All creatures great & small

Fasten your seatbelts. Andrea Weisberger has a knockdown argument against the existence of God:

“What strikes me as the most compelling evidence against the existence of a wholly good, all powerful deity is the status of nonhumans in the world today. One might think that the sheer number of people in this country alone who profess devotion to the ideals of Christianity would have the effect of making people more compassionate towards the suffering of others. Sadly, this is not the case.”

“200 years ago there were approximately 2 million wild horses in the US. Today there are less than 40,000. This is not due to disease or natural catastrophe, but to cruelty. In Wyoming, Nevada, Colorado and Oregon, horses, even small foals, are shot to death for fun. Others are captured and sold for slaughter -- to provide low cholesterol steaks to France, Italy, Begium [sic.] and Japan. The 3 horse slaughter houses in the US have carved up 50,000 horses in the past year alone.”

“Take this one example of the last moments of a wild mustang:”

‘Depressed and confused, gentle Daisy stands nervously on the cold, slippery floor.’ (Excerpt from Lifesavers, Inc. letter. http://www.wildhorserescue.org)

“Now what kind of god would create these creatures with the foreknowledge of their agony at the hands of cruel humans? How could any of this suffering be needed in any way? How could the allowance of such cruelty be construed as providing fertile ground for free will? Would it really limit free will to deny the French their mustang steaks?”

“It seems to me that our religious language is at a loss to conceive any reasonable explanation for a perfectly good and all powerful deity permitting such atrocities. And this is not an isolated case.”

http://aweisbe.blogspot.com/

This argument contains a number of unspoken assumptions.

1.Why does Andrea seize on the plight of Mustangs?

Is it simply because horses, as domesticated animals, are objects of human affection?

Is the assumption that animals have rights if the animal in question is special to us?

If an animal is a pet, then it is entitled to special treatment?

If so, that’s a rather androcentric outlook.

2.Suppose, instead of mustangs, she talked about the plight of cockroaches.

The way in which human beings ruthlessly hunt down coackroaches. Poison cockroaches. Squash them underfoot.

Would that be another slam-bam argument against the existence of God?

3.What’s wrong with horsemeat steak? Is horsemeat immoral, but beefsteak is not? Or is Andrea a vegan?

Is Andrea saying that a meal of steak and lobster is opposed to secular ethics?

What about cheeseburgers? Are they verboten too?

And that's before we ever get around to the morally vexed question of escargots.

How can Andrea sleep at night as she contemplates the genocidal assault on all those hot-buttered snails?

Surely there's some international convention against the wholesale slaughter of our gastropodal neighbors.

4.Is it okay to hunt a deer, but immoral to hunt a horse? Or is hunting, per se, contrary to secular ethics as well?

5.Is it Andrea’s position that horses have civil rights? That when we hunt wild horses, we violate their civil rights?

Is this grounded in social contract theory?

Did horses, in a state of nature, decide one day that equine existence was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short?

Were the cougars party to this contract?

Is it immoral for a cougar to enjoy a low-carb diet of horsemeat?

What about squirrels? If it’s immoral for a cougar to eat a horse, can he still snack on squirrels?

Or would all mountain lions be vegans in the best of all possible worlds?

6.How does Andrea know that Daisy was feeling depressed that day? Isn’t this a rather transparent case of projecting human emotions onto an animal?

Once again, it assumes a rather androcentric viewpoint.

7.How does Andrea feel about abortion? If she thinks it’s wrong to kill a horse, does she also think it’s wrong for a human mother to kill her own young?