Abstract
Charles Darwin questions whether conflicts between species palpably captured by the conflict between Ichneumonidae and the caterpillars on which they prey could be compatible with the existence of an all-good, all-powerful God. He also questioned whether the suffering of millions of lower animals throughout our almost endless prehistory could be compatible with an all-good, all-powerful God. In this paper, I show that these two problems of natural evil that Darwin raised in his work can be resolved so as to present no objection to theism once it is recognized what the moral principles are that should govern our relationship to the natural world and analogously should govern God’s relationship to the natural world.
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Notes
Frances Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1896) Vol. II p.105.
Stephen Jay Gould, Hens Teeth and Horse’s Toes (New York: Norton and Co. 1983), p. 35.
Philip Kitcher, “The Many-sided Conflict Between Science and Religion” in Philosophy of Religion, edited by William Mann (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005) p. 368.
Charles Darwin, Autobiographies (New York Penguin Books, 2002) p. 52.
For a very useful discussion of alternative views on the problem of natural evil, see Michael J. Murray, Nature Red in Tooth & Claw (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). Of course, one could appeal to a fall to explain much of the natural evil in the world, but such an explanation would not have appealed to Darwin because it would appear to deny that our first ancestors evolved from nonhuman living beings, but were instead directly created by God.
Some contemporary philosophers, notably Peter Singer and Tom Regan, have gone against the traditional view. However, I still want to argue against the view myself using my nonquestion-begging approach because that approach enables me to defend a more demanding concern for nonhuman living creatures than other contemporary views that also express such a concern have been able to defend.
To simplify my argument, I am considering only humans, not all rational agents, but my argument does also hold for the more inclusive class.
See Taylor, Respect for Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), pp. 129135 and R. and V. Routley, ‘Against the Inevitability of Human Chauvinism’, in Ethics and Problems of the 21st Century edited by K.E. Goodpaster and K.M. Sayre (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), pp. 36–59.
This assumes that there is an environmental niche that cheetahs can fill.
It is also noteworthy that my nonquestion-begging approach is the appropriate and needed generalization of John Rawls’ anthropocentric/rational agent approach in A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971) See my From Rationality to Equality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015) pp. 7–8,70ff. I am also assuming here that all the nonhuman living beings I am referring to here are not rational agents.
By human ethics, I simply mean those forms of ethics that assume, without argument, that only human beings count morally.
For how my account excludes instrumental goods from having moral status, see my The Triumph of Practice Over Theory in Ethics, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) Chapter 4.
We can make this assumption here because the net effect of giving priority to high-ranking human-centered interests over conflicting low-ranking nonhuman-centered interests and giving priority to high-ranking nonhuman-centered interests over conflicting low-ranking human-centered interests, other things being equal, is to count all living beings morally, and thus granting that all living beings have moral status.
For my purposes here, I will follow the convention of excluding humans from the denotation of ‘animals.’
If I were questioned further as to how I would distinguish basic from nonbasic needs, I would point out how widespread the use of this distinction is. It would really be impossible to do much moral, political, or environmental philosophy without a distinction between basic and nonbasic needs. I would also point out that the fact that not every need can be clearly classified as either basic or nonbasic, as similarly holds for a whole range of dichotomous concepts like moral/immoral, legal/illegal, living/nonliving, human/nonhuman, should not immobilize us from acting at least with respect to clear cases. This puts our use of the distinction in a still broader context suggesting that if we cannot use the basic/nonbasic distinction in moral, political, and environmental philosophy, the wide spread use of other dichotomous concepts is likewise threatened. It also suggests how our inability to clearly classify every conceivable need as basic or nonbasic should not keep us from using such a distinction at least with respect to clear cases.
There is also a further point to be made here. If we begin to respond to clear cases, for example, stop aggressing against the clear basic needs of nonhuman nature for the sake of clear luxury needs of humans, we will be in an even better position to know what to do in the less clear cases. This is because sincerely attempting to live out one’s practical moral commitments helps one to interpret them better, just as failing to live them out makes interpreting them all the more difficult. Consequently, we have every reason to use the basic/nonbasic distinction to implement these biocentric principles at least with respect to clear cases.
The principle just does not speak to the issue, although I do discuss what is permissible and impermissible in this regard elsewhere, for example, in The Triumph of Practice Over Theory in Ethics, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) Chapter 4.
It should be pointed out that, although the Principle of Disproportionality prohibits aggressing against basic needs of nonhumans to serve nonbasic needs to humans, the Principle of Human Defense permits defense of nonbasic needs of humans against aggression of nonhumans. So while we cannot legitimately aggress against nonhumans to meet our nonbasic needs, we can legitimately defend our nonbasic needs against the aggression of nonhumans seeking to meet their basic needs.
For a moral detailed argument for these conflict resolution principles, see my Three Challenges to Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) Chapter 2 and The Triumph of Practice Over Theory in Ethics, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) Chapter 4.
Realities for the 90’s (Santa Cruz, Calif.: Earth Save Foundation, 1991), 4.
Ibid., p.5.
By farm animals here I mean not just individual farm animals but also the species or better the subspecies of farm animals and the individual animals that are required to sustain those species or subspecies in existence.
There is an analogous story to tell here about ‘domesticated’ plants, but there is no analogous story to tell about ‘extra humans’ who could be raised for food given that the knowledge these ‘extra humans’ would have of their fate would most likely make their lives not worth living. But even assuming that this is not the case, and that this particular justification for domestication is ruled out because of its implications for a similar use of humans, it still would be the case that domestication is justified in a sustainable agriculture to provide fertilizer for crops to meet basic human needs.
To say that the proposed arrangement is in the interest of farm animals implies that existing farm animals and farm animals brought into existence through this arrangement will sufficiently benefit to make their lives worth living, not that there are some preexistent farm animals who will benefit from the arrangement by existing rather than nonexistent. But I also want to claim that species or subspecies of farm animals are better off existing both in zoos and through mutually beneficial relationships with humans than they are existing simply in zoos.
Therapeutic hunting is hunting designed to secure the aggregate welfare of the target species, the integrity of its ecosystem, or both. For a valuable discussion of this issue, see Gary Varner, In Nature’s Interests? (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 100–118.
There are other species, such as mourning doves, cottontail rabbits, gray squirrels, and bobwhite and blue quails, that each year produce more young than their habitat can support through the winter, but they usually do not degrade their environment. With respect to such species, it might be argued that hunting is morally permissible. Nevertheless, unless such hunting is either therapeutic or required to meet basic human needs, it is difficult to see how it could be permissible.
See Stephen Jay Gould, Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes (New York: Norton, 1983) Chapter 2.
Quentin Smith, ‘An Atheological Argument from Evil Natural Law’ in Michael Martin and Ricki Monnier, The Improbability of God (Amherst: Prometheus Press, 2006) 235–249.
I am assuming here, as I have throughout, that if something cannot be given a nonquestion-begging defense then it is not morally defensible. Another possibility is that we are dealing with universally self-evident truths. But that is not the case here. Justification here is by way of argument.
Hypothesizing a historical fall is a way to explain the conflicting relations among nonhuman living creatures, but it is not a way that would have appealed to Darwin because even in Darwin’s time, there was evidence of the existence of conflicts between nonhuman species that clearly predated the appearance of Homo sapiens, and so any subsequent fall. Even more, evidence exists today. So, it is not clear how Darwin, or anyone else, could have thought that the fall could have caused something that predated it.
For a more general attempt to defend the compatibility of God and natural evils, see Michael Murray Nature Red in Tooth & Claw (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008) and Trent Dougherty, The Problem of Animal Pain (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
In his famous essay, Evolution and Ethics (New York: Appleton and Co., 1899) Thomas Henry Huxley wrote ‘The practice of that which is ethically best –what we call goodness or virtue- involves a course of conduct which, in all respect, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence. It requires that the individual should not merely respect but shall help his fellows.’ But clearly, this cannot mean all fellow living beings—we have to eat something if we are to survive. That is why my biocentric principles of conflict resolution include a Principle of Human Preservation which allows us to meet our basic needs at the expense of the basic needs of nonhuman living beings at the same time that a Principle of Disproportionality imposes a constraint on meeting our nonbasic or luxury needs for the sake of nonhuman living beings.
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Sterba, J.P. Solving Darwin’s Problem of Natural Evil. SOPHIA 59, 501–512 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-019-0704-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-019-0704-y