Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Some Questions About Animal Suffering and Religious Belief

This just in from Karl White:
A couple of questions.
 
1. The gist of your posts seems to be that we can never know for sure that an evil is pointlessly evil, therefore no evil rules out definitively the potential existence of an omni-loving God.
 
Yes, that's the gist of it, but strike 'potential.'
 
So in your view does that imply that there is no amount of evil that could rule it out? If the entire planet were like Auschwitz would that still not rule it out? (And it is estimated that roughly 150 million animals are slaughtered per day for human consumption, so it could plausibly be maintained that for animals the world is a kind of Auschwitz.)
 
No. The idea is that the existence of evils that are necessary for a greater good are logically compatible with the existence of an all-good God. So the goods have to outweigh the evils.  It follows that there has to be a limit to how much evil there is.
 
And let's leave out of the present discussion the human slaughter of humans and animals, for that belongs under the rubric 'moral evil,' whereas the topic under discussion is natural evil. One question for a separate post is whether natural evil is itself a species of moral evil, namely, the evil perpetrated by fallen angels. But for now I will assume that natural evil is not a species of moral evil; I will assume that it is not the result of free agency.
 
To put it more formally: is there any state of affairs, call it X, that would rule out the existence of God?
 
Yes. Just one case of pointless or unjustified evil would rule out the existence of God.
 
I am uncomfortable with the idea of saying yes, as I suspect it pushes the notion of an omni-God toward the brink of meaninglessness. We generally think that if a proposition cannot be proven or disproven then it is in a certain sense meaningless or at best useless. The Theist will reply that the existence of God is a unique case and fine, but I still feel that we are within our rights to ask for some form of verification without having the whole concept of God becoming meaningless.
 
I rather doubt that  a proposition is meaningful iff it is verifiable. Consider the following proposition
 
a) My grandfather Alfonso drank a glass of dago red on 1 January 1940.
 
By Bivalence, (a) is either true, or if not true, then false.  And this is so even though it is impossible now to determine (a)'s truth value.  Since (a) must either be true or false, it must be meaningful, despite its unverifiability.  Similarly for 
 
b) The execution of Sophie Scholl (of White Rose fame) was not a pointless evil.
 
(b) is meaningful but not empirically verifiable in the present life.
 
Note also, that if one is a verificationist, there is no need to mess around with the problem of evil: one can put paid to all (synthetic) claims about God, such as the claim that God exists, by maintaining that they are meaningless because not empirically verifiable in the here and now.
 
2. You push the pragmatic, Pascalian line about the benefits of believing in God quite regularly. But isn't there a sort of question-begging to this, in that it assumes only beneficial consequences? What if someone reads the Quran, sees the lines about killing non-believers and thinks "I may as well, because if God exists, he'll reward me, and if he doesn't, it doesn't matter anyway." Or if someone adopts a religion that promotes the total subjection of women?
 
My Pascalianism is not blanket; it kicks in only in specific circumstances.  Islam is "the poorest and saddest form of theism" (Schopenhauer), It is clearly an inferior religion as compared to Christianity (morally if not metaphysically) if it (Islam) is a religion at all as opposed to a political ideology masquerading as a religion, or a Christian heresy (Chesterton).  It was founded by a warrior who was arguably a fraud and it enjoins immoral practices such the genital mutilation of girls, the subjection of women, and the slaughter of 'infidels.' . So if one exercises due doxastic diligence one excludes Islam and other pseudo-religions from the Pascalian option.
 
The Pascalian move is made in a situation like the following.  One is a serious and sensitive human being who cares about his ultimate felicity.  One is alive to the vanity of this world. One is psychologically capable of religious belief and appreciates that God and the soul are Jamesian live options. One is intellectually sophisticated enough to know that God and the soul can neither be proven nor disproven. One appreciates that not to choose to live as if God and the soul are real is to choose to live as if they are not real.  One understands that it is prudentially irrational to suspend judgment.  At this point the Pascalian reasoning kicks in.
 
By the way, my Pascalian move is merely reminiscent of he great Pascal; I am not concerned with accuracy to the details of his view.  I write as a kind of 'existentialist.' What matters is how I live here and now and what helps me here and now.  I borrow what is useful and appropriable by me here and now; I am not committed to the whole Pascalian kit-and-kaboodle.

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9 responses to “Some Questions About Animal Suffering and Religious Belief”

  1. Jacques Avatar
    Jacques

    Hi Bill. I’ve been enjoying these excellent posts on natural evil. And I’m sympathetic to skeptical theism. But is such a position consistent with your view of Islam?
    After all, the skeptical theist claims that natural events that seem to us pointless even on careful reflection could be fully justified; so why would that same general point not hold for actions that similarly seem to us morally evil even on careful reflection, e.g. those that Muslim terrorists take to be commanded by God? If we are entitled to bracket our moral intuitions in the one case why not in the other? Why not hold that Allah is God and, therefore, slaughtering infidels must be morally good or acceptable given that Allah commands it?
    (A related question is this: What distinguishes Allah morally from the apparently genocidal God of the Torah? Is traditional Judaism an equally sad and immoral form of theism?)

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  2. Karl Avatar
    Karl

    Thanks for the blog entry, Bill. Just one point of clarification: I made a typo howler: I meant to say “I am uncomfortable with the idea of saying no….” in my own reply to the “Is there any state of affairs that would rule out the existence of God?”
    So I guess the kind of position you’re advocating is a form of what I’ve seen called “Eschatological verificationism”: if God exists and all is revealed and restored at the end then it will all have been justified. Plus it seems to make God a kind of utilitarian, does it not? All the evils are outweighed by a final superior good?

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  3. BV Avatar
    BV

    You raise two utterly fascinating questions that are not confined to the present topic.
    One is whether a good end ever justifies an evil means. My ‘inner Kantian’ is feeling a little cognitive dissonance at the moment.
    The other is whether a proposition could be true but unverifiable by anyone ever.

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  4. BV Avatar
    BV

    Thanks for the comments, Jacques.
    >>After all, the skeptical theist claims that natural events that seem to us pointless even on careful reflection could be fully justified; so why would that same general point not hold for actions that similarly seem to us morally evil even on careful reflection, e.g. those that Muslim terrorists take to be commanded by God? << The cases are quite different. In the first, natural evil, in the second, moral evil. The Muslim terrorist evils arise from free finite agency; God is not on the hook for them if the free will defence holds. You are on to something, however. Perhaps you could give your objection a sharper and clearer formulation.

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  5. Elliott Avatar
    Elliott

    If the created world is restored in the end, it doesn’t seem to follow that God is a utilitarian or some kind of consequentialist. Regarding moral evil: assuming that created persons have libertarian free will (LFW), that moral evil is the result of misused LFW, and that God knew that such LFW would be misused if he were to create persons, perhaps God used something like the Principle of Double Effect (PDE) when deciding to create.
    Regarding natural evil: perhaps the PDE is relevant here, too.
    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-effect/
    http://sites.saintmarys.edu/~incandel/doubleeffect.html
    The SEP article expresses the PDE as follows: “The New Catholic Encyclopedia provides four conditions for the application of the principle of double effect:
    1.The act itself must be morally good or at least indifferent.
    2.The agent may not positively will the bad effect but may permit it. If he could attain the good effect without the bad effect he should do so. The bad effect is sometimes said to be indirectly voluntary.
    3.The good effect must flow from the action at least as immediately (in the order of causality, though not necessarily in the order of time) as the bad effect. In other words the good effect must be produced directly by the action, not by the bad effect. Otherwise the agent would be using a bad means to a good end, which is never allowed.
    4.The good effect must be sufficiently desirable to compensate for the allowing of the bad effect“ (p. 1021).

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  6. Elliott Avatar
    Elliott

    Quick point regarding the suffering of non-human animals: suppose that for an animal to be aware that it is experiencing pain, the animal must possess self-awareness, i.e., an awareness that it is an “I.” Suppose also that animals lack self-awareness. They can’t think “I am in pain.”
    If these suppositions are plausible, it seems plausible to hold that although animals experience pain, they are not aware that they experience pain.

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  7. BV Avatar
    BV

    Elliot,
    Your second comment is especially intriguing. One might argue as follows.
    1. To be in pain is to feel pain. (For pains, esse = percipi)
    2. My cat is in pain. Ergo:
    3. My cat feels pain.
    4. My cat lacks self-awareness: he is not reflectively aware that he feels pain. He cannot think an I-thought, e.g., I now feel pain! Why is Big Pussy standing on my tail?
    5. Only a being that is reflectively aware of its pain suffers from its pain. Ergo:
    6. My cat does not suffer when I tread on his tail.
    Generalizing: non-human animals don’t suffer!
    Would you endorse this argument? The crucial premise is (5).

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  8. Elliott Avatar
    Elliott

    Thanks for your response, Bill. That’s an interesting argument. I had something like it in mind when I posted the comment. I don’t know whether or not to endorse it. I agree that the crucial premise is (5).
    I think (5) is plausible. Suppose animals are aware but not self-aware. If an animal is aware that physical distress is occurring but, lacking self-awareness, is not conscious that the pain is its own, what is the animal suffering? Analogy: consider calumny. Suppose someone defames me and I’m not aware that it’s happening to me. It seems I don’t suffer the calumniation.
    But we should say something about the definition of “suffer.” Is self-awareness a necessary condition of suffering?
    I can see someone questioning (2) as well. Perhaps your cat is instinctively repelled by physical damage to its body, but is not in pain. That is a difficult position to take, though. The cat’s behavior (e.g., caterwauling, scratching) is evidence that it feels pain. I don’t know what it’s like to be a cat (in Nagel’s sense of “what it’s like”) but I believe cats feel pain.

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  9. Jacques Avatar
    Jacques

    Hi Bill,
    I don’t think the cases are relevantly different. Here is how a skeptical terrorist theist might argue…
    “Yes it seems intuitively that God would not command the mass murder of unbelievers, since that seems intuitively to be immoral. However, I am justified in believing that God exists and has commanded just this. Therefore, I am justified in believing that my moral intuitions are unreliable on this point. And that’s not too unlikely if God exists. Why would we expect that mere human beings are in a position to know What would be commanded by an omni-God? Just as apparently pointless suffering could well have a point unknowable for us, apparently morally wrong acts could be morally good and even obligatory in relation to the inconceivably greater knowledge of God, I.e. Allah. So the mere fact that terrorism seems wrong to me has little epistemic significance with respect to the question of whether it really is wrong. And so I don’t agree that Islamic terrorism is a moral evil. Rather, since I justifiedly believe that God has commanded it, I justified believe that it’s morally right (though I have no idea _why_ it’s morally right or even how it could be right).”
    Does this make the reasoning more clear?

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