Emoting over animal pain

A Catholic reader of this blog is deeply troubled by the problem of animal suffering. He reports his painful recollection of a YouTube video that depicts

. . . the killing of a baby elephant by 13 lions. They first attacked the little elephant in the open, but he was saved when several water buffalo intervened and drove the lions off. The baby then ran to two large bull elephants nearby, but rather than protecting him from the lions, they were indifferent. The lions, seeing this, rushed the baby, which helplessly ran off into the bush, where the lions, 13 in all, caught him, and began to devour him. You probably know that because of an elephant’s trunk, a lion’s bite to the neck does not kill, so I assume that the baby was eaten alive.

I find the thought of this killing and the myriad other killings like it very hard to accept. How does a theist explain such acts in nature? I know something of the various theodicies and defenses of theistic philosophers, but when confronted with this scene of terror and horrendous death, I find them all unconvincing. Something in the depths of my being rejects them all as over-sophisticated attempts to mask what is truly terrible so as to defend at all costs the first of Hume’s four options, that of a perfectly good first cause. I am not saying that I am abandoning my theistic beliefs, but I think that for too long, theists have not taken the matter of animal pain and suffering seriously enough.

Leaving philosophic theism aside, there is glaring indifference to this matter in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, where the fixation on humanity’s fall, faults, and need for salvation. Without denying whatever truth may be found in this long theological reflection on human misery, what of the animals, those here millions of years before man walked on the earth, and all those who have shared and do share the earth with him? 

https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2019/05/animal-suffering-and-the-problem-of-evil.html

i) I've often written about the so-called problem of animal suffering, so I won't repeat that here. Instead, I'll say some new things in addition to what I've said in the past.

ii) Some issues are artificially important. They're not intrinsically important, but they become important because some people make them more important than they are. 

iii) For most of their history, Christians and Jews have been overwhelmed by human death and suffering all around them. It's only in the age of affluence and modern medicine that that's retreated to some degree. At a time and place when many children were orphaned by disease and war, when many children who slept together with their siblings watched their young brothers and sisters buried due to death from famine or childhood illness, it would be morally obscene to fret over animal suffering. That's a luxury for spoiled people who don't have more serious and immediate evils to lament. 

iv) It's not coincidental that he cites the example of a mammal. He doesn't talk about fish eating other fish, or a bird eating an earthworm, or a hawk eating a snake, or snakes consuming other snakes, or adult crocodiles gobbling up young crocodiles. That shows you how subjective the reaction is. Like a lot of guys, I find certain reptiles impressive. I have a morbid fascination with crocodiles, Komodo dragons, anacondas, reticulating pythons, and venomous snakes. However, I have no affection for reptiles. I suspect that's because I'm too mammalian to have affection for reptiles. 

v) Most wild animals aren't nice. A few year ago there was a nature show about meerkats. They're cute and fun to watch. But they're not nice animals. They stage vicious raiding parties on rival meerkat communities. Otters are cute. They can be fun to watch. But they belong to these same family as wolverines, and otters have a vicious streak. 

vi) Apropos (v), some animals are evidently intelligent. Animal intelligence ranges along a continuum. I think it's fair to say there's such a thing as animal minds, at least among some higher animals. But if we could get inside an animal mind, we might well find that animal minds are quite alien to us. Many animals may well have minds like a psychopathic serial killer. There are science fiction movies about getting inside the mind of a psychopath. 

Suppose Ted Bundy picked the wrong coed. Suppose she had a couple of Dobermans who mauled him to death. Normally, it would be horrific to witness someone mauled to death by dogs. If, however, that was Ted Bundy, I wouldn't shed a tear. 

vi) It's striking that some animals seek out what appears to be painful behavior. Take a cat fight. To a human observer, that looks excruciating. Perhaps it is. But if it's that excruciating, shouldn't we expect the pain to be a deterrent to cat fights? Why do cats initiate fights if it's that painful? Maybe it's not as painful as it looks to us, from our human frame of reference.