Dmitry Chernikov’s Blog

Finally, someone, namely Quentin Smith, responds to my challenge to “design a better world,” thereby showing that if God did not actualize it, then this must not be the best possible world or even a good world, and if it’s not, then God does not exist. (The Improbability of God, 3, 1)

Behind his complex argument there is a simple point. There is a law E, according to which “animals must savagely kill and devour each other in order to survive” (235, italics removed), and that law is ultimately evil. There is a possible world W, Smith contends, which “is exactly like the actual world except that all (and not just some) animals or animal-like creatures are vegetarians. For example, in W there are counterparts to humans that are exactly like humans except that their DNA includes a strictly vegetarian blueprint.” (240ff) In W, unlike in the actual world V, even tigers are nourished exclusively by vegetables.

Is that a better world?

Let us first realize that death must come to us all and, moreover, can come at any age. It is immaterial for the animals whether they die naturally through old age and disease, are killed and eaten by predators, get starved by a changing ecosystem, or are put to sleep as in the case of pets. Death is death, and happy deaths are rare; humans often suffer horribly in the process of dying, and no predator hunts them. Smith’s argument, presumably, does not call for God to have created a world in which animals (or humans especially) are immortal and impassible. But if he were to refine his argument in that way, I’d wonder about the possibility of such a world myself.

Thomas Morris has identified four fears related to death: (1) fear of the process of dying; (2) fear of punishment; (3) fear of the unknown; (4) fear of annihilation. (Philosophy for Dummies, Ch. 16, “From Dust to Dust: Fear and the Void”) Animals are innocent; hence they can have no fear of punishment. There is nothing for them after death, so (3) does not apply to them either. Their souls are corruptible, so they must be naturally protected from (4), as fearing the inevitable would be pointless. So, it seems that animals are only afraid of the pain and suffering attendant upon dying. But, once again, it is hard to imagine a happy death. On one nature show there was a dying giraffe surrounded by a swarm of insects which were eating it alive. We were shown the moment at which the giraffe could no longer stand and collapsed, and that was the end of it. Is that a better way of dying than being consumed by a tiger? Or must insects, too, be vegetarians?

The first problem I see with Smith’s creation is that plant-eating animals would multiply unchecked, quickly fill the earth, and, once that has happened, many would die due to ruthless competition for scarce vegetable food. Now perhaps we could program animals to die within a few months or years of procreating: copulation would trigger a slow death-inducing mechanism in the parents. Unfortunately, it seems unnatural to die in the prime of one’s life and by earnestly obeying your instincts, especially ones which result in intense pleasure, salmon and perhaps a few other animals considered odd exceptions.

Secondly, plants compete for sunlight, good soil, etc. with equal brutality. Let me quote you from the speech by Absalom Weaver from the Garet Garrett’s novel Satan’s Bushel:

“This natural elm, was once a tiny thing. A sheep might have eaten it at one bite. Every living thing around it was hostile and injurious. And it survived. It grew. It took its profit. It became tall and powerful beyond the reach of enemies. What preserved it — cooperative marketing? What gave it power — a law from Congress? What gave it fullness — the Golden Rule? On what was its strength founded — a fraternal spirit? You know better. Your instincts tell you no. It saved itself. It found its own greatness. How? By fighting.

“Did you know that plants fight? If only you could see the deadly, ceaseless warfare among plants this lovely landscape would terrify you. It would make you think man’s struggles tame. I will show you some glimpses of it.

“I hold up this leaf from the elm. The reason it is flat and thin is that the peaceable work of its life is to gather nourishment for the tree from the air. Therefore it must have as much surface as possible to touch the air with. But it has another work to do. A grisly work. A natural work all the same. It must fight.

“For that use it is pointed at the end as you see and has teeth around the edge — these. The first thing the elm plant does is to grow straight up out of the ground with a spear thrust, its leaves rolled tightly together. Its enemies do not notice it. Then suddenly each leaf spreads itself out and with its teeth attacks other plants; it overturns them, holds them out of the sunlight, drowns them. And this is the tree! Do you wonder why the elm plant does not overrun the earth? Because other plants fight back, each in its own way.

“I show you a blade of grass. It has no teeth. How can it fight? Perhaps it lives by love and sweetness. It does not. It grows very fast by stealth, taking up so little room that nothing else minds, until all at once it is tall and strong enough to throw out blades in every direction and fall upon other plants. It smothers them to death. Then the bramble. I care not for the bramble. Not because it fights. For another reason. Here is its weapon. Besides the spear point and the teeth the bramble leaf you see is in five parts, like one’s hand. It is a hand in fact, and one very hard to cast off. When it cannot overthrow and kill an enemy as the elm does, it climbs up his back to light and air, and in fact prefers that opportunity, gaining its profit not in natural combat but in shrewd advantage, like the middleman.

“Another plant I would like to show you. There is one near by. Unfortunately it would be inconvenient to exhibit him in these circumstances. His familiar name is honeysuckle. He is sleek, suave, brilliantly arrayed, and you would not suspect his nature, which is that of the preying speculator. Once you are in his toils it is hopeless. If you have not drowned or smothered him at first he will get you. The way of this plant is to twist itself round and round another and strangle it.

“This awful strife is universal in plant life. There are no exemptions. Among animals it is not so fierce. They can run from one another. Plants must fight it out where they stand. They must live or die on the spot. Among plants of one kind there is rivalry. The weak fall out and die; the better survive. That is the principle of natural selection. But all plants of one kind fight alike against plants of all other kinds. That is the law of their strength. None is helped but who first helps himself. A race of plants that had wasted its time waiting for Congress to give it light and air, or for a state bureau with hired agents to organize it by the Golden Rule, or had been persuaded that its interests were in common with those of the consumer, would have disappeared from the earth.”

It seems most arbitrary to subject plants to the rigors of survival of the fittest yet exempt animals. And this brings us to point number 3: competition and fighting for survival of yourself and your progeny makes species strong, even if some individuals are sacrificed in the process of evolution. God gives animals a shot at life and strength to avoid dangers and pass on their genes and nature, which are more than they deserve. We might say that God acts towards animals as Conan’s god Crom in Robert E. Howard’s novels acts towards humans: Crom answers no prayers, and he dispenses only two gifts to the Cimmerian newborn: the strength in their sword arm and the fire in their hearts. And after that he doesn’t bat an eye at them.

Our author attacks what he see to be a premise in Richard Swinburne’s argument that “instances of E provide humans with helpful knowledge pertinent to themselves”: “It is good that animals savagely attack, kill and devour each other and occasionally humans, so that animals and humans can learn to avoid being savagely attacked, killed and devoured on some occasions in the future.” He says that if we take it to heart, then “we should be rejoicing in the AIDS epidemic since the instances of AIDS combined with the opportunities to learn how to prevent AIDS would result in an overall increase in the positive value of the universe.” (243ff) This is just a confusion. We do not rejoice in physical evil, but we recognize the value of metaphysical evil as an incentive to fight. As the character Gordon Chen considers in James Clavell’s Tai-Pan: “He looked covertly at Mauss. He respected him for being a merciless teacher and was grateful to him for forcing him to be the best student in school. But he despised him for his filth, for his stench and for his cruelty.” (29-30) So, we, too, should appreciate the challenging environment of nature as a merciless teacher both to humans and lower animals, yet at the same time nothing stops us from longing for eternal rest in God’s heaven.

Smith accuses God of “speciesism,” of favoring humans and letting animals serve them, thereby neglecting the latter’s welfare or rights. Of course, that’s nonsense. Domesticated animals often live happier lives than their wild cousins. But the more important point to grasp is that men do not rule the world by some divine mandate; rather, men are the kind of animals who are able to subdue and exploit other animals, given a sufficient level of civilization, better than those other animals are able to exploit them. Our dominion of the world is due to our nature and craftiness and resourcefulness, not necessarily to the reception of a divine inheritance a la early Genesis, though I speculate that the human intellect is intelligently designed.

To sum it up, the world either must be a full-fledged Garden of Eden, or it must be very much like our world without any artifices of tofu-eating tigers. But the Garden of Eden is gone, or it never existed. So our world is the only real possibility that remains. We can try to make it on this earth as it is in heaven. Tu ne cede malis, Quentin.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 8:58 pm and is filed under Philosophy, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.