Why Does God Allow Animal Suffering?: Stephen Law vs WLC

This is a re-upload of videos originally presented in three parts.

The whole debate:

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[xensonar]

If suffering is necessary for freedom, then there is no freedom in heaven, or else heaven is a place with suffering in it.

[gentlemandemon]

Saying animals don't have an awareness of pain is plainly ridiculous. Dogs cower to avoid pain, they are externally aware of the experience and seek to avoid it. Dogs are the easiest examples, but mistreat any animal for an extended period of time and you'll see them develop behaviors in response.

[fifthape]

I've always considered WLC to be intelligent enough to be aware that he's dishonest. Now hearing his absence of compassion for animals shows that he's also heartless.

[SciPunk]

So animals experience pain but they are not aware of the experience which they are experiencing.
Got it, Dr. Craig.

[NastyLittleBagginses]

Never ceases to amaze me how Craig can just pull some idea straight out of his rectum, and say it with such undeserved confidence.

[Overonator]

I don't think you should give to Craig his "fact" of animals lacking "3rd order pain awareness." I think this "fact" is highly debatable.

[AV]

I initially left the church over their stances on animals. It dawned on me one day when I really sat down and thought about how they are supposedly denied heaven, yet are still forced to undergo all the torments on Earth. They’re treated like nothing. Later, I became atheist.

[bdf]

Ichneumonoidea wasps. If any animal makes "intelligent design" seem plausible, it's Ichneumonoidea wasps. They carefully paralyse their prey (often a caterpillar) by using their stinger to inject venom into neural ganglia. Very parsimonious of venom, minimal chance of killing the prey (it has to be alive to serve its purpose). Then they use their ovipositor to lay their eggs inside the prey.

The eggs hatch and the larvae are even more fastidious than their mother. They eat the prey starting with organs that the prey does not need to live. Then they eat organs that will kill the prey, but not immediately. They finish with the heart and the brain, then burst out. If you're now thinking of the movie _Alien_ it's like that, only typically 10 or 12 of the little bastards.

Gawd must *really* like those things. There are an estimated 100, 000 species of them (more than the combined number of species of birds, reptiles, mammals, fish and amphibians). Gawd must be really proud of the design and handiwork.

Fuck WLC and his "first-order pain" doesn't matter. Caterpillars feel pain. It's what alerts them to harmful situations and prompts evasive actions. As with us, their pain is *unpleasant* or they would ignore it. They can't philosophize over it. They can't scream out their pain. They can't debate WLC about it. But they feel it. Worse, that pain prompts them to move away from whatever is causing it (as pain does with us, because that's its function), but they're paralysed. Of course, it's internal pain but they can't even try changing position to see if that relieves the pain.

There is no reconciling this with a just, merciful, loving god. We might casually kill insects but most of us would not torture them. If we saw somebody torturing insects we'd suspect that person of having psychopathic tendencies, somebody who might grow up to be a serial killer or a WLC.

Oh, and don''t forget the Noachian flood. Near genocide of human adults, justified because they were evil. Near genocide of children, justified because if they'd been magically spared from drowning they'd have slowly starved to death. Zero justification for near genocide of the animals. None whatsover.

Fuck off and die, WLC. Preferably painfully. Fourth-order pain, if you can manage it.

[chrisose]

The first victim of religion is empathy for our fellow animals.

[paulmitchum]

I'm not sure why Craig needs to define animals as not really suffering. Because somewhere around 4:50 he mentions that the world must be filled with suffering according to divine plan anyway. Just move the goalposts so that God's definition of 'benevolence' includes all suffering which is plainly manifest, and say that the definition is unknowable by man. Mischief managed. God is plainly mean to us, if the stories are true, and people who look to him for moral guidance are then justified in being mean as well. It's almost as if the stories exist to justify mendacity as 'objectively moral.'

[LiamWakefield]

(Hypothetical) 9 year old WLC explaining to his parents why he boiled the puppy alive. "It didn't know that it was suffering and, anyway, God never promised it would be happy".

[MoovySoundtrax]

I wonder how many times Bill would have to be punched in the face before he concluded there wasn't a morally sufficient reason for his suffering.

[ruku]

It's painfully obvious that Craig has never spoken to a neuroscientist. Everything he said about animals and "pain awareness" is just so easily disproven, if only he would do the most basic research.

[xxMrBaldyxx]

When humans die, we go to heaven where we live happily for an eternity. But all other animals on this planet just rot in the ground after they die. This is one of the biggest problems I have with religion. Religious believers have the arrogant and unfounded assumption that we are Gods chosen species.

[rlinton]

But God power is unlimited so he should be able to accomplish anything he wants without suffering.

[Fantumh]

Once you get past the smooth talking, Craig sounds exactly like a psychopath.

[nobs]

Naturalism explains this perfectly. Now it is up to the theist to show their "supernatural all loving God" hypothesis to be the more probable explanation. Seems an impossible task since we would just expect suffering under naturalism. Shit happens.

[soriac]

Everyone with a pet animal should shun WLC by now. I can't imagine anyone who has a dog or a cat and even just a bit of empathy would think that they don't feel pain and are in any way aware of it when they are injured. I just can't. Give me examples of it and I still wouldn't call those people emphatic in any way.

[jwinburn]

How do we know that other people suffer? What would happen to cause us to say, "that person is experiencing pain." Would it make sense to say that of a person who was sitting relaxed in an easy chair? Or enjoying a delicious treat? It would only make sense to assume the experience of pain if various painful behaviors were elicited. Say a person winces and tries to pull away. Or holds their head tightly and cries out. It would make sense if we saw someone scream loudly and ran around a room that they were in pain. Why then would we assume animals do not feel pain when they elicit exactly the same painful behavior?

[stefan_nikolic]

"Ironically, this same tendency is what causes people to fallaciously infer that there is agency behind the universe as a whole" earned you one more subscriber.