Lewis (with regard to "tamed" animals), Robert Wennberg, Jay McDaniel, John
E Haught, Christopher Southgate, Jiirgen Moltmann, and Keith Ward, who
claims for instance that: "Immortality for animals as well as humans, is a
necessary condition of any acceptable theodicy"65 Jurgen Moltmann claimed of
an animal resurrection that: "If we were to surrender [such a] hope for as much
as one single creature, for us God would not be God."66
The reason why Christopher Southgate believes all types of animals will go to
heaven is because of (1) "specific scriptural texts," (2) "the conception that
human life is richest when in the presence of other creatures," and (3) the need to
"marry the evident lack of blessedness in the lives of many creatures."67 I doubt
that the first two reasons have any bearing on the existence of a heaven for
animals (or humans for that matter). Nonetheless, how can three billion years of
animal suffering just to fill heaven with all of those resurrected animals be
morally justified? If heaven is meant to compensate or reward sentient creatures
for their sufferings on earth, then this does not morally justify their sufferings.
Otherwise anyone can torture any sentient creature, including another human
being, and simply compensate them for their sufferings. Rewarding animals in a
heaven made for them simply does not make their sufferings on earth morally
justifiable.
There are also some significant problems with regard to an animal heaven.
What kinds of bodies will each creature have in heaven? Will a bear or a shark or
an eagle still be carnivorous? Will a mosquito or leech still need to suck blood?
Since their bodies have a direct bearing on who they are, if they lack these
bodies will they be the same creatures in heaven? Will they also need to live in
the same kind of habitat? Will there be both cold and hot regions in heaven? Will
there be wetlands and deserts? Mountains and oceans? Will all species of
animals even be in heaven, or just a select few, Lewis's "tamed animals"? Would
we really want scorpions, alligators, ticks, snakes, spiders, and skunks in heaven
with us? Will all parasites be there? What rational criteria can distinguish
between animals that will be in heaven from those that aren't there? Or would
there be separate heavens for each species? As far as I can tell, a heaven with all
creatures in it would look like the actual world.
Southgate admits these types of questions are "difficult" ones. He writes that it
is "very hard to imagine any form of being a predator that nevertheless does not
`hurt or destroy' on the `holy mountain' of God (Isaiah 11:9). What could the life
of a predator look like in the absence of the second law of thermodynamics, and
the imperative of ingesting ordered energy to ward off the ever-present slide into
decay?" According to him these kinds of questions are the ones "theologians can
never resolve, any more than we can say what would be fulfillment for the
parasitic organisms that so exercised Darwin, or for the bacteria and viruses that
only thrive as pathogens."68 All he can basically do is quote fromJohn E
Haught, who said: "it is not beyond reason to trust that [God's] eternal care could
also transform local cosmic contradictions into a wider harmony of contrasts,
that is, into an unfathomable depth of beauty, and that our own destiny beyond
death admits of conscious enjoyment of this beauty as well."69 But we're on this
side of heaven, and on this side we want to know how those "cosmic
contradictions" can be reasonably resolved before we can believe that there is a
heaven for them (or us) in the first place. Southgate and Haught cannot simply
say God can do these things without offering us a reasonable explanation for
how this can happen. After all, Haught is the one who called them cosmic
contradictions in the first place.
OPTION SEVEN
This option is actually a related set of answers combing several different
Christian options to the problem best argued for by Michael J. Murray. He
doesn't necessarily accept all of the answers he offers in his book, Nature Red in
Tooth and Claw, some of which are ultimately inconsistent, but he cannot rule
them out either. So I'll just deal with what I consider his best combination of
answers.
Murray suggests that it is intrinsically good for God to create a universe that
begins from a state of chaos and leads up to order rather than instantaneously
created by fiat, and that such a manner of creating is an outweighing good of the
sufferings it produces. In Murray's view, the emergence of human beings like us
in an environment like ours is going to require "a spectrum of precursor
organisms with increasingly more complex mental capabilities." He continues,
"In order to have organisms which, like us, are capable of intellectual reflection,
deliberation, agency, morally significant action, etc., there must first be less-
complex organisms which have only more primitive capabilities such as the
ability to experience pleasure and pain, or sentience."70
He suggests it is good that human beings exist in a regular, law-like
environment where human soul making is possible and where they have freedom
to exercise it. In such an environment pain and suffering "will be inevitable for
corporal, sentient beings," and as such is, "required to preserve the integrity of
sentient physical organisms engaged in intentional actions."71 Additionally, he
says it's quite reasonable to think human beings living in such an environment
"will be essentially dependent on nonhuman animals in a variety of ways. If they
are not necessary for food, they are at least a necessary part of an ecosystem in
much the same way they seem to be in the actual world; i.e., for spreading pollen
and seeds, for replenishing atmospheric carbon dioxide, and so on. For these and
other reasons, embodied physical humans cannot live without animals," while
the animals that exist are well-suited for a meaningful existence in this
environment and they may experience an eternal future as well.72
Murray also argues that divine hiddenness is a requirement for morally
significant human freedom, so he would expect that we cannot know all of God's
reasons for the sufferings of this world. But he also rejects Kenneth Miller and
Michael Corey's arguments for divine hiddenness when they claim that if God
had created by fiat a frilly formed universe six to ten thousand years ago, it
would make God's existence so evident and obvious that creatures would no
longer have significant moral freedom.73 Against them both Murray argues it's
hard to believe that the sufferings of animals throughout geological time are to
be preferred over a scenario where God simply introduced "deceptive evidence"
misleading us to conclude the universe is much older than it is without such
suffering. He also argues that prior to 1859, when Darwin published the On the
Origin of Species, vast numbers of people actually did believe the universe was
created by fiat a few thousand years ago, and that this did not significantly affect
their moral freedom.74
Murray charges that in order to dispute his claims the skeptic must give a
>
detailed description of a world that has at least as good or a better balance of
good over natural evil than the actual one contains. According to him, attempting
to do this "seems hopeless." It would require an account of the world whereby
any suggested alteration "could be pulled off without incurring the cost of a
worse overall balance." It is this, he claims, that "cannot be done."75
In a way, Murray's proposal is not unlike Dinesh D'Souza's claim with regard
to why there are earthquakes like the underwater one that created the 2004
Indonesian tsunami, slaughtering over a quarter of a million people and millions
of animals.76 The answer D'Souza proffered is that without these earthquakes
our planet couldn't support creatures like us.
D'Souza's answer assumes a natural causeand-effect world without divine
interference. However, the question is whether this answer is what we'd expect
to find based upon a theistic supposition, and the answer is a resounding no,
given what believers claim about an omni-God.
In the same way, Murray is asking critics to provide a detailed natural
description of a world at least as good as or better than the existing one, without
as much suffering. If I could do that, then such a world would be a different one
with different natural laws producing a different ecosystem, which would
produce different life forms, depending upon how radical of a deviation it is
from the actual one. If Murray wants a natural description of a better world with
the present life forms in it, this probably cannot be done precisely because he's
asking for a natural explanation given the existing set of natural laws. This
present natural world is the only one we know and the only one that could
produce the life forms that presently exist in it, that is, until we get our hands on
the right kinds of technologies to produce a better natural world. Richard Carrier
tells us about what we have accomplished with these technologies: "No thanks to
God, we got rid of his damned murderous floods, with dams, levies, and
channels. What floods did that was of use, we then did with irrigation
technology without all the pain and murder."77
Murray needs to understand that the question isn't whether I could provide a
detailed natural description of a better world. The real question is whether an
omniscient God could do so, and it would seem that he could. To simply respond
that because God is omniscient he knows how to create a perfectly good world
doesn't cut it. For it begs the question of whether God is omniscient, and I can
indeed criticize his socalled creative handiwork, just like I can criticize the poor
construction of a house even though I don't know enough to build one myself.
Besides, I see nothing in the world that could not be bettered by God through
perpetual miracles. As David Hume wrote, the ordering of the world by natural
laws "seems nowise necessary to a very perfect Being."78 I call this the
Perpetual Miracle Objection. I wonder if Christian theists have really thought
through the implications of a God who prefers this present set of natural laws
with its sufferings over constant divine, miraculous maintenance. Is their
omnipotent God lazy or something? What is there that is more valuable to God
about this present ecosystem that takes precedence over our sufferings? There is
no moral parity here at all, just as Murray argued that there's no moral parity
between the sufferings of animals through evolutionary time, and a God who
introduces "deceptive evidence" to mislead us to think the universe is much
older without so much intense suffering.
God could have created us much differently-easily. I've previously suggested
that God could've created all creatures as vegetarians. ButJames A. Keller argues
these types of suggestions aren't convincing "because they are inevitably
incomplete":
They are suggestions about how some features or natural laws might be
changed, but they do not specify a complete set of features and natural
laws, so we cannot gain a complete conception of what life would be like in
a world operating in accordance with the suggested natural laws. Therefore,
we cannot begin to determine whether there would be a better balance of
good over evil in the new world than in this one. (For example, if all the
animals in the world were vegetarians, one wonders what would keep their
populations in check so as to mitigate overcrowding and mass starvation
subsequent upon overgrazing.) Moreover, humans are not competent to
compare the overall balance of good and evil in our world with the balance
in a world with different natural laws.79
Contrary to Keller, God could have made fruit trees, tomatoes, carrots, grape
vines, blueberry bushes, corn stalks, bananas, wheat, barley, and corn to grow as
plentiful as weeds do today in areas where they are needed, or he could have
changed our diets. And if for some reason this isn't enough, then God could've
created us such that the process of photosynthesis would feed us off of the sun
itself. Barring that, I see no reason why any creature has to eat at all, since God
could perform a perpetual miracle that would provide us all with miraculously
created nutrients inside our bodies throughout our lives. If he did this, no
creature would ever starve to death. Since this is so, God would not even need to
create any animals at all.
I see no reason why we need animals for clothes, transportation, work, or play.
Clothes made from linen or cotton rather than from wool would do just fine until
we invented synthetic materials. Prior to the automobile our legs would've been
sufficient to get us places, or God could have created wings in addition to our
arms that could be used for transportation. I see no reason why God would not
have told us how to invent the combustion engine or synthetic materials anyway,
if needed. And we wouldn't need oxen or horses to plow the land if we didn't
need to eat.80 God could also control any overpopulation by reducing our
mating cycles in the first place (which is a much better method of doing so than
natural disasters after the fact, anyway). Human beings would still have to work
for a living, since we'd want a good home with the comforts of life. Cities would
still need to be built and maintained. With more time on our hands we could
meditate, pray, and focus on raising our families. We could do more traveling,
and be better educated. We could pursue our hobbies or engage in sporting
activities. And if God had done this we wouldn't know any differently.
But if there were no meat eaters of any kind, then what would happen to dead
carcasses, Keller might ask. They decompose into nothing because of the help of
scavenger birds, like vultures, and parasites, like maggots, (although God could
have designed all bodies to dissolve naturally by innate chemical reactions once
dead). I see nothing problematic with the existence of meat-eating scavengers
who never kill any other creature to eat (they would be the only creatures who
were not vegetarians in such a world). They only feed on carcasses that have
&nbs
p; already died.
Furthermore, if God did these kinds of perpetual miracles, then scientists
would not be able to explain as many things naturally, which in turn would be a
good thing for believers. The God of the Gaps defense would be given a boost.
I've already explained in some detail why a world that couldn't be explained by
natural science would help me to believe, anyway.81 And such a world would
not significantly affect morally significant human freedom, just as Murray
argued that an unexplainable universe created by fiat spontaneously a few
thousand years ago did not do so prior to the rise of modern science.
I see no reason at all why a perfectly good, omnipotent God would choose to
create through a long evolutionary process such as we find in this world, unless
we either radically alter what it means for him to be perfectly good or for him to
be omnipotent, especially since he wants us to believe. The best explanation for
the world of animal and human suffering is therefore evolutionarily natural
selection, where nature is red in tooth and claw, precisely because this is how the
fittest survive. The God hypothesis is no solution for what we see in this world.
OPTION EIGHT
The last option is the Ignorance Defense, which I've dealt with before (see
note).82 Christian apologist C. S. Lewis punts to that option when he wrote that
the problem of animal pain "is outside the range of our knowledge. God has
given us data which enable us, in some degree, to understand our own suffering:
He has given us no such data about beasts. We know neither why they were
made nor what they are, and everything we say about them is speculative."83
Wennberg says when all is said and done his suggested solutions are mere
"possibilities ... providing faith with options that it can at least tentatively
embrace as it struggles with the problem of animal suffering."84 Echoing
Wennberg, Stewart Goetz argued with regard to the issue of animal suffering:
[It] is reasonable for the theist to be a defender and answer these questions
with "I do not know," because the matter is one that lies outside our
cognitive purview. One thing that is important to understand is why it is
beyond our ken. The explanation for this ignorance has to do with our lack
of knowledge of both a beast's nature and the purpose for which a beast
exists.85
Granted, C. S. Lewis and others offered some reasons for thinking animal pain
is not divine cruelty, but in the end they punt to ignorance. Lewis, for instance,
offers two reasons in defense of his Christian view. The first reason is a
deductive one unrelated to the evidence itself. He writes, "From the doctrine that
God is good we may confidently deduce that the appearance of reckless divine
cruelty in the animal kingdom is an illusion." However, I can easily reverse this
deduction. I deduce that from the evidence of animal suffering there is no good
God. Lewis's second reason is an argument by analogy. Lewis thinks he has
previously offered good reasons why human pain is not divine cruelty. He claims
the success of these arguments about human pain make it easier to believe
animal pain is not divine cruelty either, even if he cannot specifically say why
animals suffer. I, however, have argued that there is no satisfactory solution to
human suffering,86 so if my arguments succeed, as I think they do, there is no
reason to think there is any good solution to animal pain either. Having
mentioned these two reasons, Lewis admits: "After that, everything is
guesswork." 87 And that's all he has left with, guesswork, since neither he nor
anyone else can specifically answer this problem. A religion that can only stand
on such dubious guesswork is not a religion we have any epistemic right to
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