Stephen Law is perhaps the foremost defender of the argument from suffering. While not an argument for atheism per se, if the argument is successful, then it does constitute a sound a defeater of classical theism, which holds that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good.
One aspect that Law focuses on is the suffering of animals. Animals, many believe, are innocent of any moral crimes, and so it would be unjust to allow them to suffer. More precisely, it would be unjust to allow them to suffer to the extent that they do. Since the God of classical theism would not allow such suffering (according to the argument), and this suffering is real, it follows that the God of classical theism does not exist.
Now, one classical theistic response to this is to say that while animals suffer pain, they are not aware of the fact that they are in pain. If true, this minimizes the emotional impact of this aspect of the argument from suffering, and severely undercuts its rational import. After all, suffering is either just or unjust only if there is some level of self-awareness, or at the very least a potential of self-awareness.
Law, like other defenders of the argument from suffering, responds that (at least some) animals do have the capacity for this kind of self-awareness. Instead of contesting this response, I want to accept it for the sake of argument. Why does this result in an odd consequence?
The problem is that with self-awareness comes a recognition of moral obligations, or (again) at least a potential for this recognition. If animals have self-awareness, then it is reasonable to think they are cognizant that certain things are right and others wrong. This in turn means that animals are morally culpable. Yet, we find among animals many moral atrocities, such as rape and murder. Ordinarily we would refer to an ape intentionally causing the death of another of its kind "killing," as opposed to "murder." However, moral culpability changes all of that.
Unwittingly, then, Law and other proponents of the argument from suffering have actually given classical theists a further justification for animal suffering. For "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23) and "the wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23). If animals have self-awareness and they are cognizant of moral obligations, then it follows that they are capable of sin, which (like for humans) is their metaphysical cause of death.
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Now, one classical theistic response to this is to say that while animals suffer pain, they are not aware of the fact that they are in pain.
ReplyDeleteWhat does it mean to suffer pain but to not be aware of the fact that you are in pain?
The problem is that with self-awareness comes a recognition of moral obligations, or (again) at least a potential for this recognition.
I don't see the connection between self-awareness and the recognition of moral obligations.
Stephen Law can't psychologically accept the brute fact that (as Brian Davies argues rather successfully in his work) God in the classic sense is not coherently conceivable as a moral agent & thus has no obligations too his creatures.
ReplyDeleteAll of Law's objections to God from his Evil God argument to this nonsense he is spouting pre-supposes a Theistic Personalist "deity" that is some type of moral agent.
It's a less severe version of your average Gnu Atheist shlub who batters about his anti-Young Earth Creationist polemics and acts surprised and annoyed when a Theistic Evolutionist informs him all his argument are by definition non-starters for him.
additionally:
ReplyDeleteIf I believe Thomas Nagel I don't know what it is like to be a bat. At best I can imagine myself as small and furry and flying sending out sound waves from whose echo my senses form images.
But if I do this I am not literally imaging myself as a bat. I am literally imagining a human mind, intellect & cognitive experience with the physical morphology of a bat. Not a real bat.
So Stephen is already at a wall of an impenetrable mystery as to what animals experience in their existence. So we don't know if they really suffer as we do & in principle can't know.
Thus Rowe's Fawn doesn't move me no matter how many Bambi Films I am made to watch. Turn the Fawn into a five year old little human girl then we can talk about a possible "cruel" god.
The trouble with the whole "Why would a good God allow or create Animal suffering?" mishigoss polemics used by Atheists is, it suffers from the anthropomorphic fallacy big time.
I could affirm no god concept of any kind is true tomorrow & based on Nagel I would have no reason to believe animals experience suffering the way I do as a human or as bad as I do as an intellective human.
"While not an argument for atheism per se, if the argument is successful, then it does constitute a sound a defeater of classical theism, which holds that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good."
ReplyDeleteI disagree: the so-called "argument from suffering" is actually one more argument against atheism. Below is the same "logic" as this pseudo-argument --
1) No father who is good/loving would allow his children to experience any pain/suffering that he can prevent, and certainly wouldn't pay someone else to cause them pain/suffering.
2) Going the the dentist generally causes children pain/suffering.
3) When I was a child, my father took me to the dentist -- and paid him to cause me pain/suffering.
4) My father was not a good/loving father. The bastard.
1) No father who is good/loving would allow his children to experience any pain/suffering that he can prevent, and certainly wouldn't directly cause them pain/suffering.
2) Being told "No!" generally causes children pain/suffering.
3) When I was a child, my father told me "No!" A lot.
4) My father was not a good/loving father. The bastard.
A lot more responses than I was expecting after just one day! :)
ReplyDeleteJayman, you ask: "What does it mean to suffer pain but to not be aware of the fact that you are in pain?"
Take, for example, the human body that has "gone under" for surgery. The body is being inflicted with a great deal of stress as a result of the pain being inflicted upon it. I know this firsthand, as the doctors told me my blood pressure shot way up during the operation. I was in pain, but I wasn't aware of it.
Jayman: "I don't see the connection between self-awareness and the recognition of moral obligations."
I think it's a reasonable connection to make, but I won't belabor the point. After going over this argument with some likeminded philosophers, I think the argument can be revised for the better. Assuming Law is correct in contending that animals have moral rights, here's how we can formalize the argument:
1. Animals have rights. (Assumption)
2. If animals have rights, then they are moral subjects. (Premise)
3. If animals are moral subjects, then they must have rationality. (Premise)
4. Therefore, animals have rationality. (From 1 - 3)
So, instead of starting with self-awareness, we focus instead on the notion that animals have moral rights. (By the way, I do think it's wrong to inflict pain on animals. However, it's not because animals have moral rights, but partly because there's a slippery slope between inflicting suffering on animals and inflicting suffering on human beings. That's one of the reasons why we ought to nip animal cruelty in the bud.)
I think a little caution is in place here, Doug.
DeleteConsider the following argument
1. Embryos have rights. (Assumption)
2. If embryos have rights, then they are moral subjects. (Premise)
3. If embryos are moral subjects, then they must have rationality. (Premise)
4. Therefore, embryos have rationality. (From 1 - 3)
This conclusion is, to say the least, controversial.
It seems like premise 2 is not as straight-forward as you suggest and, as a result, Law's argument isn't as easy to refute as you seem to think.
Walter, I'll concede a little more tweaking is needed. Instead of (3) entailing rationality, let's say that it entails moral accountability. With that change made, it only follows that embryos possess moral accountability. Of course, embryos are incapable of committing personal sin, since, as you correctly point out, they (likely) do not possess rationality.
DeletePremise (2), on the other hand, appears obviously true. Whatever is not a moral subject cannot possibly have any moral rights.
Now, if we want to keep (3) as it is and include rationality, there is another route we could take. We could simply deny the first premise of your counter-argument and hold that embryos do not have rights.
DeleteThis may worry some, thinking that such a position implies that abortion is morally permissible. However, that worry can be dispelled by appealing to natural law ethics, for example. Surely if artificial contraception is wrong on NLE, then so is abortion. Hence, there's no need for embryos to have rights on a pro-life view. However, I digress, since NLE is not the topic under consideration. I only point it out to show that your counter-example has some holes.
BenYachov, those are some excellent points. Law has no way of knowing what it's like to be an animal (other than a human animal, of course), so unless there's some compelling reason to think that animals are aware of the fact that they are in pain, it remains perfectly reasonable to maintain they aren't aware of it. In fact, given that animals are not rational agents, I think there's good reason to believe they have no self-awareness. Rather, they act upon instinct. Crying out in pain is a valuable survival trait, since it informs other animals of the same kind that one of their own needs help, thus helping that species of animal to further survive.
ReplyDeleteIlion: "I disagree: the so-called 'argument from suffering' is actually one more argument against atheism. . . ."
ReplyDeleteI agree with this. What I was saying was simply that if the atheist's argument from suffering is correct, then... and you know the rest. Of course, I don't think the atheistic argument from suffering is sound.
D.Benscotter: "2. If animals have rights, then they are moral subjects. (Premise)
ReplyDelete3. If animals are moral subjects, then they must have rationality. (Premise)"
W.VdA: "...4. Therefore, embryos have rationality. (From 1 - 3)
This conclusion is, to say the least, controversial.
It seems like premise 2 is not as straight-forward as you suggest and, as a result, Law's argument isn't as easy to refute as you seem to think."
When one speaks of an entity as being a 'rational being', or argues from the premise that an entity is a 'rational being', one is speaking about or arguing from the nature of the genus/species (using these words in their older, non-biological sense of "kind" or "class"), rather that about or from any specific individual.
It is (allegedly) the nature of human beings to be 'rational beings' ... thus (if true), even an unconscious man, or even a human embryo, "has rationality".
So, it seems to me that Mr Van den Acker's counter argument isn't so much a counter to Mr Benscotter's as it is a misunderstanding of issue(s).
In that case, we have a third viable response to Walter's counter-example.
DeleteD.Benscotter: "I agree with this. What I was saying was simply that if the atheist's argument from suffering is correct, then... and you know the rest. Of course, I don't think the atheistic argument from suffering is sound."
ReplyDeleteI'm not *simply* saying that I think the argument "isn't successful". I'm saying that *even if* it "is successful", it's not actually a defeater for "classical theism", but is, instead, a defeater for 'atheism'.