Why Faith Fails The Christian Delusion

by John W. Loftus

implausible to modern, scientifically literate people. They must deny that the

  present laws of nature are the key to understanding the past without which

  paleontology and geology would be rendered null and void. And their answer

  still doesn't help us understand exactly why animals should suffer simply

  because Adam and Eve sinned. What did animals do wrong to deserve this

  punishment?

  J. W. Rogerson, emeritus canon of Sheffield Cathedral who was head of the

  department of Biblical Studies at Sheffield University in England before retiring,

  offers a similar defense of traditional view. He claims there is a contrast between

  the creation that existed before the Flood and that which existed after it. Before

  the Flood all creatures were vegetarians, but after it the dominion mandate

  spoken of in Genesis 9:1-4 "introduces an element of hostility" among us,

  especially between animal life and human beings. Paradise is lost. Animals now

  fear and dread us because into our hands they have been delivered. After the

  Flood "the human race is given authority to eat meat, provided that the blood is

  drained from it."ls

  Rogerson understands frill well that his understanding goes against the views

  of modern readers-post-Darwinian readers-that there never was a "violence-free"

  period of time in the evolutionary scheme of things before the supposed Flood.

  He candidly admits the reason for holding his particular view is because he

  cannot explain or justify the existence of natural evil and the sufferings of

  animals otherwise. By his lights it "is preferable to say that natural evil is not the

  will of God ... than to try to justify natural evil or to explain it away"19 Just look

  at this Biblical scholar squirm, retreat, and take an indefensible position because

  of the serious nature of the problem natural evil presents to his faith. It causes

  Rogerson to deny the geological and biological evidence for the age of the

  universe in order to maintain it. It requires him to either adopt a young six-

  thousand-year-old creation, or more than likely, the idea that there were three

  billion years before the arrival of human beings on earth in which all animals

  were vegetarians. And he adopts this view based upon a historically conditioned

  interpretation of an ancient, superstitious, mythological biblical text. His

  viewpoint seems ludicrous to modern scientifically literate readers. This is a high

  price to pay in order to hang on to his faith in the face of the Darwinian Problem

  of Evil. In my opinion, such a faith isn't worth hanging on to.

  Apparently Rogerson has never read where Augustine cautioned fellow

  Christians against being ignorant of the sciences in front of nonbelievers who

  know better. Augustine wrote:

  It is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian,

  presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on

  these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing

  situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh

  it to scorn.... If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they

  themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about

  our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning

  the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of

  heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which

  they themselves have learnt from the experience and the light of reason?20

  But it's even worse than what Rogerson shows awareness of, for while he

  rejects science in order to support his Biblical interpretation of the world despite

  the overwhelming scientific evidence, not even the Bible supports his claims. It

  is not the case that the God of the Bible created us all as vegetarians, and so it is

  not the case that by returning to the vision of paradise represented in Isaiah that

  we will return the supposed Garden of Eden's paradise.21

  At least Paul Copan, the president of the Evangelical Philosophical Society, is

  trying to harmonize what these specific Biblical texts lead us to accept. At least

  he's trying to avoid Augustine's caution about scientific ignorance. Copan is not

  completely consistent, for while he admits that "animal death occurred before

  human beings existed," he also says that not until the fall of Adam and Eve did

  human death enter the world. The reason why he accepts the results of

  evolutionary biology for animals but not for humans is inconsistent with the

  facts and shows deference for believing in an ancient socalled inspired text over

  the results of modern science. Still, based on the Biblical texts, Copan argues,

  "human beings and various animals were meat eaters before the Flood of

  Noah."22

  There is a good amount of biblical evidence for Copan's claim. After God

  pronounced his sentence on Adam and Eve for their sin and as he was banishing

  them from the Garden he made for them "garments of skins, and clothed them"

  (Genesis 3:21). Where would these skins come from? What was done with the

  meat of the animal killed? Or did God just kill an animal for its skin, like the

  elephant poachers of today's African jungle do for ivory tusks? If the animal was

  a burnt sacrifice to God on behalf of their sin, surely Adam and Eve ate some of

  the meat too.

  There is much more to consider. In Copan's words: "God tells human beings

  to `rule over the fish of the sea' (Gen.1:28). What could this mean apart from

  permission to eat them? Abel kept sheep, presumably to eat (4:2-4). Noah

  himself distinguished between clean and unclean animals (7:2), which clearly

  assumes the edibility of meat prior to the Flood." Copan is surely right about

  this. We also read where Jabal, who existed before the Flood as a descendant of

  Cain, "was the father of those who dwell in tents and have cattle" (Genesis 4:20).

  The same problems arise. Why did Jabal raise cattle if he was a vegetarian? We

  see this same carnivorous view reinforced when it comes to Psalm 104:20-22,

  which speaks of the time when God created the world. Copan argues of this

  Psalm: "There is no clear biblical indication that carnivorous activity is the result

  of sin and could not have existed before the Fall; rather as Psalm 104 suggests,

  all organisms have their rightful place in the food chain."23

  In the poetical book of job we see God's discourse about the glory of his

  original creation where there is carnivorous activity (Job 38:38-41, 39:26-30).

  After mentioning these texts Copan exclaims, "No herbivore here!" and

  concludes, "Animal death and the food chain are presupposed as part of God's

  creation-without apology or qualification." He admits, "the

  paleographic/geological evidence bears out that carnivorous animals-not to

  mention thorns and thistles or earthquakes and hurricanes-existed before the

  Fall, it was only after the Fall that human beings became vulnerable to and

  endangered by them."24

  This last comment by Copan needs to be examined more closely before we

  move on. Again, he said, "it was only after the Fall that human beings became

  vulnerable to and endangered by
them." Christian thinkers who believe all

  suffering occurs after a human moral failure must deny that there was pain and

  suffering before such a fall. Peter van Inwagen suggests one partial defense of

  this traditional answer as it relates to human animals like us. As an inventor of

  stories, Van Inwagen tells us one he thinks justifies the literal Genesis account of

  the fall of Adam and Eve as the cause of all suffering in the world. He imagines

  a world created and guided by God over the evolutionary span of time that first

  produced clever primates and then Homo sapiens. God raised these primates to

  rationality and made them into human beings who were given "preternatural" or

  "paranormal powers." Van Inwagen writes:

  Because they lived in the harmony of perfect love, none of them did any

  harm to the others. Because of the preternatural powers, they were able

  somehow to protect themselves from wild beasts (which they were able to

  tame with a look), from disease (which they were able to cure with a touch)

  and from random, destructive natural events (like earthquakes), which they

  knew about in advance and were able to escape. There was thus no evil in

  the world. And it was God's intention that they should never become

  decrepit with age or die, as their primate forbearers had. But, somehow, in

  some way that must be mysterious to us, they were not content with this

  paradisiacal state. They abused the gift of free will and separated

  themselves from their union with God. The result was horrific ... they now

  faced destruction by the random forces of nature, and were subject to old

  age and natural death.... and became playthings of chance.25

  Van Inwagen's story is supposed to offer a conception, albeit bizarre, that after

  Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden their "preternatural powers" were

  stripped from them, and they consequently began to suffer at the hands of

  predatory animals. Presumably animals themselves subsequently became

  "playthings of chance," so they began to be subject to the power of evil and

  fallen human beings at that point. Van Inwagen contends that given the existence

  of God, "the story is true for all anyone knows." He "doesn't see any reason to

  reject any of it," even if he admits he's not at all sure about "preternatural

  powers."26

  What are we to make of such a story? Does it sound reasonable to a "neutral

  agnostic," as he thinks it should be? No, not at all. This is a bizarre story, an ad

  hoc one, that although possible, for all we know is extremely improbable and not

  supported by any evidence at all. If all we need are possibilities unrelated to the

  actual evidence to help solve the problem of suf fering and sin, then any possible

  story will do. Why doesn't he just tell the literal creationist story where God

  instantaneously created the whole universe in six literal twenty-four-hour days?

  Why not tell a story where human beings could make themselves invisible when

  threatened by the environment so they couldn't experience any suffering before

  the Fall into sin? Why not tell a story where snakes, scorpions, spiders, and

  bullet ants had venom but that the venom was miraculously neutralized? The

  whole reason van Inwagen doesn't tell such stories is that he knows the evidence

  is against them. He knows such stories would be ad hoc, created out of the blue

  to defend a position he cannot defend any other way. So the question Van

  Inwagen fails to answer is why his particular story has any more going for it than

  any of these other stories he could have told. The question for him is why the

  evidence against these other stories doesn't count against his own particular

  story. My claim is that he cannot answer this question. The only reason he even

  entertains it is because he somehow thinks the Genesis story depicts a Fall,

  something that biblical scholars themselves dispute.

  What, then, can we make of the differences between the Genesis 1:26-28 pre-

  Fall dominion mandate and the Genesis 9 post-Flood mandate? Given this other

  biblical evidence on behalf of carnivorous behavior found in the Bible itself,

  biblical scholars like Gordon Wenham argue that the post-Flood mandate is

  merely "ratifying the post-Fall practice of meat-eating rather than inaugurating

  it."27 And so the fear and dread of the animal kingdom toward human beings

  mentioned in the post-Flood mandate "seems more likely to reflect the animosity

  between man and the animal world that followed the Fall (Genesis 3:15)."28

  Michael J. Murray seems to agree that if moral wrongdoing in the form of

  Adam and Eve can leave "such catastrophic consequence in its wake, it must be

  the case that God created things so that the integrity of the natural order was, in

  some important sense, initially dependent upon the integrity of the moral order."

  But if this is the case, then God would know that the created order was "fragile,"

  he argues. So unless "there is some reason why the fragility of nature is

  necessary, or why making it fragile in this way makes possible certain

  outweighing goods, the fragility of nature itself seems to be a puzzling defect in

  creation." He rhetorically asks, "What possible good reason could there be for

  creating the universe in such a way that the Fall of the first human pair could

  bring about a rewiring of brute nervous systems, thereby allowing for the

  possibility of pain and suffering?"29 I know of none.

  A second traditional Christian way to understand how the Fall caused animal

  suffering is to say it did so antecedently. Michael Murray sums this view up with

  these words: "God in his foreknowledge chose to prepare in advance a world

  with genuine evil and suffering in anticipation of the fact that it would be the

  dwelling of fallen humanity"30 This is what Emil Brunner argued for along with

  Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, as well as Baptist theologian A. H. Strong, and most

  recently with modifications by William Dembski. Strong argued for what he

  called "anticipatory consequences," in that the world was not created perfect,

  anticipating the time when Adam would sin. When Adam sinned, God's

  protective hand was removed from humanity and they found themselves in the

  real world with natural disasters, pain, and death.31 Accordingly, this solution

  attempts to explain the reality of evil "not as a consequence of moral evil but

  rather as among the necessary antecedent conditions for a universe which

  provides morally appropriate conditions for postlapsarian free creatures" (i.e.,

  after the Fall). Dembski argues that just as God can answer prayers retroactively

  and just as the death of Jesus can forgive sins retroactively for Old Testament

  people, so also the Fall of humanity caused natural evils retroactively. Left

  unresolved is whether or not this is the case.32 Since Genesis chapter 1 describes

  God's creative handiwork as "good," Dembski proposes a second creation prior

  to the Fall that is described in Genesis chapter 2.33

  Murray rejects such an explanation as "implausible," as I do, because:

  [It] offers us no satisfying answer to the following questions: Why must the

  world have a natural history that precedes the existen
ce of Adam at all?

  Wouldn't God secure all the relevant goods and avoid a massive array of

  evil simply by creating the universe in much the same way the

  younguniverse creationist believes it was created? If God were to so create

  it, none of the goods supposed to arise from animal pain and suffering

  would be lost, and a great deal of natural evil would have been

  eliminated.34

  Christian philosopher Robert N. Wennberg concurs by arguing that it "still

  remains unclear how animals, who do not sin and do not incur guilt, can

  legitimately bear the penalty for human sin."35 Philosopher C. E. M. Joad

  concludes as I do: "The hypothesis that the animals were corrupted [i.e., made

  into predators] by man does not account for animal pain during the hundreds of

  millions of years when the earth contained living creatures, but did not contain

  man."36

  OPTION Two

  C. S. Lewis speculated on a different sort of answer to the problem of animal

  pain based on a "Satanic corruption of the beasts" prior to the existence of

  human beings. Having rejected the traditional answer, Lewis speculates "that

  some mighty created power had already been at work for ill on the material

  universe, or the solar system, or, at least, the planet Earth, before ever man came

  on the scene ... If there is such a power, as I myself believe, it may well have

  corrupted the animal creation before man appeared ... The Satanic corruption of

  the beasts would therefore be analogous, in one respect, to the Satanic corruption

  of man." According to Lewis, "living creatures were corrupted by an evil angelic

  being."37 By "corrupted" Lewis means that the beasts were made to prey upon

  one another. Richard Swinburne, a philosopher and prolific apologist for

  Christianity, has likewise commented that human free will seems, "unable to

  account for the animal pain [that] existed before there were men," so supposing

  the existence of "fallen angels" who have brought on these other evils, "may

  indeed be indispensable if the theist is to reconcile with the existence of God the

  existence of... animal pain."38

  Gregory A. Boyd, professor of theology at Bethel College, St. Paul,

  Minnesota, argues in some scholarly detail that C.S. Lewis was essentially

  correct to suggest such a thing, as does Michael Lloyd, who is supposed to

  publish a three-volume work on the problem of evil.39 Boyd's theodicy comes

  from his warfare worldview, which is defended in his book, Satan and the

  Problem of Evil. Boyd believes we are part of a cosmic war, a war between God

  and the good angels against Satan and his evil cohorts. This world is a war zone.

  There is a cosmic rebellion taking place against God that was started even before

  God created the world. In fact, Boyd argues, God had to fight back the forces of

  evil just to create the world in the first place. When God's creatures did turn up

  on earth we were all caught up in this cosmic war whether or not we like it.

  There are casualties of war that take place because the battle is raging

  everywhere around us, called "collateral damage." That's just what happens in

  times of war. Innocents do in fact get hurt. Animals have gotten hurt ever since

  creation because the evil forces corrupted them into beings that preyed upon

  each other in defiance of God's intentions. Human beings have also sinned and

  stepped over into rebellion against God, according to Boyd. As such we have

  become failed ecological stewards and we do harm to animals and to each other

  too. This is because "in this war zone, there are few guarantees.... [T]here is no

  guaranteed security in this world."40 In Boyd's eyes, God is "a sovereign chess

  master" who cannot predict with certainty what truly free-willed creatures will

  do. While God cannot predict certainties, he can predict possibilities when it