly
rejects the low standard of a defense. He wrote: "Defenses will be of little use in
our context because ... they do not aim to provide explanations that undercut the
evidential value of evil."10 Instead, Murray seeks "to find a middle way between
a defense and a theodicy." He calls his standard De Causa Dei, meaning "on
behalf of God," reminiscent of a juridical context about a legal case on behalf of
a defendant in a trial, a phrase which comes from Leibniz, just like the word
theodicy did. Such a standard might best be described by Murray: "[T]he theist
may freely admit that she is not aware of any plausible hypotheses which turn
back the evidential challenge. Still, there might be a variety of reasons which
are, for example, true for all she knows and which are such that if they were true
they would constitute good explanations for evil. Reasons like these would not
fairly count as plausible (not implausible) but rather as plausible as not,
overall."11
Murray claims there are theistic answers for the existence of animal suffering
that can be warranted for theists based upon all that they know, even if the
nontheistic critic doesn't share them. Whether the critic accepts the theistic
answers or not, such answers "can still succeed for the theist." 12
But what does Murray mean by the phrases, "true for all she knows," and
"plausible as not, overall"? Two pages prior to the one upon which we find the
above quote he mentioned how the death of Jesus was both evil and good. It was
evil because Jesus suffered, he claims, but it was also good because it brought
about the "great good of salvation for humanity." What Murray ends up
proposing is that given everything a Christian believer accepts about a triune
God who sent one third of himself (?) to become incarnate in Jesus, who
subsequently died for our sins and rose from the grave, that he can offer some
"plausible" answers with regard to the problem of animal suffering. Can he do
this? I think not-not by a long shot. But even if he can, it still doesn't show that
those background Christian beliefs, which form the basis for all she or he knows,
are true. There are so many other undercutting defeaters to his collection of
Christian beliefs that Murray shouldn't even be dealing with the problem of evil
in the first place.
Peter van Inwagen offers a fourth kind of standard. He thinks he can convince
us "that the argument from evil has not got the power to transform ideal (and
hence neutral) agnostics into atheists," and therefore it's a "philosophical
failure." Neutral agnostics, by his lights, are people who don't have an opinion
either way on the matter, unlike socalled weighted agnostics, who think it's
improbable that God exists. He calls this "the ideal debate test," which, if he's
successful "will also show that the argument from evil is incapable of turning
neutral agnostics into weighted agnos tics." He acknowledges that the whole
concept of an ideal test is problematic, but we'll leave that aside.13 Nonetheless,
I don't think he accomplishes what he proposes at all. If the argument from evil
is successful, it doesn't lead someone to atheism or "weighted" agnosticism
anyway. It could also lead a person to mysticism, or Deism, or panentheism
(known as process th(ism). The argument from evil merely argues that if God
exists, then he does not have one or more of the three attributes normally
ascribed to him by Christian theism, namely, he might not be perfectly good, or
allpowerful, or omniscient. That's all it can show. So what Van Inwagen should
say instead is that the argument from evil will not be able to persuade neutral
agnostics that this Christian kind of God doesn't exist. I think that does, most
definitely, and I hope to show this to be the case.
CHRISTIAN SOLUTIONS TO THE DARWINIAN PROBLEM OF EVIL
One thing is agreed upon when it comes to the Darwinian Problem of Evil, and
that is a few of the usual Christian responses to this problem simply do not apply
at all. Animals don't suffer because of their own sinful free-will choices to kill or
be killed, so the free-will defense cannot be used to justify these sufferings. Nor
are there any moral lessons animals can learn in response to their sufferings.
Christian scholar Robert N. Wennberg, professor of philosophy at Westmont
College, Santa Barbara, California, tells us:
It is not that animal pain and suffering exacerbates the problem of evil by
adding to the pain and suffering in the world. Rather, animal suffering
intensifies the problem of evil.... [A]nimals suffer, innocent of sin and
without guilt, who cannot be morally or spiritually benefited by the ravages
of pain, who cannot place any meaningful or elevating interpretation upon
their suffering, and who will not (according to most) be compensated for
their suffering by another life beyond the grave. It would seem that some
animals have been brought into existence only to suffer and die, and
possibly along the way be put to use by humans: killed for food and
clothing, harnessed as beast of burden, hunted for sport, experimented
upon, and in general valued only to the extent that they con
tribute one way
or another to the satisfaction of human interests. And so the question
emerges: how can we understand animal pain and suffering so as to make
peace with a vision of a God whose compassion extends to all of his
creatures?14
In what follows I'll describe and then criticize eight major options Christians
have at their disposal in answering the Darwinian Problem of Evil. I'll argue that
none of them succeed (see note).us
OPTION ONE
The traditional Christian answer is that animal predation and pain entered our
world through the supposed fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. There
are two different ways of considering how such a fall into sin caused animal
suffering and death. The first way is the traditional solution that a historical fall
in the Garden subsequently caused human and animal suffering from that time
forward. The second way is that God retroactively created these painful effects
into creation from the very start, antecedently, because he foreknew a later fall
would occur.
Standing squarely in the first traditional answer, young-earth creationists
Henry Morris and Martin Clark claim that God cursed the whole earth and all of
its inhabitants because Adam and Eve had sinned, who were his human vice-
regents on earth. Before this time there were no carnivorous animals. All
creatures ate fruits and herbs. With the fall of man things began to gradually
change because of God's curse. There was now a hostile environment in a post-
Edenic world (Genesis 3:17-19; Romans 8:21; 1 Corinthians 9:9), and later, even
more so in a post-Flood world (Genesis 9:1-3). In their words:
Pleasant flowering shrubs degenerated into noxious weeds. Many bacteria
originally helpful in various organic processes became deadly
diseaseproducing microorganisms. Certain organisms planned for symbiotic
relationships with others declined in usefulness and became mere parasites.
Certain plants actually became poisonous.... Similar changes began to take
place among the animals, not immediately, but gradually.... As the plant
kingdom began to suffer deteriorative changes, it became more and more
difficult for the animals to derive their nourishment solely from the grasses
and herbs. Gradually certain animals began to obtain some of their proteins
and other needed foods by killing and eating animals smaller than
themselves.... eventually teeth and claws and other such characteristics
(perhaps originally intended merely to tear and eat tough roots, bark, etc.)
were modified and became established in certain varieties, and many
species of animals thus became carnivores.
Morris and Clark tell us that the greatest modifications were "reserved for the
drastic changes in the environment following the great Flood." After a supposed
worldwide flood, "God even authorized man to eat animals (Genesis 9:3-4)."16
Of course, such an answer is simply no longer taken seriously by any
scientifically literate person, even by many other Christians. C. S. Lewis admits:
"Carnivorousness, with all that it entails, is older than humanity." 17 The
consistent pattern in paleontology and in geology shows us that carnivorous,
meat-eating, animals did not arrive on the scene suddenly, but rather very slowly
through millions and millions of years, which predates the arrival of human
animals.
What Morris and Clark have done is to believe their literal interpretation of
the Bible despite what we've learned from the sciences. This is evident from the
title to their book: The Bible Has the Answer. But their answer is wildly
Why Faith Fails The Christian Delusion Page 31
