Thoughts on the Problem of Animal Suffering
YouTube atheist Cosmic Skeptic uploaded a video entitled “Christianity’s Biggest Problem”. He definitely caught my attention for the title and because I recently gained some respect for Alex as he had a recent discussion with William Lane Craig and that discussion turned out very well. To spoil Alex’s cryptic surprise, he believes that Christianity’s biggest problem is the problem of animal suffering. In Alex’s view, he believes that because animals experience gratuitous suffering (resource depletion, death in wildfires, long drawn out deaths to predators) that it is evidence that God does not exist, and that Christianity is false. I admit that I hadn’t really considered this problem, so I have gone looking for resources, and I would like to present what I have found here as possible avenues in which we can answer this particular problem.
The first line of response I am borrowing Sean Luke, a comember
of CAA: Christian Apologetics Alliance on Facebook, who left this comment on
the original video from Cosmic Skeptic:
I
think we actually can reduce the problem of animal suffering to the problem of
moral evil. Here's how. Alvin Plantinga famously gave the Demon Defense,
wherein he suggested that the progression of species in such a way that led to
tremendous animal suffering (since the real rub here is not animal death per
se, but animal suffering) could be sourced in demonic activity. Now that was
laughed out of academia and not taken seriously. But suppose we take Christian
suppositions to be true, and ask if its consistent with the world we see (since
objections of this sort tend to test the internal consistency of a worldview).
Is it consistent to say a good God created a world which is suffused with the
profound animal suffering we see?
Well,
if the Christian story is to be believed, then a number of things would be true
about reality. First, naturalism would be false; so in principle, the existence
of non-natural beings wouldn't be so implausible (I think, at least) if we have
good reason to think naturalism is indeed false. Second, we would know from
Scripture that spiritual beings do rebel against God, and often that manifests
in the natural world (think of the story of Job). God has such agents on a
leash, as it were; they can only do what he allows them to do. But nevertheless,
their activity makes a real impact on the natural world. Third, we know that
there was a serpentine-agent (a symbol of some creature in rebellion against
God) on the scene before Adam and Eve were on the scene. So I think a plausible
response that emerges from *within* the claims of Christianity is the response
that even animals, to some extent, were and are corrupted by the influence of
evil. And this has some force to it, in that we can see what happens when we
mistreat animals (say). If you beat a dog regularly, even a well-tempered dog
can become cruel and vicious. Perhaps we can attribute the development of
species in the particular path of violence as a material embodiment of
spiritual forces that rebel against God.
Now
again, that would be wildly implausible to a naturalist--so I get why people
reject this suggestion out of hand. But I don't think there's any reason to
just dismiss this on its face; certainly, the plausibility of this story
increases if we have other good reasons to think that a) naturalism is false
and b) there is some ultimate, personal foundation to all reality and c) the
facts concerning the life of Jesus of Nazareth are difficult to account for
apart from the resurrection.
Trent Dougherty’s 2014 work, The Problem
of Animal Suffering: A Theodicy for All Creatures Great and Small, acknowledges
the problem of animal suffering as a challenge for theism, but he offers a
compelling case as to how God will redeem all of creation, animals included. Dougherty
asserts that animals will be resurrected at the end of Revelation, and that
they will become full persons who can choose to become part of God’s plan.
Dougherty rejects the idea that animals are not aware of their suffering, as
some theodicies and theories proclaim. Dougherty then looks at Hick’s theodicy
of Christian saint-making and adapts it to soul-making for animals and follows
this theodicy to explain how God needs to defeat evil, not just compensate for
it. Evil can be defeated by integrating it into a morally valuable whole that
is better than it could be without the evil. Dougherty proposes that God
integrates this evil by allowing animals to embrace there earthly story, and be
redeemed into Heaven.
William Lane Craig had a guest
writer (Michael Murray) on his website comment on the problem of animal
suffering. The article starts with a close answer to Sean’s answer above, with
a theological answer contending that animal suffering exists because of our
fallen state, and states that this answer is incomplete given evidence that
animals existed way before the dawn of humanity. The second response is the
unintuitive denial of animal pain/suffering as a reality. Michael provides some
ideas as to why this idea isn’t as crazy as it may sound, and answers CosmicSkeptic
on his objection that if we deny animal pain, that animal mistreatment isn’t
immoral. We as humans are under a moral law to be good tenants of God’s
creation, and we should work to preserve the well-being and integrity of animals
as we are under that law. Our next answer looks at the idea that pain is
necessary to avoid further injury, and we do see this in disorders where
patients do not feel pain such as leprosy. Paul Brand described potential
solutions in his book The Gift of Pain, and the only solution was to use
a device to shock them when they might hurt themselves, and the patients chose
to disconnect it. Pain may be unavoidable in this world so that we can attempt
to live lives to pursue God on this side of the grave. Murray closes with some
thoughts on mass extinction events, and comments on how the most famous mass extinction
event (the meteor that killed the dinosaurs) set the stage for the environment
of Earth to be hospitable to humans.
There are 3 answers of many that I
have worked to summarize and report here to show that Christians have been
working and grappling with the problem of animal suffering, and that there are
many answers that are satisfying to me, if incomplete. I hope these will help
you in your intellectual pursuit of God. If there are more thoughts you have on
this problem, put them in the comments and we can discuss. May God bless you
and have a great rest of your day!
Resources (I have not utilized all of them in this post)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKQWrbeoA2E
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