Why, do you think, animals suffer?

[Ridgerunner]

To examine pain through the lens of the Fall, suffering, and the consequence of sin is a tad unfair. I’m not sure exactly what kind of suffering you’re referring to, but in the case of pain, for instance, we must consider that pain is a natural biological experience. Animals, so far as we might imagine, always had nervous systems and and could always feel pain. The same goes for humans.

It’s entirely possible that, before the Fall, our first parents indeed experienced pain. But they might have been more like animals in accepting it. If they were fully accepting of providence, they might not have thought about it in the same way we do. Remember, the fruit of the tree bore “the knowledge of good and evil”.

Reminds me of a line in “Gulag Archipelago” in which Solzhenitsyn opines something like the following about being a prisoner in the Kolyma; a terrible place where people would be driven out to work in 60 degrees below zero dressed only in sacks, to dig for flecks of gold with crowbars in the iron-hard earth and had to subsist on ten ounces of adulterated bread per day. His statement went something like this: “One cannot be truly spiritual until it is a matter of complete indifference to him whether he is, or is not, in the Kolyma.”

 

[scm]

I keep seeing in this thread that pain is a defense mechanism or some kind of signal to alert us and animals of danger.
Here is the thing…
suppose the animal, or even a human, gets something like lung cancer and it spreads to other internal organs… what is the point of the increadible pain that results before death?
The animal can take no steps to remove or avoid the cause of that pain… neither can humans.
I see it as a point against evolution…which has been mentioned in this thread… what survival value is in this internal pain that can not be aleviated? for humans or animals. another example… what survival value is there in having pain sensors in the appendix? You feel an increadible pain, it bursts and you die. where is survival value and natural selection in that?

And i do not think God designs pointless mechanisms…so how could it be there by God’s design?

So i am left with the fall as an explanation

Be gentle in your responses, I am open to the possibility i just have it all wrong here…

 

[SisterSally]

This thread seems to have been eliciting comments for some time now. It is a touchy subject for a lot of people these days as the modern culture becomes more concerned with animal welfare and less concerned with babies in the womb. However, my opinion is one I have held for some time ever since meditating seriously on the following passage from Genesis:

Genesis 1:26-31 (RSV)
[26] Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”
[27] So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
[28] And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”
[29] **And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. **[30] **And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. **[31] And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.

---

In the beginning, before the Fall, it would seem that God’s plan was for every living creature to be vegetarian! I am not being facetious here. The eating of abundant grasses, grains, etc. is the only way there could be a creation that was not “red in tooth and claw”. This would mean that all of us creatures with a CNS would not have to suffer in order that the strong might eat us and survive! Of course, this really messes up the whole idea of Darwinian evolution; however, I don’t think that evolution was part of God’s original plan anyway!

“In all things give thanks”

 

[nemmark]

Suffering itself is so difficult to understand and bare. I’m sure no one knows suffering better than Christ and the triumphant saints. It always gives me great hope and inspiration when I read saint stories about people who endured tremendous suffering with joy… seems so unrealistic, but faith instructs me that it is very possible through God’s graces. Thinking like a sociologist though, I’d have to partly blame our culture and society for giving us such a twisted view of comfort and suffering. I know I’m making a generalization of some sort, but it appears that most Americans fear suffering more than anything else, even mortal sin. I can even refer to instances in my own life where this has sadly been the case. To put it plainly, we confuse suffering with evil and comfort with goodness, but they are not interchangable terms. People in the past had a better understanding of suffering and could endure it much easier as well. The saints especially treasured suffering… for they understood its great value, which is only available, to help us grow in virtue and merit heaven through uniting our suffering with Christ, in this life on Earth. It always surprises me to see how much we can know, but not understand, for knowing that suffering has great value is so much different than understanding it. It also surprises me to see how twisted truth can become, because of our corrupted nature. Just as Ridgerunner said:

It’s entirely possible that, before the Fall, our first parents indeed experienced pain. But they might have been more like animals in accepting it. If they were fully accepting of providence, they might not have thought about it in the same way we do. Remember, the fruit of the tree bore “the knowledge of good and evil”.

And as far as evolution goes, it’s probably very hard for anyone, even the most brilliant scientists, to contemplate such a complex structure of events. Who knows, God may have wanted all creatures to be vegetarian before the fall of man, but as science enlightens us, as evident in fossil records, creatures were “designed” in such a way to prey upon other sensible creatures.

I think the confusion and doubt simply lies in our sinful nature rooted in the corruption from the original fall of man. And to add to that confusion, we have satanic forces that do daily battle with us, even if we’re able to perceive this or not. We are truly in a pathetic condition, but God totally understands. It appears that the only way to resolve such doubt and confusion about suffering is to utilize the Faith that God has mercifully given us. Faith always confused me, because I always thought that doubt meant the absence of faith, but it now seems that it is to be utilized in the presence of doubt. I am almost completely convinced, after seeing many logical explanations to many complex theoretical and theological “issues” that we simply can’t know everything and explain it logically, but we can eventually understand things through Faith just like past saints have. It appears that the only logical solution to this complex question is to first utilize our Faith, and to recall that suffering, as such endured by Jesus, is an awesome treasure, and a mysterious thing contemplated in the sorrowful mysteries of the rosary.

 

[E_7]

they suffer because they have feelings. They feel.

 

[Della]

I keep seeing in this thread that pain is a defense mechanism or some kind of signal to alert us and animals of danger.
Here is the thing…
suppose the animal, or even a human, gets something like lung cancer and it spreads to other internal organs… what is the point of the increadible pain that results before death?
The animal can take no steps to remove or avoid the cause of that pain… neither can humans.
I see it as a point against evolution…which has been mentioned in this thread… what survival value is in this internal pain that can not be aleviated? for humans or animals. another example… what survival value is there in having pain sensors in the appendix? You feel an increadible pain, it bursts and you die. where is survival value and natural selection in that?

And i do not think God designs pointless mechanisms…so how could it be there by God’s design?

So i am left with the fall as an explanation

Be gentle in your responses, I am open to the possibility i just have it all wrong here…

God, in his wisdom, created systems within our bodies that function without us having to think about them, such as breathing, senses, blood circulation, etc. The pain response is one of these.

Let’s take you scenario about the spreading cancer and pain. What the pain says is that something is terribly wrong. Our bodies are wired to send out such alarms. It doesn’t stop if the disesase is terminal. That’s not its purpose–it only exists for one purpose. It’s like a computer program that has hardware but uses software to modify it. The software is medical treatment or resignation.

Animals often demostrate they are terminal by their behavior, allowing a predator to finish them off or they hide themselves to avoid that fate. They don’t think about the future as we do–anticipating how things could have/should have happened, so they don’t suffer from that type of anxiety, which is what causes so much human suffering. Human babies often survive being buried in rubble better than older children or adults, for that reason.

Man was meant to elevate natural life, to tame it. We know this because God told man to name all the animals. The Fall disrupted our proper place/duty to care for nature but it will be restored when Christ returns. In the meantime, we can and should do what we can to help animals and not treat them inhumanely.

 

[tonyrey]

And i do not think God designs pointless mechanisms…so how could it be there by God’s design?

The mechanisms are not pointless but neither are they infallible! Like instincts they cannot cater for every contingency because they don’t know what they are doing…

 

[scm]

God, in his wisdom, created systems within our bodies that function without us having to think about them, such as breathing, senses, blood circulation, etc. The pain response is one of these.

Let’s take you scenario about the spreading cancer and pain. What the pain says is that something is terribly wrong. Our bodies are wired to send out such alarms. It doesn’t stop if the disesase is terminal. That’s not its purpose–it only exists for one purpose. It’s like a computer program that has hardware but uses software to modify it. The software is medical treatment or resignation.

Animals often demostrate they are terminal by their behavior, allowing a predator to finish them off or they hide themselves to avoid that fate. They don’t think about the future as we do–anticipating how things could have/should have happened, so they don’t suffer from that type of anxiety, which is what causes so much human suffering. Human babies often survive being buried in rubble better than older children or adults, for that reason.

Man was meant to elevate natural life, to tame it. We know this because God told man to name all the animals. The Fall disrupted our proper place/duty to care for nature but it will be restored when Christ returns. In the meantime, we can and should do what we can to help animals and not treat them inhumanely.

It makes more sense to think that God designed us to have the internal pain sensors than to think that it evolved that way, but He must have done it knowing that some day we would invent medical care. The first appendectomy was performed in 1735, so for most of human history there was no point to having the appendix have pain sensors, nothing could be done for it.
But I get what you are saying. It tells us to seek medical care (now that we have medical care)
Evolution could not have done that since evolution does not think and have reasons.

Thanks

 

[tonyrey]

It makes more sense to think that God designed us to have the internal pain sensors than to think that it evolved that way, but He must have done it knowing that some day we would invent medical care. The first appendectomy was performed in 1735, so for most of human history there was no point to having the appendix have pain sensors, nothing could be done for it.

There are many physical events that are more reasonably explained as misfortunes rather than directly willed by God. There is an element of chance within the framework of Design.

 

[Hokomai]

Animals suffer because there is not a god who is omnipotent and all-loving. Otherwise, they would not suffer.

 

[Della]

Animals suffer because there is not a god who is omnipotent and all-loving. Otherwise, they would not suffer.

This does not address anything at all, nor explain anything except your lack of faith. Pain is real. Suffering, however is a state of mind. No being suffers if it does not know that pain is suffering. It only knows what it senses. Pain is not suffering any more than is tasting chocolate–it’s merely a sensory reaction to stimulus. One needs the ability to understand that pain could be eliminated, and animals don’t have that capacity. Therefore, they don’t suffer as we humans understand the term. They only know what they feel, nothing more. This is a blessing for them. I recently watched one of our cats slowly deteriorate due to a health condition. From day to day he just did what he could and never expected to be able to do anything else. He had no sense of the future or what else could be happening to him. He died never having suffered in that way, in his mind, because he was not capable of having that experience. God in his wisdom created animals as they are, with this lack of understanding. I think it shows his great compassion for his creation.

 

[scm]

This does not address anything at all, nor explain anything except your lack of faith. Pain is real. Suffering, however is a state of mind. No being suffers if it does not know that pain is suffering. It only knows what it senses. Pain is not suffering any more than is tasting chocolate–it’s merely a sensory reaction to stimulus. One needs the ability to understand that pain could be eliminated, and animals don’t have that capacity. Therefore, they don’t suffer as we humans understand the term. They only know what they feel, nothing more. This is a blessing for them. I recently watched one of our cats slowly deteriorate due to a health condition. From day to day he just did what he could and never expected to be able to do anything else. He had no sense of the future or what else could be happening to him. He died never having suffered in that way, in his mind, because he was not capable of having that experience. God in his wisdom created animals as they are, with this lack of understanding. I think it shows his great compassion for his creation.

The thing is, I had a dog that lived 15 years. Towards the end he was suffering. It was obvious. He was in pain and discomfort and he expressed that. Animals are not machines, and pain is not just a sensory signal.

 

[scm]

Animals suffer because there is not a god who is omnipotent and all-loving. Otherwise, they would not suffer.

You kind of have a straw-man in there:

1. An omnipotent, all loving god would not allow animals to suffer.
2. Animals suffer
3. therefore there is no omnipotent all-loving god.

Great.
I think there is a lot of room for debate on statement 1.

 

[tonyrey]

Animals suffer because there is not a god who is omnipotent and all-loving. Otherwise, they would not suffer.

You need to explain how animals could be prevented from suffering and also prevented from harming themselves…

 

[Hokomai]

You need to explain how animals could be prevented from suffering and also prevented from harming themselves…

No I don’t. An omnipotent god, by definition, could work this out for themselves.

 

[tonyrey]

No I don’t. An omnipotent god, by definition, could work this out for themselves.

Your concept of omnipotence is obviously flawed. It does not entail inconsistency for a start…

 

[LittleSoldier]

Animals suffer because there is not a god who is omnipotent and all-loving. Otherwise, they would not suffer.

As one who recently lost a much-loved cat to a probable coyote attack, I have no doubt that animals suffer. They suffer both physically and emotionally (I’m referring to mammals primarily).

There IS a God who is omnipotent and all-loving. To lack either omnipotence or all-consuming love would go against His nature.

Animals suffer, even in their purity and innocence and lack of ability to sin because we, starting with Adam, have made a mess of this world and God does allow suffering to occur. I have struggled with understanding this since my cat disappeared almost two weeks ago. The lion does not lie down with the lamb and that is because this is an imperfect world.

However, all will be made right in Heaven and at the Second Coming. EVERYTHING will be made right - even the pain that my cat did suffer if he did indeed run across a coyote, and I will be comforted and am blessed because I mourn.

God does not fit into a little “human” box. He is so far above us that we have trouble understanding His love. Sometimes it’s best to climb out of our box and try to view things from a divine, eternal perspective. We won’t understand perfectly as we, unlike God, are fallible and not omniscient, but hopefully we can learn to trust that God, in His divine wisdom, acts only in love.

Remember that God Himself, as God Incarnate, went through horrific suffering and death in order to open the Gates of Heaven for us. Even Jesus’ Mother, sinless forever, suffered horribly as she saw her own Son being murdered. Yet we call both Jesus and Mary “blessed” (“blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus”).

A few days ago I would have agreed with you. I could understand why people suffer but not animals and I questioned why a loving God would even allow such a terrible thing to occur. I don’t claim to have all the answers but I have prayed a lot and I am learning to trust.

It will all be OK. Every last little bit of suffering will be stamped out - except for those who deny God, spit in His Holy Face, and turn their backs on Him; yet they will still receive what they desire: hell.

 

[Hokomai]

.

Animals suffer, even in their purity and innocence and lack of ability to sin because we, starting with Adam, have made a mess of this world and God does allow suffering to occur. I have struggled with understanding this since my cat disappeared almost two weeks ago. The lion does not lie down with the lamb and that is because this is an imperfect world.

However, all will be made right in Heaven and at the Second Coming. EVERYTHING will be made right - even the pain that my cat did suffer if he did indeed run across a coyote, and I will be comforted and am blessed because I mourn.

So prior to Adam (who the Church considers to have been a real person), and his sin, why did god allow billions of years of animal suffering, as shown by the millions of fossils of animals who died in pain and distress?

 

[Hokomai]

Your concept of omnipotence is obviously flawed. It does not entail inconsistency for a start…

I am sorry but I do not understand your comment.

 

[LittleSoldier]

So prior to Adam (who the Church considers to have been a real person), and his sin, why did god allow billions of years of animal suffering, as shown by the millions of fossils of animals who died in pain and distress?

You are right in that the Church considers Adam to have been a real person. I agree with that teaching, even though my background is in science. But God does not work in chronological time; we do. This is another situation when we need to climb out of the box and try to view things from an eternal perspective (and we will fail but hopefully come to some sort of understanding). To God, all time is now.

This is coming dangerously close to a banned topic; please be careful. I don’t want an infraction and I don’t want you to receive one, either.