The Soulful Eye

Here’s a page with a couple of good entries on the problems for theodicy presented by animal pain and suffering, from the online journal of philosophy and animals Between the Species.  The two articles I found most interesting are :

Theodicy and Animals, by Joseph Lynch.  This is a good short summary of the problems animals pose for traditional theodicies as well as some of the general attempts by theists to address those issues. Nature Red in Tooth and Claw: Theism and the Problem of Animal Suffering, by Michael Murray would be a similar treatment in book length.

Darwin’s Doubts and the Problem of Animal Pain, by Eric Kraemer.  This one touches on a few points of interest, Plantinga’s use of ‘Darwin’s doubts’ and whether evolution is in fact reconcilable with the propositions of traditional theism.  I appreciated the example of the Cyclopsian Hordes in response to framing the significance of animal suffering in terms of human character building … honestly … could there be anything more selfish than explaining someone else’s suffering in terms of yourself?

To claim that animal suffering is required for human character building, free will, etc. not only ignores the huge amount of animal suffering in nature which has no effect on humans at all.²² To avoid this last problem, suppose we try to justify animal suffering in terms of requirements involving another kind of creature, for example a very large number of idiotic giants, modeled perhaps after the Cyclops, who live on other planets but are obsessed with observing all nonhuman suffering on Earth through powerful telescopes, so no bit of animal suffering ever goes unobserved. If there are enough giants on other planets and if every bit of animal suffering goes towards improving the moral situation of these pathetic giants, the theist might claim that earthly animal suffering was counterbalanced by creating greater goods elsewhere in the universe.²³ However unlikely this situation might appear to us, and even if we accept the crude Utilitarian calculations it presupposes, the Cyclopsian scenario faces a standard problem confronting most theistic attempts to explain away the existence of evil.²⁴ This is the problem of making it plausible to believe that God, an all-powerful and all-knowing being, really had no better method available for the moral improvement of the Cyclopsian race than to permit the huge amount of animal suffering we find on Earth. Since we can, with no apparent difficulty, imagine God making video tapes of animal suffering, or showing movies of animal suffering to produce the same good extra-terrestrial effect, to think of God’s ingenuity being defeated by the mental limitations of the Cyclopsian hordes is a possibility that is hard to take seriously.