Did someone here claim they could do this “objectively”? Does your vague meaningless challenge have anything to do with the actual claims that Rope made?
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Stephen:
@Roy’s line of questioning traces back to Rope’s response to @Rumraket’s sea-turtle hatching example:
In answer to Rope’s first question, it would seem fairly obvious that young animals are often the most vulnerable, and so frequently live short and brutal lives. This, contrary to Rope’s flowery rhetoric, would appear to be the real tragedy.
Rope informs us that “their existence is good and beautiful” (without any visible doubt, exception or caveat) – but I would ask:
What is so obviously “good and beautiful” about a turtle hatchling spending its brief life struggling across hot sand and obstacles, only to be, dehydrated and exhausted, pecked to death within sight of the sea?
It is generally easy for rhetoric to sound good in the abstract, less easy when it is contrasted against reality.
Yes, all morality, and questions of what is “good”, will entail a degree of subjectivity – but I think that there is a difference between discussion based on actual animal lives and actual animal suffering, and discussion based upon flowery rhetoric (“empty claims”) and on a rhetorical echo-chamber of similarly-ungrounded opinions from like-minded philosophers and theologians.
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Well, he said there was ‘good’ and ‘beauty’ in turtle eggs and other young animals, and he said that you could ‘add the good of the existence of young turtles’ and compare that and the good when these young turtles are food for other animals against the harm the young turtles suffer when they are killed and eaten.
But if all he has is his subjective opinion that there is ‘good’ and ‘beauty’ in young turtles that get eaten by e.g. crabs; and he can’t even back up that opinion by saying what that ‘good’ is, or even who or what it is ‘good’ for - which has so far been the case; and he has no way of determining whether the harm of predation on the turtles outweighs the ‘good’ of young turtles existing and the ‘good’ of them being food; then he can’t show that “the creation of each mortal creature on average adds more bad than good to the world”, any assumption he makes that this is the case is groundless, and any conclusion he draws is unsupported and can be rejected.
Roy
I am surprised you think the turtle question and the goodness question are such good objections against my argument. Here’s some reasons why I did not provide an essay on goodness in answer to your question:
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I think we all have some notions of goodness already, and it’s useful for everyone to think themselves further about what they think makes some species’ existence a good or a bad thing. Thus, my explaining this is not a priority. (Note: Also, it is not just theists who need a definition of goodness - anyone who makes value judgments, or thinks there is a problem of evil needs one too. No definition of goodness and evil = no problem of evil.)
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My argument is 100% fine with the overall goodness of turtles being inscrutable. It is the proponent of the problem of scale that has to argue turtles (and other species) overall, on average bring more disvalue than value to the world. Thus, it is not relevant for my argument to give an exhaustive account of turtle psychology, what sort of joy and pain baby turtles might experience, turtle goodness, etc. It is those who object to my argument who owe such an account.
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I think it is pretty obvious that turtles add value to the world. Actually, I regard it as pretty much a reductio ad absurdum of the problem of scale if the proponent has to argue that more turtles would literally make the world a worse place. (Note: It is fine with me if you disagree with me on this. I think most people won’t though.)
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My theological point of view, theodicy and the arguments of this paper are compatible with many biological features and even species overall adding more disvalue than value to the world. Given that such a range of options is possible for me, I don’t see the need to get too hung up on any one example. I just cannot see any good case for turtles being one of these just because they lay so many eggs. For some other examples: (A) Parasitic wasps or ophiocordyceps - yucky, but not necessarily a problem. I don’t think ínsects experience suffering in the same sense as humans. (B) Mosquitous - seems they have an important role for ecosystems, but are annoying. (C) Yersinia pestis and enterobius vermicularis - actively seem to make the world worse. (Note: this list is for illustrative purposes and should not be taken too seriously.)
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I cannot think of any general theory of why animals have value that would make the problem of scale work. None of the usual understandings of “goodness” seems to work either. Thus, I hope that those who think the scale is a problem will supply their own theory that gets the problem going. (Note: The point of the paper is that such discussion of the type and proportion of evil should be more important for the problem of evil than considerations of deep time etc.)
Hope this helps - signing off for now and leaving more detailed discussion of goodness for the literature.
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An essay wasn’t necessary - a few sentences would have done. It should have taken less effort that writing the post you did write.
Without some definition of what is meant by ‘good’ and ‘beauty’, you don’t have an argument, only an opinion.
Note: written yesterday, but got stuck in draft due to a bad connection.
When it comes to good and evil subjective opinion is all anyone can have. (I grant there are things most any human will agree fit into one of those categories, but that is still the human perspective.) My subjective opinion is that turtle eggs are good. Omelets are good too. The goodness of turtle-eggs omelets remains an open question.
Much of the argument above revolves around trying to quantify good and evil, which also seems to require unsupportable assumptions. I think we might qualify some things as more good(evil) than others, but that too may be subjective.
I think it’s good that we have evolved to the point where it is possible to consider questions like the problem of evil. It means we can ponder deep questions, and ask ourselves how we might try to reduce “evil”.
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David Attenborough closed that question years ago.
Usually when something is described as ‘good’, that goodness can be described further, both in terms of how it is good and who/what it is good for. Such as providing concrete benefit, being nourishing or tasty, being well-made, being helpful or charitable, providing enjoyment, leading to an advantage, etc.
Saying turtles are ‘good’ with no further qualification is too vague to be meaningful.
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Not all opinions are created equal. Some are informed by knowledge of actual animal lives and suffering. Others appear only informed by vague hearsay, and the assumption that these things can be understood without further research.
I would have sympathy for such a line of thinking. However it would require changing the title of the article under consideration to:
Why We Cannot Know If Evolution Makes the Problem of Evil Worse
Evaluating the truth of the claim contained in the original title essentially forces us to assume that such a quantification is possible.
But then we realise (or remind ourselves) that Rope’s article isn’t actually interested in how much animals suffer.
His argument would be the same if all animals suffered a lifetime of torture, or if they only endured a single momentary episode of mild discomfort in their whole life.
Animal suffering is simply a magnitudeless abstraction within this viewpoint – hence my earlier use of the (figurative) adjective “bloodless”.
It exists solely as an obstacle to be explained away, in pursuit of the inevitable goal of all Christian Apologetics – the conclusion that God exists and is good.
The article would therefore seem to be of very little interest to those whose first reaction to such questions is to ask how much do animals actually suffer?
It would appear to be more of interest to those whose first reaction is how much must we torture logic to get to the ‘right’ answer regardless of the answer to the above question?
This. There is no way to objectively quantify suffering versus thriving or flourishing in a way where we can show that this much pleasure has been paid for with this much pain. There is no unit of hurt, joy, or pleasure.
The argument basically just has it as a premise that if we could, we would count a net positive, and that everyone somehow subconsciously agrees. But that’s just not clear at all, and with respect to sea turtles and how so many are slaughtered so young, I just don’t see this as being somehow justifying whatever the quantiy of “good” the few who make it to adulthood is supposed to add to the world.
The three alternatives would appear to be:
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attempt to quantify the balance of happiness/suffering;
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assume the balance of happiness/suffering; or
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admit that we do not (and probably cannot) know the balance of happiness/suffering.
The problem with (1), as @Dan_Eastwood points out, is it “seems to require unsupportable assumptions”.
The problem with (2), in addition to such an assumption being fairly arbitrary, is that it solves the question rather too quickly. Assume suffering dominates and it’s only a short step to (i) that yes, ‘The Problem of Evil’ is a very real, insurmountable problem and (ii) that evolution makes it enormously worse. Similarly assume happiness/good dominates, and it’s only a short step to (i) no, ‘The Problem of Evil’ doesn’t really exist, and (ii) no, of course evolution doesn’t make it any worse. The problem with each of these scenarios is that it is clear that it is the assumption that is doing most of the work. It would of course be possible to obfuscate this fact by adding in extra waffle, subsidiary arguments, etc to ‘pad’ the argument out to a reasonable length.
(3) of course means that we’d have to admit that no, we don’t really know if ‘The Problem of Evil’ is a real problem or not. It might be. It might not be. This answer is probably reasonably comfortable for an agnostic (or agnostic atheist), but probably more than a little uncomfortable for an apologist, or for a hard-line positive atheist.
I think it is clear that Rope’s article employs neither (1) nor (3), and this would seem to leave (2) – unless somebody can point out a fourth alternative that I’ve missed?
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Yes. It can be considered qualitatively. This sets aside any question of balance (insert Moody Blues link) and considers aspects of both. Some comparisons may be possible (a greater good or lesser evil) but others are meaningless (apples and oranges). This approach isn’t necessarily better, but I think it strikes closer to what philosophers and apologists are trying to accomplish.
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I agree, but I think that’s pretty much the same as Tim’s option (2). Qualitatively and objectively weighing the amounts of good and evil in the world is impossible, since no one can know everything that happens. So one will end up with a conclusion that fits their presuppositions. Of course a theologian like Rope would end up concluding that good outweighs evil.
Tim is right that this article should have been titled, “Why We Can’t Know if Evolution Makes the Problem of Evil Worse.” It’s ultimately a subjective judgment.
I think the argument is more “if the current situation is not sufficient to refute the existence of God, extending it backwards in time won’t either”.
True enough but I think some reasonable approximations can be made about the total number of organisms, fraction of time spent in some state of stress, how many organism live at any point in time, etc. etc.
It’s not so much that we can’t know everything that happens (at least to a high accuracy). Perhaps a plausible range of values could be established with reasonable confidence.
The subjectivity comes from the weighting of suffering or other evils, versus the flourishing and the good. There isn’t a way to measure whether some X number of deaths, or Y amount of hours spent in Z level of agony or stress, objectively outweighs the amount of time spent in/with some degree of pleasure.
For innumerable biological reasons also, besides the purely philosophical. Just one is that even something like pain is experienced differently between individuals (both humans and other animals). One person might have more nerve receptors pr unit surface area of skin (say), and therefore feel certain pains more intensely than another. Many other factors affect the intensity of experience both good and bad. Quirks of memory and recollection, genetic and environmental factors that affect psychology, and so on mean that to some individuals, such experiences linger longer than they do for others.
Then there’s strange psychological biases that affect your recollection of events. I recall I saw an interview with some neuroscientist or psychologist or something (I believe it was on the skydivephil youtube channel) speaking of how for example parents will misremember how difficult it felt to raise their kids when they are babies. Apparently there is some bias that makes people report that the experience was better the further back in time it was. So parents will report being tired and stressed and feeling misrable from having to wake up several times in the night, for months, to feed the baby, change diapers, and so on to stop them from crying and constantly feeling agitated because they’re basically afraid something will happen to the child. While in the process, they score low on self-reported wellbeing. Then years later they will recall the period as being much less stressful than they did at the time.
Women will testify vehemently that childbirth is the worst imaginable pain. The worst experience of their life by leagues and fathoms. Unbearable. With some saying they in some moments literally wished to die to get it over with. 3 years (or whatever) later they’re making another one. Don’t tell me there isn’t some sort of cognitive bias overruling something here. You can ask the question, is this good or bad? Imagine a situation where you suffer agony for 10 hours, then it stops, and then a quirk of your psychology makes you forget the agony and recall it as pure bliss for a month. Then it repeats. Is this bad?
You could go on and on with stuff like this.
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Yes, and this approach would appear sufficiently limited that it is largely indistinguishable from my (3) above in terms of resolving the Problem of (Natural) Evil.
Unless of course they then introduce an assumption or presupposition into this gap then, as @misterme987 suggests, the approach then would become (2).
Some philosophers might be willing to take it only as far as the limits that qualitative allows, and accept the uncertainty this allows – I suspect agnostic philosophers are more likely to take this approach.
But I’d be surprised if any apologists would. Apologists tend to be allergic to uncertainty – I don’t know if God exists and I don’t know if God is good would seem to be precisely the sort of doubts that they are trying to defend Christianity from. This would, I think, lead them to smuggling in assumptions and/or presuppositions to reach their desired conclusion.
I would suggest that this argument conflates the Problem of (Natural) Evil with the existence of God. Yes, the reality of the former has the latter as a consequence, but they are not the same thing.
If the former is true, then evolution would likely make it worse (more animals = more net suffering = worse problem).
This would of course have little impact on the latter – God is either refuted or not refuted – he cannot be more refuted.
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Related, and relevant to contemplation about pain and suffering (largely irrelevant to Rope’s point but whatever) is the famous peak-end rule that blew my mind while reading Thinking, Fast and Slow years ago. I think this is less about how people remember but how they attach meaning to the recollection. Among other things, this means that the kinda macabre question about whether suffering is “horrendous” (see @vjtorley entry above) can lead to speculation about whether 10 minutes of such horror would be “recalled” differently than, say, ten days of less-than-horrendous suffering.
Human minds are strange. I guess that’s obvious since human minds made up these creepy gods and thereby seeded our entire forum with weird and sometimes sick topics. 
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Or, even closer to home evolutionarily, and therefore for most (including evolution deniers), ethically, giant mice (introduced to an isolated island by humans) eating albatrosses alive?
It’s much worse than that, as @Rope is explicitly claiming to do this quantitatively.
You seem to be obsessed with this notion that you somehow know what someone else has to argue. That makes no sense to me and I have not encountered it before. Is it some sort of implicit claim that you possess omniscience? Some sort of philosophy cheat code?
That’s bullshit (he’s not doing that, has not claimed it explicitly or otherwise, and others have pointed this out), and it’s also ignoring the fact that he explicitly and repeatedly noted that the topic (assessing good/evil in context of happiness/suffering) is not what his piece is about. Perhaps you can explain why you typed such obvious falsehood?
It makes sense to all native English speakers, and is a common and straightforward mode of philosophical dialog. Basic form (which you should have been able to discern had you read any of the thread) is: “You seem to be claiming X. In order to do that, you first/also have to argue Y and Z.”
Really? It’s starts with his title. Quantification is present throughout the article. One example:
In conclusion: it seems to me that if God has the moral right to create
even one mortal animal capable of suffering, then God would plausibly
be equally justified in creating two, or creating billions…
It’s throughout this thread. One example:
Proportion of suffering to what? Regardless, isn’t “proportion” explicitly quantitative?
Perhaps I was too subtle, because my comment is about why I don’t accept those denials.
If Rope claims to know that those criticizing his topic have to make an explicitly quantitative argument (below, “on average bring more disvalue than value”), then trying to explicitly deny that Rope’s own point is explicitly quantitative is absurd.
It certainly might make sense–if it had been presented in that conditional form. If I were using it, I also would be reluctant about expressing certainty about what anyone else has to argue. That’s why I emphasized the word “know” and added the question about omniscience. But that aside, where does @Rope use that basic form, specifically by including the very polite premise that you quoted (and I italicized and bolded)?
In addition to being explicitly conditional, to make any sense the condition would have to be something other than strawmanning to construct a false bifurcation. IOW, merely pointing out that scale confounds anyone’s attempt to determine if something is worse or not doesn’t make me or anyone else a “proponent.” Note also that Rope was specifying an explicitly quantitative requirement for those who dare to criticize.
Tim’s far more accurate title shows why this is a straw man:
I couldn’t agree more. Scale is just one of many problems.
I think most people will think that the various animal species that exist typically add more good than bad to the world (hence, the widespread support for animal conservation, and the widespread love for nature among biologists as well). Although presenting such a detailed estimate was not the point of my article, as Stephen Matheson and Paul King have pointed out.
However, even for those who think it is inscrutable whether a greater amount of present-day animals add more disvalue than value to the world, I do not think a change in the title of my article would be required. If we cannot know whether some X (such as a greater number of turtles) makes the world a worse place, then from our perspective, we cannot appeal to the existence of that X (a greater number of turtles over deep time) as making the problem of evil worse. Thus, we have effectively removed the scale of turtle history from impacting our subjective consideration of the severity of the problem of evil. Hence, even admitting the inscrutability of whether turtles are actively making the world worse by procreating (a point I have not conceded) would require no change to the title of the article. Moreover, it would still remain true that what we need to focus on is the suffering of individual animals, rather than the scale.
Those who found the article too complicated, and are interested in seeing me discuss the article in video form can check out this interview on the Capturing Christianity channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4HEk25TV2s.
For my part, I will leave this as my final message in the thread as I have too much work to get through. Once again, thanks for participating.
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