The Real Problem of Infant and Animal Suffering
Abstract:
The problem of infant suffering and death has
remained one of the most intractable problems for theists. Andrew
Chignell has attempted to develop a theodicy for this problem that is based on
Marilyn Adam’s paradigm for theodicy.
However, his discussion repeatedly avoids the argument that,
traditionally, most have thought to be the basis of this problem of evil. Thus, his theodicy provides the traditional
theist with no adequate response to the problem. I argue that since infant suffering is a serious (and
inadequately addressed) problem for any theodicy, animal torture and death is a
serious problem as well. I note that
few theodicies have addressed animal suffering in a manner that takes their
pain seriously.
There are many
theistic responses to the problem of infant suffering that are open to
criticism. For the sake of formulating precise
criticisms, I shall concentrate on Andrew Chignell’s theodicy, which is based
on the paradigm for theodicy that has been developed by Marilyn McCord Adams.
The first of Andrew Chignell’s articles on
the relation between God’s existence and infant suffering began with this
historically accurate observation:
Since St Matthew wrote of Herod’s massacre of the innocents, people in
the Christian tradition have wondered how cases of extreme suffering, torture
and death on the part of infants can exist in a world governed by an
omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good God.[1]
This wonder, not unique to Christians, has sometimes brought the devout
to doubt God’s knowledge, power, and good character and, sometimes, even his
very existence. These doubts have led
others to conclude that, probably, there is no God, or, at least, not a being
that fits the traditional description.
For most who have wrestled with these
doubts, their motivating concern, tacit or explicit, has been how to respond to
an argument like this:
(1) If there is a God, then no infants endure extreme suffering, torture and resulting death.
(2)
But some infants do endure extreme suffering, torture
and resulting death.
(3)
So, probably,
there is not a God.
Call this an instance of the “traditional argument from evil.”
Chignell’s opening claim suggests that,
historically, an argument like this has been the source of the theist’s problem
of evil with respect to infant suffering.
Traditionally, their problem has been to explain why known facts about these
kinds of evils are not sufficient evidence against theism. Attempts to solve this problem result in the
proliferation of theodicies, or attempts to provide reasons why a premise like
(1)—especially in a formulation that pertains to unnecessary suffering in
general—is either false or unreasonable, given the evidence. Theodicies attempt to show why—despite (1)’s
prima facie plausibility, given what many find to be seemingly
reasonable expectations about what an omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good being
like God could and would do—accepting a traditional argument from evil as
strong is rash.
However, following Marilyn McCord Adams,
Chignell rejects traditional attempts at theodicy with regard to the question
of why, were there a God, he would allow some infants to suffer so much and die
such early, brutal deaths. Chignell
writes, “Such an answer, assuming there is one, seems likely to be outside the
purview of creaturely minds.”[2] In light of this, Chignell pursues different
and more readily answerable questions regarding God and infant suffering. One commentator notes that it seems that,
from Chignell and Adams’ perspective on theodicy, “the failure to find a
solution [to the traditional problem of evil] is somehow taken to show that the
problem doesn’t need answering.”[3]
I will explain the issue that Chignell takes
to be the relevant problem of infant suffering, briefly restate David
Basinger’s and my criticisms of Chignell’s proposed solution and note that Chignell
failed to address these criticisms in his recent reply to his critics.[4] Our fundamental criticism is that Chignell’s
discussion does not address the real problem of infant suffering, the
problem that, traditionally, has troubled theists and, for others, taken as
some evidence against theism. Thus,
Chignell’s discussion does nothing to help the traditional theist confront the
traditional problem of evil and respond to non-theistic critics.
I conclude by arguing that since infant
suffering is a prima facie problem for theists, the unnecessary pain,
suffering and death that humans impose on non-human animals is another serious
(and, likely, greater) problem that any adequate theodicy must address. I note that few theodicists have attempted
to do so, especially in a manner that takes animal pain and suffering
seriously.
According to Chignell, the problem of infant
suffering for theists is not to try to identify possible reasons why God allows
some infants to suffer greatly and die brutal deaths. His preferred “sort of theodicy does not aim to answer the
question of why God allows a particular evil.”[5] His theodicy only involves identifying
possible explanations for how horrendez evils could be “defeated” and
non-horrendez evils “balanced off.”
I will explain.
First, there is a category of evils that
Chignell and Adams classify as “horrendous” evils. For the sake of clarity and to avoid confusion—since ‘horrendous’
is a word from ordinary language—I will rename these as horrendez evils.[6] Horrendez evils are
evils the participation in which constitutes
prima facie reason to doubt whether the participant’s life could (given their
inclusion in it) be a great good to him/her on the whole.[7]
“Participants” here are the victims of serious evils. In assessing whose perspective the judgment
that the life is no longer a “great good” should be made from, Chignell claims
that, "the perspective of the victim should be of primary importance for
theodicists."[8]
To understand whether infant suffering can
be horrendez, we should consider a case. One of Chignell’s examples, although fictional (or perhaps not),
is from The Brothers Karamazov: that of newborn infants being thrown into
the air and skewered on soldiers’ bayonets.
Surely these infants would experience excruciatingly painful deaths. Many morally sensitive competent
speakers of English would not object to describing this as a horrendously
evil event, the torturer’s acts and character horrendously wicked and
the infant’s sufferings horrendously bad. These claims are sensible and, likely, true.
Chignell might agree that this was a
horrendous evil, in an ordinary sense of the term, but note that this
was clearly not a horrendez evil.
For an infant to be victim of a horrendez evil, he or she would
need to have the concepts of a life and a life that is a “great good,” the
ability to judge (and doubt) that being victim of a serious evil has made his
or her life a great good “on the whole,” and so forth, none of which the infant
possesses, given his or her limited cognitive capacities. So infant suffering cannot be horrendez,
Chignell shows without a doubt. Anyone
who thinks otherwise is simply confused about the concept of horrendez
evils. Showing that this is so is a
focus of his discussion.
Chignell and Adams’ theodical paradigm has
it that that since infant suffering is not a horrendez evil, it need not
be “defeated”: on their view only horrendez evils need defeat. So, while we need not concern ourselves with
understanding their concept of “defeat”, we might briefly do so, in order to
fully understand their view. On their
view, a non-horrendez evil is “defeated” if and only if
it is part of a larger (organic) whole whose
value is greater than it would be were that evil replaced by its neutral
negation.[9]
When an evil is “defeated” in an individual’s existence, that
existence is now better than it would have been without that evil: it is
better, in the individual’s overall pre- and post-mortem existence, that that
evil occurred, and it would have been worse for that individual had it been
prevented.
It is very hard to see how an infants being
brutally tortured to death or dying a gruesome natural death could make its
overall existence better than it would have been had it either not died
and then lived a normal life or even died an early, but peaceful, death. Being tortured to death is one of, if not the,
worst fates to befall an infant (or anyone, for that matter): surely this is
also one of the worst things that could happen to a parent who loves his or her
child. That this sometimes occurs is prima
facie surprising on the hypothesis that there is a God that, at least,
wishes for better than the absolute worst for his creation (and, more
plausibly, as theists believe, loves and wishes for good for his creation) and
is, at least, very powerful and knowledgeable (if not omnipotent and
omniscient, as traditional theists believe).
However, explaining why these intuitions of seeming incompatibility are
mistaken is the task of traditional theodicy, which Chignell and Adams
eschew.
Thus, it is hard to see how infant
torture-unto-death could be “defeated”, since that seems to have the shocking
implication that, for an infant that is tortured to death, the torture brings
about a fate that is the best (or among the best) possible fate(s) for him or
her. However, since infant torture,
while horrendous, clearly is not horrendez and so on Chignell and Adams’
view need not be “defeated”, we need not further discuss “defeat” and its
implausibility when applied to tortured infants.
The second part of Chignell and Adams’ theodicy
is the following principle:
if an evil is not horrendez, then it
needs to be “balanced off,” although it does not need to be “defeated.”
Chignell clearly showed that the evil of infant torture is not horrendez,
so he, therefore, holds that it must be balanced off. On his view, a non-horrendez evil is “balanced off” in an
individual’s pre- and post-mortem existence if and only if
it is part of an existence history that is,
on balance, good for that individual.
Chignell argues that the even the greatest of non-horrendez infant suffering (or anyone’s non-horrendez suffering), if it is finite, can easily be “balanced off” when weighed against the eternal bliss that, presumably, the tortured infants would be granted by God, if he exists. This is Chignell’s proposed solution to the problem of infant suffering. In essence, the response is that, since tortured infants will go to heaven, infant suffering is not a problem for theists.
This response is inadequate from both atheistic and theistic perspectives. First, it is a question-begging response. The traditional argument from evil, including the argument from infant suffering, is an argument that God, God’s heaven, eternal rewards and compensation for undeserved suffering, etc., do not exist. To answer this atheological argument by appealing to God’s heaven is to beg the question, since it assumes the very thesis that is in question, namely, whether or not God and his heaven exist. Thus, this response does not address the non-theist’s challenge. Even theists, who, as Chignell reports, wonder “how cases of extreme suffering, torture and death on the part of infants can exist in a world governed by an omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good God,” should find this solution inadequate, since they find a prima facie tension between their belief in God and facts about these evils, even though they believe tortured infants receive eternal bliss.
Second, apart from this informal logical fallacy, there are metaphysical difficulties with the concept of a heavenly afterlife when applied to these infants. Chignell’s scenario requires that tortured infants are numerically identical to their post-mortem “counterparts” that are reaping the benefits in the afterlife; this relation might be difficult to adequately explain on Chignell’s suggested, and plausible, psychological continuity criteria for personal identity. He does not attempt to explain how tortured infants (who lack much in the way of mental awareness) that die and go into an afterlife to emerge as persons with their accompanying psychological and mental sophistication (Chignell calls this “a sizeable cognitive upgrade”[10]) could be psychologically continuous with each other. His assertions that this does not seem logically impossible are insufficient to establish this claim.[11] He also offers soul-identity as a possible criterion for identity and, while this proposal is metaphysically problematic, even if these problems could be solved, the most serious problem would remain.
This problem is that, regardless of the fact
that even a (finite) world full of tortured infants’ sufferings could easily be
balanced off over an eternity of time, Chignell’s response leaves even theists
wondering why God would actualize a world containing tortured infants,
since, it seems, at least prima facie, that he could have actualized a
world where no (or far fewer) infants get brutally tortured or suffer
horrendously unto death, and with no loss of any greater goods. It seems that tortured infants are among the
worst beings to actualize and that it would have been much better to actualize
infants that, at least, either die relatively painlessly or, at most, develop
normally to lead decent lives. Again,
attempting to explain why these intuitions (and arguments that could be given
in their defense) are mistaken is a task of traditional theodicy, which
Chignell does not concern himself with.
He concludes his discussion by sizing up infant torture as a merely “small or medium-scale” evil.[12] While a scale of evils is not developed, according to Adams some other “small or medium-scale” evils include “a childhood case of the measles” or “not getting into the best graduate school.”[13] To compare infant torture to either of these is, at least, prima facie incredible: on any plausible view, an infant’s being tortured to death does not rank on the same scale of evil as not getting into the best graduate school.
By down-scaling
the evil of infant torture, Chignell tries to console theists with the claim
that infant torture can be “balanced off”, an obvious claim which most theists
already accepted. [14] But Chignell’s more basic problem still
remains, namely, his question-begging response to the atheological argument
from evil, namely, that infant suffering and death by torture is not a problem
for theists since, after all, those infants are now, in fact, in heaven with
God. It seems clear that that this
cannot count as an adequate solution to this problem of evil.
Even most theists will agree that the problem of evil that arises from
the existence of infant pain, suffering and death cannot be solved in the
manner that Chignell suggests.
David Basinger suspects that, among
contemporary philosophers of religion and theologians, only Chignell and Adams
find the main questions asked and purportedly answered in Chignell’s original
paper to be the relevant ones. He
suspects that perhaps no other philosopher, theologian, or lay-person accepts
their paradigm of theodicy that has at its core horrendez evils and the
“defeat” and “balancing out” relations.
Chignell neither argued that this paradigm ought to be accepted
nor did he present his thesis as a conditional: if one accepts Adams’
paradigm for theodicy, then this is what one might reasonably think about
infant suffering. Thus, Basinger shows
that we “gain little from his discussion with respect to the actual challenge
infant suffering poses for theistic belief.”[15]
As we saw above, Chignell introduces his
discussion as if it were a response to a traditional problem of evil. But his subsequent discussion does not
address this problem. What happens is
that he changes the subject and addresses a distinct, much easier (and somewhat
idiosyncratic) problem, attempts to solve that problem, and then
declares that he has provided a way for Christians to “resolve this difficulty
[that is, ‘the problem of infant suffering’] and better configure their beliefs
about God and the nature of human suffering,” suggesting that he has addressed the
traditional problem.[16]
Perhaps Chignell solved a problem of
infant suffering, but it was not the problem that most believers and skeptics
throughout the ages have been concerned with.
Chignell “affirm[s] that others may want to pursue other types of theodical
projects”[17], but
Basinger did rightly criticize him for subtly changing the subject away from
the one he started with and attempting to provide a merely verbal solution to
the problem of evil by showing that, although infant suffering is horrendous,
it is not horrendez and then suggesting that it is thereby not a serious
problem. In his reply, Chignell did not
address Basinger’s fundamental criticism that the problem of evil cannot be “defined
away, as Chignell suggests.”[18] Basinger argued that, given the
horrendousness of infant suffering, “more, much more, is needed”: in his reply,
Chignell did not meet that need.
Chignell concludes that “the
fundamental disagreement between Nobis and myself is one that is too complicated
to be dealt with adequately here.”[19] This disagreement is not complicated, and
Basinger shares in it. It just is this:
it is not clear why anyone should accept Chignell’s assumptions about theodicy
as “philosophically defensible and religiously viable”[20]
and find the (once the terminology is understood) clearly true conclusion that non-horrendez
infant suffering can be balanced out to be at all satisfying
(intellectually, psychologically, or spiritually) since it simply does not help
us understand what to think about the merits of the traditional argument from
evil by giving any insight why these evils might be permitted, if God
exists.
Chignell may reply that he is
just not interested in the traditional problem. He is certainly not obligated to be interested in the problem
that, traditionally, has been called the problem of evil. However, various formulations of the
argument from evil remains and both theists and atheists are interested in
rationally assessing its merits.
Chignell’s discussion gives us no help with that and he presents no
argument that assessing the argument’s merits is a foolhardy task.
If infant suffering matters, so does animal
suffering
A possible objection that can be raised
against Chignell’s discussion is that, for many, it might seem that,
fortunately, few infants die from brutal torture.[21] One might think that since this class of
evils is, in the actual world, quite small, it’s not a pressing problem for
theists since they might think that there is some justifying reason for why
these few babies die such awful deaths, even thought they can’t identify it or
even conceive of what it might be. This
perspective would have it that, by the numbers, the problem of infant suffering
is not that great of a problem.
This response is historically naïve. History shows there are many cases of
infants dying of brutal torture. For
example, in World War II both the SS and German soldiers regularly
bayoneted or burned infants to death, in the scale of tens of thousands. In the
concentration camps, infants were killed in medical experiments and in the gas
chamber. In the 1930s, hundreds of
thousands of Chinese infants were tortured to death by the Japanese army when
they invaded China. Stalin deliberately
starved to death over a million infants in the Ukraine in the early 1930s. These are just a few examples.
However, these cases of infant torture are
numerically insignificant compared to the tens, if not hundreds,
of billions of beings with comparable, although typically greater,
capacities for pain and suffering that are each year brutally tortured
to death around the world. Cats are
boiled alive. Dogs are slowly strangled
to death, crucified, while their hindquarters are burnt to a crisp with a blowtorch. Pigs’ heads are smashed with concrete cinder
blocks and skinned alive. Cows’ legs
and skin are removed while they are still conscious. Newborn male chicks are gassed, crushed, or ground up alive. Rats’ heads are drilled into without
anesthesia; mice are decapitated with scissors; primates are dissected while
conscious and beaten to death. The list
goes on and on and on, for far too long, and includes not only their horrendous
evils that occur when they are killed in brutally painful and inhumane ways,
but the routine intense pain, suffering and frustration that nearly all animals
raised for food, fashion, or experimentation and other exploitive uses endure
daily.[22]
If the sufferings of a relatively few
infants raise doubts about whether there is a God, then certainly the typically
greater sufferings of billions of animals (most of whom who, unlike many
infants, are likely persons in the psychological sense) should raise similar
doubts.[23] In fact, since the numbers of the animals
and the intensity of their sufferings is so much greater, one can plausibly
think that the suffering of animals raises stronger doubts. All plausible moral perspectives—secular and
religious—support the view that to intentionally inflict unnecessary and brutal
suffering on an animal is evil. Basinger
notes that, “as a general rule, the more defenseless the victim, the greater
the degradation and thus horrific nature of the act, regardless of the degree
to which the victim is aware of what is happening.”[24] This plausible principle renders animal
torture and death especially horrendous.
Unless Chignell and Adams posit a heavenly
afterlife of bliss for animals where their sufferings, like infant sufferings,
can also be “balanced out,” their paradigm for theodicy has no resources to
respond to the problem of the seeming incompatibility of extreme and
unnecessary animal suffering and God’s existence. But even if they do allow for an afterlife for animals, difficult
questions for them, and all theodicists, remain: if there is a God, why he
would allow so many animals to be brutally tortured to death in the first
place? What greater goods come from
that, especially since none of this animal suffering is necessary for human
survival, health and happiness?[25] If any greater goods come from this torture are
they good enough to justify such intense pain and suffering? Is it impossible that these goods
could not have been gained in another way that requires less suffering?
These are difficult questions that any
complete theodicy will need to answer.[26] For those who are vividly aware of the
vastness of the truly horrendous suffering that is deliberately inflicted on
animals by humans, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to see how these
questions merit anything other than atheological answers. It is fair to say that these
difficult questions have not been adequately answered by theists, even after
centuries of discussions of the problem of evil. Their few attempts to do so generally do not take the stark reality and evil of animal
pain and suffering seriously.
For these tens of billions of animals, it
truly would have been better for them had they never been born. The fact that they are born to live short,
pain-filled lives and endure inhumane deaths provides some evidence that there
is not a God. Some conclude, based on
the recognition of the vastness of animal suffering, infant suffering, and, of
course, the abundance of seemingly gratuitous and horrendous sufferings of
normal humans, that there is not a God.
The serious challenge for genuine theodicy is to explain, in full and
vivid awareness of all of this, what defeats this inference and why it is
unwarranted. Theists have so far offered nothing that might defeat an argument
for atheism from facts about animal torture and death. Given the vastness of this horrendous evil,
I do not see how theists could defeat this justification for atheism.[27]
[1] “The problem of infant suffering”, Religious Studies 34 (1998), 205-217; “Infant suffering revisited”, Religious Studies 37 (2001), 475-484.
[2] “Infant suffering revisited”, 476.
[3] Patrick Shaw, review of Marilyn McCord Adams Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God, Religious Studies, 37 (2001), 226-230, 228.
[4] David Basinger, “Infant suffering: a response to Chignell”, Religious Studies 35 (1999), 363-369; Nathan Nobis, “Balancing out infant torture and death: a reply to Chigell”, Religious Studies, 37 (2001), 103-108.
[5] “Infant suffering revisited”, 476.
[6] Basinger writes that, “while Adams and Chignell are free to define ‘horrendous’ as they wish, I question whether they are using the term as it is normally applied to the suffering of infants” (“Infant suffering: a response to Chignell”, 368). Surely their use of this term invites misunderstanding.
[7] “Infant
suffering revisited”, 475. This is
Marilyn McCord Adam’s definition of a horrendez evil: see her Horrendous
Evils and the Goodness of God (Ithica NY: Cornell UP, 1999), 26.
[8] "Infant suffering revisited", 483-484, note 3.
[9] “Infant suffering revisited”, 476.
[10] “Infant suffering revisited”, 480.
[11] See Peter van Inwagen’s cautionary claims about assertions of possibility and impossibility in his God, Knowledge and Mystery : Essays in Philosophical Theology (Ithica, NY: Cornell UP, 1995) and Ontology, Identity, and Modality : Essays on Metaphysics (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001).
[12] “Infant suffering revisited”, 483.
[13] M. Adams, “Theodicy Without Blame,” Philosophical Topics XVI (1988), 215-245; 242, note 21.
[14] “Infant Suffering Revisited,” 483.
[15] Basinger, “Infant suffering: a response to Chignell”, 363.
[16] Chignell, “The problem of infant suffering”, 217.
[17] “Infant suffering revisited”, 484, note 7.
[18] Basinger, “Infant suffering: a response to Chignell”, 369.
[19] “Infant suffering revisited”, 483.
[20] “Infant suffering revisited”, 476.
[21] Some aborted later-term fetuses might fit the category for “infant suffering,” however.
[22] Documentation of all these practices is readily available in print, video and online formats. See, e.g., Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, 3rd ed. (HarperCollins, 2002), Carl Cohen and Tom Regan, The Animal Rights Debate (Lanham, M.d.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001); Gail Eisnitz’s Slaughterhouse : The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1997), Gary Francione, Introduction to Animal Rights (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2000), and Kim W. Stallwood, ed., A Primer on Animal Rights: Leading Experts Write about Animal Cruelty and Exploitation (New York: Lantern Books, 2002); Joby Warrick, “They Die Piece by Piece: In Overtaxed Plants, Humane Treatment of Cattle is Often a Battle Lost,” Washington Post, April 20, 2001, A1; Rick Weiss, “PETA Says Tape Shows Rat Research Violations,”April 19, 2002, Washington Post. Many videos are available for online viewing from the animal rights organizations People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals at (http://petatv.com/) and SHARK (SHowing Animals Respect and Kindness) at (http://www.sharkonline.org/).
[23] Recall that both William Rowe’s and Paul Draper’s formulations of the argument from evil are, in part, arguments from an animal suffering.
[24] “Infant suffering: a response to Chignell”, 368.
[25] For a survey of the nutritional literature that shows that this animal pain and suffering is not necessary for human survival and flourishing and an argument that vegetarianism/veganism is morally obligatory, see Mylan Engel’s “The Immorality of Eating Meat” in Louis Pojman (ed.), The Moral Life: An Introductory Reader in Ethics and Literature, (New York: Oxford, 2000), 856-890, p. 857, (reprinted as “Why You Are Committed to the Immorality of Eating Meat,” in William Shaw (ed.), Social and Personal Ethics, 4th Ed., [Wadsworth, 2002]) and his “The Mere Considerability of Animals”, Acta Analytica 16 (2001), 89-108. For arguments that animal research is not necessary for medical progress see Hugh LaFollette and Niall Shanks’ Brute Science: Dilemmas of Animal Experimentation (New York: Routledge, 1996) and Ray and Jean Greek’s Sacred Cows and Golden Geese: The Human Costs of Animal Experiments (New York: Continuum, 2000) and their Species Science: How Genetics and Evolution Reveal Why Medical Research on Animals Harms Humans (New York: Continuum, 2002).
[26] For theistic responses to the problem of animal pain and suffering (although general not intentionally inflicted animal pain, which is the focus of my discussion), see Peter Geach’s Providence and Evil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), John Hick’s Evil and the God of Love (London: Collins, 1967), and C.S. Lewis’s The problem of Pain (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1940). Relevant selections from these authors and others are compiled in Andrew Linzey and Tom Regan’s Animals and Christianity: A Book of Readings (London: SPCK, 1989; New York: Crossroad, 1989). Also see Linzey’s entry “Theodicy” in the Marc Bekoff, ed., Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare ( Westport, CT Greenwood Press, 1998), 297-299. For critical responses to these and other theodicies concerning animal pain and suffering, see Joseph Lynch’s “Harrison and Hick on God and Animal Pain”, Sophia 33 (1994): 62-73, Lynch’s “Classical Theism and the Problem of Animal Suffering” Between the Species: An Electronic Journal for the Study of Philosophy and Animals (available at http://cla.calpoly.edu/~jlynch/Lynch.html), R.W.K. Paterson’s “Animal Pain, God and Professor Geach”, Philosophy 59 (1984): 116-120, and Quentin Smith’s “An Atheological Argument from Evil Natural Laws”, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 29 (1991): 159-174 (available at http://www.qsmithwmu.com/an_atheological_argument_from_evil_natural_laws_(1991).htm). For a theodicy concerning animal predation that does not address moral evils committed to animals, see Peter van Inwagen’s “The Problem of Evil, The Problem of Air, and the Problem of Silence” in The Evidential Argument from Evil, Daniel Howard Snyder, ed., (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press), 151-174.
[27] For helpful and encouraging suggestions for this paper, I am grateful to Quentin Smith.