Side Comments on Why Evolution Does Not Make The Problem Of Evil Worse

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If it’s obviously false, you should have no problem explaining why it’s false.

Make sure you account for what was actually written, including:

  1. The cited definition for “horrendous suffering”, which includes “the enormous suffering caused by the “kill or be killed” law of predation in the animal kingdom.”;
  2. The request for an estimate of “the percentage of sentient animals which experience this form of suffering”;
  3. The comment “if a significant percentage of sentient animals experience horrendous suffering,”;
  4. The comment that "I’d be inclined to say that 1% is certainly a significant percentage, but I personally wouldn’t say that 1 in a million is"

I think those statements lead to a clear implication that the percentage of sentient animals that experience predation or starvation might not be significant, and so less than 1% - because without that implication, there is no need for the conditionals, and no need to ask for estimates.

I realise that there are a few escape clauses from this conclusion. Vjtorley might not have known that the cited definition of “horrendous suffering” included predation, and assumed it only referred to widespread natural events such as volcanic eruptions, wildfires. tsunamis etc. He might, by limiting his claims to “sentient” animals, only be referring to the most intelligent species - humans, cetaceans, some primates, maybe some corvids.[1] This would largely (but not entirely) avoid having to deal with predation, but as I noted above, even in humans far more than 1% of the population experience horrendous suffering[2]. He might have been asking about the % of animals experiencing horrendous suffering at any given time, rather than at any point during their lifetime - but he referred to “a significant percentage of sentient animals”, not a significant percentage of animals’ lives. And anyway, many (most?) prey animals are under continuous threat of predation.

So, sfmatheson, how am I “obviously” wrong?

  • Is the implication that “horrendous suffering” may affect less than 1% of animals not really there?
  • Does horrendous suffering not include predation/starvation?
  • Does it not include plagues/wars?
  • Is vjtorley referring to the % of an individual’s lifetime, rather than the % of individuals?
  • Does “sentient animals” not include cod? Or antelopes?
  • Have I seriously underestimated the % of antelopes etc that get killed and eaten?
  • Or something else?

If I am “obviously” wrong, I’d like to know where, so that I can correct myself. But perhaps it’s not obvious. Perhaps I’m not the one who is wrong.

[Mod edit - 2 tags removed]

  1. Cf. the mirror test as an indication of sentience. ↩︎

  2. The definitions of horrendous suffering include both pandemics and war. The black death pandemic killed about 20% of the human population, and affected far more. Other plague epidemics (Justinian, modern were less widespread, but still affected far more than 1% of the population. WWII resulted in the death of ~3% of the human population and adversely affected far more than that. WWI and the Taiping rebellion were nearly as bad, as were the Manchu conquests and the Sino-Japanese wars. Adding in all the smaller events, most people who lived before the modern era experienced at least one war or pandemic during their lifetime even if they didn’t succumb to the ~20% infant mortality. But again, maybe vjtorley didn’t realise that “horrific suffering” included wars and pandemics. ↩︎

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