A theological question Catholics cannot answer?

[Paul71]

Answers (believable or not) to human suffering and the problem of pain experienced by humans involve such beliefs as the the Fall, Original Sin, free will, the soul, life after death, redemption ----- little if any of which relate to non-human animals. If there is a God why did he create such suffering?

One explanation I have heard is that death entered the world as a result of Adam’s and Eve’s sin, and this includes animal death as well as human death. How exactly this comports with the theory of evolution and so on is an open question. One possibility is that the effects of the fall could have radiated back through time, but this is just a possibility.

 

[BartholomewB]

Can you explain how a supposedly all powerful and benevolent God could have created a world in which a great many animals, who experience pain and fear, have to tear each other to pieces to be eaten, in order to survive?

The question you rightly ask is generally known as “the problem of pain.” As long ago as 1940 C.S. Lewis wrote a short book attempting to answer your question. I believe that, still today, it remains the most satisfactory and convincing treatment of the subject.

https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Pain...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1529441590&sr=1-1

 

[catholic1seeks]

Will there be animal pain in the new Heavens and new Earth?

 

[Dan_Defender]

I would add that humans, being the only ones with spiritual souls, experience pain and suffering differently. It is therefore more natural for animals to die or be eaten. Some species become food for the next generation even.

 

[AlNg]

We don;t define God -

I thought Catholics define God in several descriptive ways, for example, as an all knowing, all merciful, all loving, all good, first cause. And as a Trinity with three divine persons in one God.

 

[AlNg]

I would add that humans, being the only ones with spiritual souls, experience pain and suffering differently.

How do you know that the pain a monkey feels when he breaks his arm is different from the pain a human feels when she breaks her arm?

 

[Erikaspirit16]

Why should it have an answer?

Isaiah 55, 8-9–

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
9 As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts."

Why would you presume to understand the mind of God?

Trust God to be God, and worry about your own issues!

 

[po18guy]

Perhaps more clearly: The Church describes what God has revealed.

 

[MCH1]

Human’s treatment of animals can be cruel, but God does not condone it.

 

[Ioana]

But that sounds super Thomistic. In reality the only meaningful sense of “good” is not some abstract perfection where all potentials are actualized. Quite frankly even if God is pure Act that’s pretty unintresting to me. What is more interesting and more compelling and more unique is that God is good in the moral sense, in the “nice” sense if you will, because nobody cares about a perfect triangle or a slightly sgguigly one but everyone would care if there were a talking triangle that would walk around acting as a psycho-therapist in hospitals for mental illness. You could argue that the consequence of the world as we know it is that the suffering of animals is unavoidable but it did not have to be this way. My more superficial and less philosophical answer would have to do with the Fall.

But I always wanted to ask somebody who is actually clever enough to get Thomas Aquinas; what’s this whole God doesn’t have to be moral thing? I’ve heard it several times and probably misunderstood it, but could you maybe expand on that general theme of God being good and what goodness means? Cheers.

 

[sevenswords]

Hi If you read the Genesis story you see all animals live on the land for meat and later you read all flesh has come corrupt even animal flesh and skip forward to the end in the book of revelation and you read that the lamb will lie down with the lion, no more killing. so from these small few texts it seems even animals can sin or at very least have broken from their original habitats.
alternative spiritual veiw
It is said that man can become lowly like the animals in their nature through sin, and perhaps we are being shown another nature to allow us to see that if we live like animals we become like animals, isn’t that what Paul said?.

 

[Benadam]

Creation was subject to futility and decay from the beginning. The fall did not make that happen. It is waiting for man to reach his end in God since the beginning.

Romans 8
19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

 

[Wesrock]

Post 1 of 2

But that sounds super Thomistic. In reality the only meaningful sense of “good” is not some abstract perfection where all potentials are actualized.

It would be actualized in a concrete way, not an abstract way, in you or me or any person living a holy life. A human being is supposed to be holy, and supposed to be drawing to God, supposed to love others. That’s what brings out the humanity in us. That is something we can be potentially, something we should be if we are truly pursuing our perfections rationally, and it’s when we actualize that potentiality by living that way that we truly live the moral good. Morality, coming from the natural law, is just one facet of the broader dimension of goodness. And insofar as we pursue our own perfections, our own good, we are seeking the one true good: God.

Remember also that not all terms have to be used univocally. To say “this food is good” does not have the same exact meaning as saying “this triangle is good”. To say “this dog is good” does not have the same meaning as saying “this human is good.” The word “good” has a common sense to all of them, but it is at the same time not referring to the same thing in all of them.

Quite frankly even if God is pure Act that’s pretty unintresting to me. What is more interesting and more compelling and more unique is that God is good in the moral sense, in the “nice” sense if you will, because nobody cares about a perfect triangle or a slightly sgguigly one.

Whether you find it interesting doesn’t mean it doesn’t have some key insights. Plenty of geometricians or architects or graphic designers may also care about the “perfect triangle,” though I say that somewhat tongue in cheek. I’m not asking you to care about a triangle. It serves its purpose as part of an illustration about the concept of goodness.

You could argue that the consequence of the world as we know it is that the suffering of animals is unavoidable but it did not have to be this way. My more superficial and less philosophical answer would have to do with the Fall.

The Fall is involved. But that doesn’t satisfy many people. Why are animals punished by what we do? Why do children have consequences the parents brought about them? Whether original sin or being a crack baby because of the consequences of the mother? Why does God allow that to happen? There are plenty of pastoral answers, and I’m not saying they’re wrong, but they’re unsatisfying for many because many people view God as simply a bigger, more powerful human person with all of the human obligations to act and prevent such things they believe we have, and if God doesn’t do that, and if he has those obligations. something doesn’t jive for them.

 

[Wesrock]

But I always wanted to ask somebody who is actually clever enough to get Thomas Aquinas; what’s this whole God doesn’t have to be moral thing? I’ve heard it several times and probably misunderstood it, but could you maybe expand on that general theme of God being good and what goodness means? Cheers.

God has no moral obligations. Picturing Christians describing God as just some bigger, more powerful human being who has the obligations to act as humans act in a moral sense is incorrect. God has no obligation to create more of what he did or less of what he did. He has no moral obligation to stop that bullet from hitting a person, to prevent wars, to prevent this child from inheriting a genetic disease. It’s not because he’s so powerful he just shrugs it off. It’s not because he ignores his moral obligations. He does not have them. How we should behave follows from what we are as rational animals. That doesn’t apply to God, not because of any type of special pleading, but because it doesn’t follow from what he is. It follows that he wills the good of himself and others, but not in the sense that he creates needs to create a perfectly nice world without any suffering.

HOLD IT. Let’s not stop there. I’ve given a very dispassionate portrayal of God. It’s something Thomists are accused of a lot. A “distant” God. I find Professor Ed Feser’s writings very helpful, but he takes a very clinical, analytical approach to explaining Thomism. Father W. Norris Clarke’s book The One and the Many really emphasizes the personal involvement of God in all of nature. He creates from his own bliss and joy beings to share existence with, beings that can participate in existence. If a closer examination is made of the (allegedly) dispassionate portrayal of God’s act of creation, you find that each and every creative act of God is an unmerited, unobligated act of giving on God’s part. More can be said, but God is intimately involved and giving in everything that is.

And more, we have scriptural revelation. God created man. Man fell. God called man back. Man went astray. God continues to call man back and make covenantal (familial) relationships with man. Man keeps going astray. God assumes human nature, takes our burdens upon himself, redeems us. He’s offers us the fulfillment of what we should be, holy people, and furthermore offers to glorify us and have us share in his own bliss forever. And he does this even though he has no obligation to create man, or to pull man back up after he falls, or to keep calling man. It’s not an obligatory moral duty to him, but an act of love. He willed a relationship with mankind, as a people and individually. He is personally aware of each and every one of us as we live, and the call goes out for us to join him. He wills us to pursue the good and join him, but he also will us to act voluntarily according to our own nature, to be what we are.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Animals don’t experience fear. Fear is an emotion, something animals are not endowed with.

This is hairsplitting. Whether you differentiate the emotion of “fear” into some other thing from what the animal feels, and setting aside the issue of whether at least some animals feel a basic, primitive level of emotions including fear and love, the bottom line is that animals are not comfortable being eaten, or otherwise maimed or cruelly treated.

Saying “oh it’s just instinct, they really don’t feel bad as they’re being killed” is ridiculous and a bad argument.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Will there be animal pain in the new Heavens and new Earth?

No. Isaiah 11:6 - 9:

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb: and the leopard shall lie down with the kid: the calf and the lion, and the sheep shall abide together, and a little child shall lead them.
The calf and the bear shall feed: their young ones shall rest together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp: and the weaned child shall thrust his hand into the den of the basilisk.
They shall not hurt, nor shall they kill in all my holy mountain, for the earth is filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the covering waters of the sea.

 

[joeybaggz]

Okay, I’ll accept “primitive” as to fear. Primitive as you can get. Love, well if you define love as "a recognition of value and an act of will, maybe, but I think you are really stretching the point to the absurd.

 

[Zerg]

That is exactly what faith is!

Belief in that which is unknown or cannot be proved. Professor Greenleaf said that if Jesus’ resurrection was recorded then it must have happened.

I know an elderly priest who says that he still does not understand the metaphysical process that occurs before communion time during transubstantiation.

Have faith! Faith, hope and charity.

 

[HarryStotle]

As for Saint Thomas’ science. Insofar as he wrote of animal consciousness, his views are far more in alignment with modern science than Descartes, who viewed animals as “zombies” simply reacting to phenomena but not actually experiencing anything, even emotions.

Anyway, my point is it’s not church teaching nor even agreed upon in the scientific community that animals are without emotions. Insofar as we understand passable emotions from a philosophical/theological point as Catholics, we don’t reserve these exclusively for humans…

I suspect you are overlooking the fact that the persistent subjective identity through time that enables an awareness of being aware (subjective consciousness) would require a certain level of brain function to feed the high level information required to sustain conscious (and self-conscious) awareness.

For an intelligent human to be aware of a dog, for example, does not merely reduce to visual perceptions of colour, shape, size and location. There is far more to being fully aware of what it means to experience a dog, intellectually speaking. That requires a rational soul, but also the brain capacity to feed and process a myriad of information (both perceptual and previously experienced) to the intellect. All of this is what sustains consciousness through time precisely because an awareness of being aware is a very high level intellectual activity that requires high level brain function.

To merely assume that animals have this level of consciousness going on independently of lower functioning brains (sentience alone) would be fallacious.

To assume that Aquinas’ views on the sentience of animals entails that they must, therefore, be conscious at a level that permits self-awareness or subjective awareness of pain/suffering is to push Aquinas far beyond what is likely to be true.

The so-called ‘hard problem’ of consciousness continues to vex philosophers of mind. It isn’t true that science or philosophy has concluded anything like the consciousness of animals. Descartes could still be very much correct. Philosophers of mind speak of philosophical ‘zombies.’ Those would be human-like entities which externally appear to function like any other human being but lack awareness. The question of consciousness also remains for AI researchers and theorists. It isn’t resolved merely by asserting that at some level of intelligence consciousness just emerges or emerges to some degree. Aquinas and the Church both recognize that the human soul is directly infused at conception. The ‘imago Dei’ is a key essential to understanding the nature of consciousness. To assume animals just do have conscious awareness ignores a great deal of scientific, philosophical and theological thinking on the subject.

I don’t think it is correct to concede the notion that animal just do have consciousness, for a number of reasons. Not the least of which is that biologically speaking, sustaining that level of awareness through time requires very high level brain function which most animals do not have.

 

[Wesrock]

To merely assume that animals have this level of consciousness going on independently of lower functioning brains (sentience alone) would be fallacious.

That goes somewhat beyond what I meant. Animals certainly don’t have the capacity to understand universals, to abstract in the way humans can. Humans also have far more developed brains, particularly in regions devoted to personality expression and cognitive behavior. I do not mean to project that animals have exactly the same thing going on just to a different degree. But emotions, insofar as they are feelings, originate on our sensitive side, our material operations, the side we share with animals. Animals can’t abstract from that, but they do feel, not just react. I see no good reason to suppose that animals are zombies in the sense you describe (and I am familiar with the term in this context). We might as well say they don’t experience the color red, or experience a smell, or experience pain (experience being the key word here, the qualia), and that just seems as absurd.