Why do animals suffer?

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Bill_Cherry said:
Well, then, I guess that would better describe the animation of Bugs Bunny and the Big Bad Wolf and such. **Animals already have similar motivations, characteristics, and behaviors. **No body has to ascribe these things to animals. One merely has to observe an animal to recognize them

that assignation of similar motives and behaviors is anthropomorphism. do you have any evidence of these motives and behaviors? it seems so obvious to most people that they dont really think about it, but on closer examination, there are no behaviors that could not be performed with adequate programming and processing power by a machine, thus the phrase ‘meatbots’.
I am more inclined to believe that your use of the word “anthropomorphism” is somewhat disingenuous.
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warpspeedpetey said:
i simply disagree with you, that doesnt make me dishonest.
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**I in no way intended to imply that you are being dishonest. I looked up the word and that is one of it’s meanings. I apologize for a poor choice. I simply meant that maybe you understood it falsely. **
if you cut a sophisticated robot up, and feed it to a smelter, would you feel bad? would you be feeding an addiction?
of course not.
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So are you then comparing yourself to a smelter? In a sense,…“anthropomorphizing” a smelter…?
 
Bill_Cherry said:
**I in no way intended to imply that you are being dishonest. I looked up the word and that is one of it’s meanings. I apologize for a poor choice. I simply meant that maybe you understood it falsely. ** So are you then comparing yourself to a smelter? In a sense,…“anthropomorphizing” a smelter…?
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yes, i am a meat smelter:D
 
What? By agreeing with myself? Was I that unclear in my previous posts? 😃
 
Your link tells me that it is an invalid. I am sorry to hear of its prolonged illness.
 
I would say that as finite creatures, animals are not perfect and like humans, they have a certain degree of fragility. Classical Christian theism tends to see suffering and evil as a result of defective use of free will by rational creatures (hence the fall of angels and humans) and also in defect by reason of finitude and being created. Only God has the unrestricted perfection and completness by virtue of his infinite and necessary Being, which has no potentiality or change and contains all perfections in an unlimited degree; creatures however, being created, are mingled with non-being by virtue of their created statuts. Creatures are good but also limited, and radically so in comparison to the fullness and perfection of God’s transcendent essence.

Another aspect is to see suffering and death as part of the overall harmony of nature. The killing of the mouse by the cat may be terrible from the view of the mouse, but from a wider perspective, if there is no predation on mice, their numbers would explode out of control. Theodicy has tried to offset suffering by seeing evil as part of the goodness of the universe as a whole.

In light though of the high levels of extinctions and death in nature, and also the often pointless and seemingly insane evils and crimes people do, these theodicies seem weak. I am not really sure if there can be a perfect theodicy, though for many, religious beliefs can mitigate pain and suffering if they have positive content.
 
redhen said:
youtube.com/watch?v=h7WZcsBRWpk&feature=related

Yup, nothing to see here except a dumb brute, move along.
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😃Very cool! years ago, when my girls were small, they came running into the house yelling,“DADDY! DADDY! There’s a baby bird in the yard and the cat want’s to kill it!” So, I go out and catch the baby Grackle.They named her Maia. She was very smart. She knew her name, and played tug-of-war with a string and would put the dogs food into his water to soften it before she ate it. We discovered she was a ‘she’ when she molted and didn’t turn black. We started leaving the front door open for her to assimilate back in to the wild. It took a while. But she eventually wandered outside. She came back in to the house once or twice. Eventually she was accepted into the flock and I could tell which one she was for a few days as she was somewhat docile and willing to fly over and sit on my finger. But, soon She wasn’t doing it anymore and I wasn’t sure if she was still there. I assume she was back in her own element. They all look alike, so I couldn’t tell which one she was any more. But, it was a neat experience!👍
 
warpspeedpetey said:
the sophistication of the system doesnt validate anthropomorphism. be it a rook, or a chimpanzee, we can duplicate any behavior with machines. so intelligence cannot validate anthropomorphism unless one is willing to assign the same qualities to machines, a clearly irrational proposition.
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I will agree with you the day a computer can spread a learned behavior through a group of other computers by observation and imitation, in other words, culture.

animals.howstuffworks.com/animal-facts/animal-culture-info.htm

But, back to the original question on animal suffering.

“The effect of Cartesianism was to devastate earlier Christian traditions of kindness to animals. Descartes’s followers, the Port Royalists, ‘kicked about their dogs and dissected their cats without mercy,** laughing at any compassion for them, and calling their screams the noise of breaking machinery**’.3 It is doubtful whether the Jesuit Joseph Rickaby could have written in 1889 that, ‘we have no duties of charity, nor duties of any kind to the lower animals, as neither to stocks or stones’4 without the influence of Cartesianism.”

humboldt.edu/~essays/linzey.html
 
Greg27 said:
In light though of the high levels of extinctions and death in nature, and also the often pointless and seemingly insane evils and crimes people do, these theodicies seem weak. I am not really sure if there can be a perfect theodicy, though for many, religious beliefs can mitigate pain and suffering if they have positive content.
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The argument that there is excessive evil in the world is vacuous unless it is supported by a detailed description of a feasible world in which there is less evil. The question of when evil becomes excessive is also relevant? Why should there be any pain and suffering at all?!
 
tonyrey said:
Why should there be any pain and suffering at all?!
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A good question, for which Christianity does not have a satisfactory answer.

youtube.com/watch?v=CvqWTx8ykzg&feature=channel_page

The best theodicial answer is wrapped up in the “greater good”, the** mystery** of inequity, and from God’s answer to Job, “where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?”.

So the answer is “it’s a mystery”, which is no answer at all.
 
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