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All Quiet with Darwin: Animal Suffering and Divine Benevolence in Historical Perspective

By May 19, 2025No Comments

For many centuries, the belief in God as the Creator and Sustainer of the universe was undisputed in the Western world.1 However, today this belief is questioned by many because of the suffering that affects animals. A single quote from Richard Dawkins makes this clear:

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive; others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear; others are being slowly devoured from within by rasping parasites; thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst and disease.2

In the opinion of many, such animal life is incompatible with faith in a benevolent God who is the Creator of all living things and the source of all good.3

To reinforce these arguments, reference is often made to Darwin’s theory of evolution.4 Darwinism would pose an unprecedented challenge to the belief in God because it depicts the suffering of animals not as something incidental but as an essential part of the course of events in nature.5 Apparently survival of the best adapted at the expense of what is weak is, after all, diametrically opposed to the image of God as depicted in the Bible, someone who takes care of the weak and vulnerable.6 The question, however, is to what extent the idea that believing in God only became problematic after Darwin is correct. Even before Darwin published his theory, everyone could see that violence is commonplace in the animal kingdom, but no one saw in this a reason to deny the existence of God at the time.

First, this raises the question why in the past animal suffering was not seen as a threat to belief in God, and second, the related question of whether it is due to Darwin’s theory of evolution that this is different now. By seeking answers to these questions, we can gain insight into how the idea arose that animal suffering makes it harder to believe in God, and such research can also provide arguments to defend the view that death and violence in the animal kingdom need not lead to doubts about the existence of God.

If we look at what authors have written over the centuries about the relationship between belief in God and animal suffering, it becomes clear that this was discussed long before Darwin published his theory of evolution, and that he was certainly not the first to see a problem here.7 Others argue that this may be true, but that this does not alter the fact that Darwin brought something new to the discussion: the view that God uses animal suffering to achieve his intended purposes, thus “God being responsible not only for the existence of the evils but also for their instrumentality in generating values.”8 That God uses animal suffering as a means to achieve his goals would make his existence less credible than if he merely passively allowed it, the reasoning goes.

At first sight this sounds plausible but whether the idea that God’s active involvement with animal suffering in this way indeed only arose after and because of Darwin requires further investigation; without such research it cannot be ruled out with certainty that already prior to Darwin, animal suffering was viewed as something that God could use as a means to achieve the goal he intends, in which case the argument that Darwin introduced a new element into the discussion does not hold up. Therefore, we need to know what was written about animal suffering before Darwin and whether this changed after he published his theory.

When analyzing how the debate about the relationship between the belief in God and the suffering of animals was conducted prior to Darwin and whether this changed significantly thereafter, it is helpful to distinguish four different aspects each of which is used individually to argue that Darwinism would make the existence of God less credible. These are, in order, (1) the age of the earth, (2) the rise and fall of animal species, (3) the existence of creatures that apparently serve no other purpose than doing harm, and (4) God’s deliberate use of evil to accomplish his purposes.9 Below I will show that each of these four aspects was discussed before Darwin, but at the time they did not pose a threat to belief in God, and I will also show that this did not change for more than a century after Darwin. Why things are different now and what a way forward might look like, I will discuss at the end of this article.

The age of the earth

The first argument—the age of the earth, often summarized for convenience as “deep time”—does not so much concern belief in the existence of God but rather questions the reliability of the Bible as a source of historical information. A long history of the earth with animal life and death predating the appearance of humans calls into question the biblical chronology of a six-­day creation and makes untenable the belief that animal suffering and death would be a consequence of Adam’s eating the forbidden fruit.

That deep time is seen as a threat by those who advocate a literal reading of the story as described in Genesis 1–3 is evident. But it is less evident that this threat arose from Darwin’s theory of evolution. That the earth has a long history, much longer than reported in the Bible, had already been accepted at the beginning of the 19th century and was not a cause for concern at the time.10 “If the heavens declare the glory of God, the rocks do not less strikingly proclaim His wisdom and benevolence. If astronomy unfolds to us the wonders of creation in the immensity of space, geology displays these wonders in the immensity of time.”11 The minority who wished to hold to a six-­day creation week fought a rearguard action.12

Nor did Darwin’s theory of evolution pose a new threat for the belief that animals suffer and die because of Adam’s sin; that his transgression had caused the fall of all living beings from primeval peace and happiness had always been a controversial doctrine throughout the ages.13 Quoting William Buckland—the founder of the science of geology—illustrates how this was thought about in the decades prior to Darwin: “the brute creation death is in no way connected with the moral misconduct of the human race, and that whether Adam had, or had not, ever transgressed, a termination by death is, and always has been, the condition on which life was given to every individual.”14

A third consequence of a long history of the earth—next to doubts about the six days of creation and the role of Adam as an explanation for the suffering that animals must face— is the view that such a long period of animal life multiplies the amount of animal suffering almost infinitely. Some thousands of years of animal suffering would be less bad than many millions. This point had also been discussed and settled in the period prior to Darwin; extension of time and increase in number of animals not only lead to more pain but also to more pleasure. It “is the sublime truth revealed to us by geology—that for countless ages our globe was the abode of myriads of living forms of happiness, enjoying all the blessings of existence.”15 Charles Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus Darwin had previously expressed similar views. “[A]ll the calcareous mountains  . . .  are MONUMENTS OF THE PAST FELICITY OF ORGANIZED NATURE!—AND CONSEQUENTLY OF THE BENEVOLENCE OF THE DEITY.”16 Deep evolutionary time was not something that Christians who wanted to hold on to the belief that God had created the universe could not accept, and Darwin’s theory of evolution did not change this. That it did not fit with a biblical chronology of a six-­day creation and the idea that animals suffered because of Adam’s sin was not seen as something to worry about.

The rise and fall of animal species

The next topic to be discussed is the problem of an animal world changing over time, also referred to as “plurality of worlds.” What is at issue here is not the reliability of the Bible, but the skills of God as Creator. The fossils that the fledgling science of geology had discovered in the earth’s crust indicated that this world was preceded by other worlds, each with animal species that no longer exist. These findings raised the question of why God would consign entire animal worlds to destruction only to create new ones that would then suffer the same fate. This challenge to belief in God’s creative skills was also recognized and addressed before Darwin published his theory but without causing doubts about God’s craftsmanship at the time. On the contrary, “changes cannot furnish sufficient grounds, for doubting of the wisdom or power of God: not even [when] several worlds had existed before the present” so wrote James Parkinson, better known for the neurological disease that bears his name than for his work in geology.17 That there were previous worlds is not a blemish on the glory of God but rather a contribution to it. “The goodness of God is thus seen in a far vaster number and greater variety of living creatures, and the manifestations of it are thus multiplied and increased indefinitely.”18

Nor should it be supposed that God destroyed previous worlds because he was dissatisfied with his work. William Whewell who coined the term “Plurality-­of-­Worlds” made this clear, writing that in each period each animal was “provided by its Author with such powers and habits, with such organs and constitutions as adapted it precisely to the condition of things in which it was to live.”19 Other authors had the same opinion. “Nature has . . . made the earth’s strata a vast anatomical museum.”20 God is not ashamed of his works, neither for what he is doing now nor for what he has done in the past. “The fact that He has thus displayed them, manifest in Him a consciousness that they will bear the strictest scrutiny of men of every grade of mind, without thereby causing the infinity of his Goodness to be called in question.”21 The more worlds, the greater the power of the Creator and therefore the more reason for worship. Just like deep time, the concept of the plurality of worlds should not be seen as a challenge to the Christian faith evoked by Darwinism or evolution in general. If it is to be regarded as a challenge, it has already been taken up and turned down before.

Harmful creatures

The third challenge to theism concerns specifically God’s goodness: the existence of organisms that seem to exist with no other purpose than to cause suffering to their fellow creatures.22 Does creating forms of life with such a reprehensible purpose fit in with this divine attribute? Examples are bacteria, viruses, and insects that transmit nasty diseases. However, this is not new either. Already long before Darwin lived and published, people knew that there were tiny animals with harmful behavior. The ichneumon wasp that caused Darwin so much trouble was seen by the Methodist theologian John Wesley as an example of divine ingenuity. It is worth quoting his words at some length:

Consider this caterpillar thick-­set with hair: the birds dare not touch it: notwithstanding which, it serves them for food: by what means? a fly pierces the living caterpillar; she lays her eggs in his body. The caterpillar remains alive. The eggs hatch. The young ones grow at the expence [sic] of the caterpillar, and are afterwards changed into flies which serve for sustenance to the birds. There are continual wars betwixt animals, but things are so wisely combined, that the destruction of some of them occasions the preservation of others, and the fecundity of the species is always proportionable to the dangers that threaten individuals.23

It is not the discovery of the behavior of the ichneumon wasp that poses a new challenge to theism, but a changed interpretation of it. Wesley took the wasp’s behavior as divine design; Darwin—76 years later—did not: “I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars.”24 What one person does not find to be in conflict with the concept of a wise God, another person may reject as unacceptable.

God appoints evil that good may come of it

The fourth challenge for theism is the concept that animal suffering is specifically intended by God to further his purposes—in this case, the creation of new species—and not simply an unavoidable side effect in an animal world where animals must compete for food and reproduction.25 Here too the image of God as benevolent is at stake. The fact that God would use suffering and death to create new animal species may be seen as shocking, but the question is whether this is worse than using animal suffering as an instrument to maintain the balance between existing animal species. In both cases, animal suffering serves a purpose intended by God, either preventing the extinction of animal species or creating new forms of life. A few years before Darwin, the theologian William Kirby wrote “that the doctrine of the sufferings of one creature, by the will of God, being necessary to promote the welfare of another, is irrefragably established by every thing we see in nature; and further, that there is an unseen hand directing all to accomplish this great object, and taking care that the destruction shall in no case exceed the necessity.”26 Animal suffering should not be seen as evil but as the path through which God realizes his purposes.27 Here too, Darwin’s theory of evolution presented no new challenges for theists; animals suffer anyhow and it makes no difference whether this serves to prevent the extinction of extant animal species or the creation of new forms of life. Below we will see that Darwin’s theory of evolution actually facilitated the acceptance of animal suffering as ordered by God to fulfill his plans.

History shows that deep time questioning the biblical chronology and the role of Adam in animal suffering, the rise and fall of animal species increasing the number of suffering animals, the presence of organisms apparently existing for no other purpose than doing evil, and a divine design in which suffering is an instrument to create values all had been subject of debate and accepted as compatible with the belief in God before the publication of the Origin of Species in 1859.28 Evolution as presented by Darwin did not pose challenges to theism that it had not met and withstood before.

Evaluation

I demonstrated that for 18th and early 19th century authors the existence of animal suffering did not necessarily lead to loss of faith in God and I have also shown that new ideas about the age and origin of the world and its inhabitants did not change this. Nor was faith in God threatened by a growing sensitivity to suffering in general that was emerging in this period or by a shift in the concept of God from one whose thoughts far surpass ours to one with the same feelings about and conception of justice, pain, and suffering as we have.29 One might suspect that these changes in human feelings and beliefs about God’s personality and attributes would strengthen the arguments against the existence of God, because the humanized concept of God might make the existence of animal suffering a greater problem for belief in a benevolent God than it was for previous generations that did not have such an anthropomorphic concept of God, but this turns out not to be the case. In fact, the opposite is true. The new data that the investigation of nature had revealed were not seen as something that Christians should be concerned about but rather as more evidence for the existence of God and his providential care for his creation.30 And if the increased sensitivity to animal suffering had any social impact, it was mainly in the area of ​​the relationship between domesticated animals and their owners; the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, founded in 1824, focused on a humane treatment of the animals entrusted to our care or management and fought against vivisection but was not concerned with the suffering that wild animals inflict on each other.31 The belief that Darwinism poses new challenges to theism is not supported by the historical facts because each of the four supposedly Darwinian challenges to belief in God—age of the earth, rise and fall of animal species, harmful creatures, and God’s deliberate use of evil to accomplish his intended purpose—had previously been the subject of debate without this giving rise to doubts about belief in God at the time.

That none of the problems commonly but incorrectly assumed to be due to Darwin’s theory of evolution were perceived as a threat to faith in God is also clear when we look at developments after Darwin.32Far from being a danger to theism, Darwinism actually reinforced the belief that events in nature including animal suffering testify to divine design. Before, animal suffering had been justified as necessary for maintaining harmony in creation but when it could be seen as a way in which God had brought about higher life forms, the Creator works even more thoughtfully than previously believed. Through development into higher life forms with increasing mental capacities, animals acquire an increased ability to pursue pleasure and avoid pain and, in that sense, evolution is not accompanied by an increase in suffering but rather a decrease thereof. “The very phrase which we commonly use to sum up Darwin’s teaching, the survival of the fittest, implies a perpetual diminution of pain and increase of enjoyment for all creatures that can feel” said bishop Frederick Temple.33 Evolution as conceived by Darwin “leaves the argument for an intelligent Creator and Governor of the world stronger than it was before.”34

The fact that that the entire process of evolution had led to the creation of humanity was even more an argument for development guided by God’s hand. “Shall we call that evil which was the necessary condition of the progressive elevation which culminated so gloriously? Evil doubtless it seemed to the individual, struggling animal, but is this worthy to be weighed in comparison with the evolution of the whole organic kingdom until it culminated in man? Is it not rather a good in disguise?”35 Evidently, the belief in divine design was not shaken by Darwinism. Time and again it appears that the conviction that animal suffering serves a purpose intended by God was widespread in the time prior to Darwin and that did not change in the decades thereafter.

Just as it had previously been accepted that God uses animal suffering to prevent the extinction of animal species, it was now accepted that God can use animal suffering to create new animal species as has been amply documented.36 “Mr. Darwin’s theory need not then be atheistical, be it true or not; it may simply be suggesting a larger idea of Divine Prescience and Skill.”37 Darwin’s thoughts did not require one to abandon cherished beliefs. “The fact is that the doctrine of Evolution does not affect the substance of Paley’s argument at all. The marks of design which he has pointed out remain marks of design still even if we accept the doctrine of Evolution to the full.”38 Evolution, whether in a Darwinian sense or not, is certainly not the threat to belief in God as it is understood today, at least not in these first decades after Darwin came on the scene. As before, animal suffering could be combined with belief in God as Creator.

This is not to deny that among Darwin’s younger contemporaries no one had a problem with animal suffering, but if that was the case, it wasn’t because of his theory of evolution.39 The Church of England cleric John Richardson Illingworth admittedly stated that the “universality of pain throughout the range of the animal world, reaching back into the distant ages of geology . . . is without doubt among the most serious problems which the Theist has to face” but was also of the opinion that “No one animal suffers more because a million suffer likewise. And what we have to consider is the amount which an individual animal suffers.”40 From this perspective, animal suffering is always a problem, regardless of the time period in which it occurs and the number of animals involved which implies that no theory of evolution, neither from Darwin nor from any other, will increase or decrease the problem of animal suffering. Nor did evolution play a role for the Oxford scholar Clement Charles Julian Webb. He linked animal suffering— “the most difficult part of the problem of pain”—to “superhuman evil wills” that thwart God’s purposes for his creation.41

Nor do other authors—sometimes cited as evidence that Darwin’s contemporaries saw his theory as a threat to their view of God because of the animal suffering it entailed –provide compelling evidence that they actually thought so.42 Evolution might raise questions about God’s attributes but not because of the fact that animals suffer. After all, “[t]he extent and nature of animal pain are entirely unknown. A multitude of facts indicate that even the more highly organized animals are far less sensitive to pain than men are; while of the sensibility of the simple organic forms we have no knowledge whatever” so wrote the philosopher Borden Bowne.43

The same mollifying of animal suffering we find with Bowne’s contemporary Henry Beecher. “As a whole the lower animals suffer very little” and “it is very doubtful when you get to the lowest forms of life whether there is any sensibility at all.”44 Therefore “while finding no need of changing my idea of the Divine personality because of new light upon His mode of working, I have hailed the Evolutionary philosophy with joy.”45

That one should not simply connect concerns of Darwin’s contemporaries about animal suffering to his theory of evolution also becomes apparent when we look at John Fiske, another author mentioned to support the idea that Darwin’s contemporaries also viewed his theory as a threat to theism.46 He indeed wrote that the suffering of animals could raise questions about the attributes of the Creator but he did not relate this to Darwin’s evolution theory; there has always been a conflict between God’s goodness and the suffering of the animals. “By this two-­edged difficulty, Theology has ever been foiled.”47 Later in his life, Fiske returned to this topic in similar terms:

If the Creator of such a world is omnipotent he cannot be actuated solely by a desire for the welfare of his creatures, but must have other ends in view to which this is in some measure subordinated. Or if he is absolutely benevolent, then he cannot be omnipotent, but there is something in the nature of things which sets limits to his creative power. This dilemma is as old as human thinking, and it still remains a stumbling-­block in the way of any theory of the universe that can possibly be devised.48

It appears that if there were people who found it difficult to reconcile the suffering that befalls animals with an image of God as good and benevolent, it was not because of the theory of evolution but for other reasons. It is not that Darwin opened their eyes to what had hitherto remained out of sight.

Recent developments

Above I have shown that neither prior to Darwin’s publication of his theory of evolution nor in the decades thereafter was animal suffering a reason to doubt the existence of God. It was not until the 1920s that publications introduced Darwin’s theory as an argument for questioning theism, at the time however not written by theologians but by philosophers hostile to the Christian faith, for whom questioning God’s involvement in his creation was useful in their fight against theism in general and certainly no evidence of genuine concern for the image of God.49 They continued on the path already laid out by 18th and 19th century authors who had also written that animal suffering argues against the existence of God, demonstrating once again that animal suffering had been a reason to question divine benevolence already before Darwin raised this point.50

For the time being, theologians left these allegations unanswered; if attention was paid to animal suffering at the time, it was justified as necessary for progress toward higher life forms.51 Even into the 1960s and 1970s, animal pain was presented as a biological fact of life and nothing to worry about.52 “Pain . . . is neutral. This fact has consequences of startling importance. Nothing has brought so much confusion as the idea that pain, omnipresent, recurring and inextinguishable, is evil. For if this were truly so, there would be no answer to the question ‘how does God allow this in his creation?’” so wrote Arthur Elphinstone.53 Similar notes were written by John Hick: “The picture, then, of animal life as a dark ocean of agonizing fear and pain is quite gratuitous and arises from the mistake of projecting our distinctively human quality of experience into creatures of a much lower and simpler order.”54 None of these authors saw a tension between divine love and animal suffering given the titles of their books in which they focus on how to reconcile God’s love with a creation marred by evil: Farrer, Love Almighty and Ills Unlimited; Hick, Evil and the God of Love; Elphinstone, Freedom, Suffering & Love.55

It was not until the 1970s and 1980s that theologians began to pay attention to the idea that accepting evolution as God’s way of creating might threaten the traditional view of God as purely good and benevolent.56 The first signs of this development are found in A. R. Peacocke: “sciences . . . incline us to think superficially that we would have been able to order things better than, say, a creator God has managed” and it is doubtful whether animal suffering “can be justified in any way that satisfies our moral sense.”57 Similar troubles about God’s dealings with his creation plagued Richard Kropf. “An evolutionary view . . . complicates things, not only in our attempts to clarify what is evil . . . but also to comprehend the very nature of God.”58 The problem is that “innocent suffering . . . even of animals, seems to make little or no sense in the scheme of things attributed to a supposedly good God.”59 The restraint with which Peacocke and Kropf expressed their concerns is absent in Holmes Rolston III, the third author to address this issue: “But now, after Darwin, nature is more of a jungle than a paradise, and this forbids any theism at all . . . Darwin seems antitheological, not merely nontheological.”60 The idea that God could create through evolution was no longer as uncontroversial as it had been before but it remains irrefutable that this emergence of concerns about Darwinism as a challenge to theism only arose in the last decades of the twentieth century, more than a century after Darwin published his theory of evolution. Since then, the question of why God allows animal suffering—whether or not in the context of evolution—has remained a topic of debate, both among Christians as well as between Christians and atheists.61

Going back in time we see that until the end of the 19th century, animal suffering was seen as God’s way to maintain order in creation. No animal species should become extinct and therefore, predators were needed to keep the numbers of each animal species within limits. This argument collapsed when scientific discoveries showed that the current animal world had been preceded by earlier ones—indicating that animal species could indeed become extinct—but these findings were defused by stating that this made God even better able to demonstrate the greatness of his creative power, the Creator not being limited to the restrictions of only one animal world. In this way, the belief that animal suffering served a higher purpose—in this case God’s glory—could be adapted to the new scientific findings and the same was the case with Darwin’s theory of evolution. From then on, the suffering of the animals could be accepted as necessary for the origin of more advanced life forms, culminating in humans. That God had arranged his creation in such a way that animals had to suffer in order to serve a higher purpose was no matter of concern and the fact that scientific developments sometimes made it necessary to redefine the nature of that higher purpose did not shock this belief.

At the beginning of this article, I wrote that for many, the suffering of animals is a reason to deny the existence of God. Such a conclusion will go too far for Christians, but that does not alter the fact that many see a problem here. Current attempts by theologians to reduce the tension between animal suffering and belief in the goodness of God indicate that solutions such as those mentioned above where animal suffering is trivialized or seen as necessary for a higher purpose are no longer considered credible. However, this observation does not explain why arguments from the past are no longer accepted today. As I have shown, this cannot be due to Darwin given the time between the publication of his theory of evolution and the emergence of concerns about God’s dealings with the animals among theologians only more than a century later; hence one must look for other explanations for these changed views on the relationship between God and the animal world.

In approaching this problem, it is helpful to look at the considerations of the theologians who first began to question the way in which God had designed creation. When doing that, the first thing that stands out is a different interpretation of the concept of pain in animals. The authors in whom we see the first traces of concerns about animal suffering as difficult to reconcile with God’s goodness, assume that we are more aware than before that animals can experience pain. Peacocke hypothesizes that it might be a consequence of a reduced tolerance for pain in general caused by increased medical options for pain relief, Rolston attributes it to Darwin’s influence—“The Darwinian account of the life process has . . . increased our sensitivity to the struggles in nature”—and Southgate assumes that advances in science may have made us more aware of the fact that animals experience pain than we realized in the past.62

This is indeed a remarkable difference; we saw that pain in animals was not perceived as a problem until the 1960s and 1970s.63 If this changes in such a way that more weight is given to pain in animals, it will become more difficult to justify the pain of animals as necessary to achieve a higher goal. If the costs are higher, the balance between costs and benefits shifts to the detriment of the benefits and this could explain why nowadays, the view that death and violence in the animal kingdom are justified as means to a higher end is no longer supported. To answer the question of why pain in animals became more important in the 1970s, reference can be made to the fact that in the 1970s, society in general became more aware of the interests of animals. The work of the philosopher Peter Singer—published in this period—illustrates this change.64 More awareness of the interests of the animals in society in a broader sense finds its echo in the theological debate.

Another factor that becomes important around the 1960s might be doubt about the purpose for which animal suffering was necessary. The idea that nature reflects divine design is being contested; contemporary secular authors see nature as a spectacle without purpose—cruel and wasteful as becomes evident from the following, often quoted text:

What kind of God can one infer from the sort of phenomena epitomized by the species on Darwin’s Galapágos Islands? The evolutionary process is rife with happenstance, contingency, incredible waste, death, pain and horror. . . .  Whatever the God implied by evolutionary theory and the data of natural history may be like, He is not the Protestant God of waste not, want not. He is also not a loving God who cares about His productions. He is not even the awful God portrayed in the book of Job. The God of the Galapágos is careless, wasteful, indifferent, almost diabolical. He is certainly not the sort of God to whom anyone would be inclined to pray.65

It is telling that the theologians who are the first to problematize animal suffering all refer to secular authors which suggest that attacks on the concept of divine design from the authors they mention motivated them to formulate an appropriate response to attacks such as mentioned above.66 There had been challenges to theism before, but only now theologians took them serious and worth responding to. Just as with the changed appreciation of the status of the animals, the changed cultural climate will have played a role here; it is remarkable that the first concerns of theologians about animal suffering connected with evolution appeared in the 1970s, at the end of a decade in which Christianity’s influence on society and culture had almost completely disappeared.67 In the past, theologians had ignored these attacks; now they no longer avoided the discussion.

A third development that may have led to concerns about animal suffering among theists since then may be the emergence of a concept of God that emphasizes his acts of love rather than his static attributes.68 Clearly this causes problems; the suffering of animals is more difficult to reconcile with a God who reveals himself in love than with a God who created animals to demonstrate his power and majesty.69

The 1970s show a convergence of three developments: first, an increased awareness that animal suffering matters; second, a declining influence of Christian faith; and third, a changed view of the nature and attributes of God. This is, as shown above, also the time when theologians no longer ignored or dismissed the accusation—made in the 18th century by the French authors Jean Meslier and Baron d’Holbach and in the 19th by Charles Darwin—that it does not behoove a good God to let animals suffer. Apparently, the current theological debate how to reconcile animal suffering with a benevolent God can be traced back to developments in society and theology. Attributing this to Darwinism or any other theory of evolution does not do justice to history.

Epilogue

The fact that it was not Darwin who made animal suffering a theological problem does not mean that we can dismiss this as irrelevant. Regardless of the background and history, the question remains how a benevolent God could allow the evil of animal suffering and why we, unlike previous generations, make an issue of it and take it for granted that animal suffering is indeed an evil that God should avoid or prevent.

The increased awareness that animals have their own intrinsic value will undoubtedly have played a role, but more important to me seems the rise of the conviction that to be benevolent God must conform to our standards of right and wrong. Just as it is morally reprehensible for us to hurt animals, so too is it morally reprehensible for God. The question is whether this claim is correct; is God indeed subject to our moral standards? I have addressed this point elsewhere, examining what the Bible tells us about God’s dealings with animals, and my conclusion was that God’s care for animals does not preclude using them as instruments serving a purpose intended by him, and that this purpose does not always benefit them.70

So, the point is whether we should be guided in our thinking about what is and is not appropriate for God to do by what the Bible says about this or by the current conception of the humanized God for whom the same moral standards apply as for us. In the first case, we will accept animal suffering because it does not conflict with what the Bible teaches us about the purpose for which God created the animals: to demonstrate his power and majesty. If, on the other hand, we believe that God must conform to what we find good and evil, and thus imagine a God made “in our image, according to our likeness,” then “God is set up to flunk the atheist exam.”71 Our choice between these two options will determine how we deal with the contemporary challenge that animal suffering is incompatible with the existence of God, either looking for arguments to justify God’s dealings with the animals or accepting that he does not always comply with our demands. For the Scottish geologist Hugh Miller, who died three years before Darwin published his Origin of the Species, the choice wouldn’t have been difficult:

It has been weakly and impiously urged . . . that such an economy of warfare and suffering,—of warring and of being warred upon,—would be . . . unworthy of an all-­powerful and all-­benevolent Providence, and in effect a libel on his government and character. But that grave charge we leave the objectors to settle with the great Creator himself. . . . [L]et us assert, that in the Divine government the matter of fact always determines the question of right, and that whatever has been done by him who rendereth no account to man of his matters, he had in all ages, and in all places, an unchallengeable right to do.72

Cite this article
Piet Slootweg, “All Quiet with Darwin: Animal Suffering and Divine Benevolence in Historical Perspective”, Christian Scholar’s Review, 49:3 , 63-82

Footnotes

  1. For this article, I will use the following definitions: Christians are those who believe that there is someone who created the universe and has been maintaining it ever since; atheists are those who do not share this faith; and theologians are those who study what can be said about this Creator and Sustainer. See also James Turner, Without God, Without Creed: The Origins of Unbelief in America (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), xi-­xiv, 1–4.
  2. Richard Dawkins, River out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1995), 131–132.
  3. “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” James 1:17, (NRSV).
  4. Cornelius G. Hunter, Darwin’s God: Evolution and the Problem of Evil (Brazos Press, 2001), 10, 145–160.
  5. Christopher Southgate, The Groaning of Creation. God, Evolution, and the Problem of Evil (Westminster John Knox, 2008), 1–10; Bethany Sollereder, God, Evolution, and Animal Suffering (Routledge, 2019), 44–91; John R. Schneider, Animal Suffering and the Darwinian Problem of Evil (Cambridge University Press, 2020), 1–47; Christopher Southgate, Monotheism and the Suffering of Animals in Nature: Elements in Religion and Monotheism (Cambridge University Press, 2023), 21–22.
  6. See for example Luke 1:53–54. “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.” (NRSV) See also Rik Peels, “Does Evolution Conflict with God’s Character,” Modern Theology 34, no. 4 (2018), 544–564.
  7. Piet Slootweg, Teeth and Talons Whetted for Slaughter: Divine Attributes and Suffering Animals in Historical Perspective (Summum, 2022), 390–394. See also Derek Joseph Wiertel, “Classical Theism and the Problem of Animal Suffering,” Theological Studies 78, no. 3 (2017), 659–695.
  8. Southgate, Groaning of Creation, 5; quote from Southgate, Monotheism and the Suffering of Animals, 22.
  9. In this approach, I follow Schneider’s classification of the problems that Darwinism is supposed to pose for belief in a benevolent God; see Schneider, Animal Suffering and the Darwinian Problem of Evil, 2–4.
  10. Martin J. S. Rudwick, Bursting the Limits of Time: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Revolution (The University of Chicago Press, 2005).
  11. Paton J. Gloag, The Primeval World: a Treatise on the Relations of Geology to Theology (T&T Clark, 1859), 11.
  12. John M. Lynch, “‘Follies of the Present Day’: Scriptural Geology from 1817 to 1857,” Creationism and Scriptural Geology, ed. John M. Lynch, vol. 1 (Thoemess, 2002), ix-­xx.
  13. Slootweg, Teeth and Talons Whetted for Slaughter, 70–73, 136–140. See also Paul Ladouceur, “Evolution and Genesis 2–3: The Decline and Fall of Adam and Eve,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 57, no. 1 (2013), 135–176. “Paradise, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the existence of prior state of perfection, the Fall and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise . . . were not the subject of dogmatic pronouncements in ancient times” (172–173).
  14. William Buckland, An Inquiry whether the Sentence of Death Pronounced at the Fall of Man Included the Whole Animal Creation or Was Restricted to the Human Race. A Sermon Preached in the Cathedral of Christ-­Church before the University of Oxford. January 27, 1839 (John Murray, 1839), 12. A similar view was expressed as early as the 17th century, long before emerging science required a reconsideration of the connection between animal suffering and Adam’s sin. “That by the fall of man the whole world became infected with sinne, may not bee yielded; where is no act of reason nor free choyce of the will, there can be no actuall sinne, nor originall, but by propagation; so as unlesse wee shall say, that the dumbe Creatures are propagated from Adam, or have in themselves an exercise of reason and freedome of will, they can in no sort bee capable either of actuall or originall sinne, and consequently not infected with sinne at all”; cited from George Hakewill, An Apologie or Declaration of the Povver and Providence of God in the Government of the World . . . Divided into Six Bookes. 3rd rev. ed. (William Turner, 1635), V: 143. This quote shows that even in a time when a six-­day creation was not disputed, people did not believe that Adam in his fall had disrupted the entire creation.
  15. Gideon Mantell, The Wonders of Geology. Vol. II (Relfe and Fletcher, 1838), 447, italics original.
  16. Erasmus Darwin, Phytologia; or, the Philosophy of Agriculture and Gardening (J. Johnson, 1800), 560, capitals original.
  17. James Parkinson, Organic Remains of a Former World . . . In Three Volumes, vol. 1 (Sherwood, 1820), 457–458.
  18. Gloag, The Primeval World, 175.
  19. [William Whewell], Of the Plurality of Worlds: An Essay (John W. Parker and Son, 1853). The quote is taken from William Whewell, “Art. IV—Principles of Geology . . . By Charles Lyell . . . Vol. II. London. 1832,” The Quarterly Review 47 (1832), 103–132 (117).
  20. J. Jay Dana, “Article IV: On the Relations between Geology and Religion,” Biblical Repository and Classical Review, 3rd ed., ed. W. H. Bidwell (pub. by author, 1846), 297–320 (299).
  21. Dana, Article IV, 307. Another illustration of the view that plurality of worlds was not seen as a threat to the image of God as Creator can be found in Charles Bell, The Bridgewater Treatises . . . Treatise IV: The Hand, Its Mechanism and Vital Endowment as Evincing Design (Carey, 1836), 111–112. “When we acknowledge that animals have been created in succession and with an increasing complexity of parts, we are not to be understood as admitting that there is here proof of a growing maturity of power, or an increasing effort in the Creator; It is not . . . a greater power that we see in operation, but a power manifesting itself in the perfect and successive adaptation of one thing to another.”
  22. Schneider, Animal Suffering and the Darwinian Problem of Evil, 38.
  23. John Wesley, A Survey of the Wisdom of God in the Creation. Or, a Compendium of Natural Philosophy, 4th ed., 5 vols. (J. Paramore, 1784), IV: 129–130.
  24. Charles Darwin to Asa Gray, May 22, 1860, in Darwin Correspondence Project, letter no. 2814, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-­LETT-­2814.xml.
  25. Schneider, Animal Suffering and the Darwinian Problem of Evil, 42–43.
  26. William Kirby, The Bridgewater Treatises . . . Treatise VII. On the History Habits and Instincts of Animals, 2 vols. (William Pickering, 1835), 2: 526.
  27. See for example John A. Bruckner, A Philosophical Survey of the Animal Creation (J. Potts, 1770), 45–46. “See how some animals thirst after the blood of others, how nature has armed them with claws and teeth to put their bloody purpose in execution. . . . It is evident . . . that animals are in a state of perpetual war, and that it is the will of their Creator that one should live upon another. . . . And what is the consequence? That the works of the Omnipotent are defective, Or that the world, which was created perfect, has since fallen into general depravity? These by no means follow . . . the law which enjoins the destruction of one animal for the advantage of another, contributes to the increase and happiness of life.” For a catalogue of pre-­Darwinian 18th and 19th century authors who discuss animal suffering as a divine instrument for maintaining order in creation, see Slootweg, Teeth and Talons Whetted for Slaughter, 166–220, 246–289.
  28. Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, ed. William Bynum (John Murray, 1859; repr., Penguin Books, 2009).
  29. Turner, Without God, Without Creed, 142–143.
  30. Jonathan R. Topman, Reading the Book of Nature: How Eight Best Sellers Reconnected Christianity and the Sciences on the Eve of the Victorian Age (The University of Chicago Press, 2022), 1–18, 107–110.
  31. Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age (Harvard University Press, 1987), 125–166.
  32. This is not to say that Darwinism did not create problems at all for theologians, but these were on a different level, especially about Darwin’s view that the evolutionary process lacks purposefulness. See Alvar Ellegård, Darwin and the General Reader: The Reception of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution in the British Periodical Press, 1859–1872 (The University of Chicago Press, 1990); David N. Livingstone, Darwin’s Forgotten Defenders: The Encounter between Evangelical Theology and Evolutionary Thought (Regent College Publishing, 1984); and David N. Livingstone, Dealing with Darwin, Place, Politics, and Rhetoric in Religious Engagements with Evolution: The Gifford Lectures, 2014 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014).
  33. Frederick Temple, The Relations between Religion and Science: Eight Lectures Preached before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884. On the Foundation of the Late Rev. John Bampton, M.A. Canon of Salisbury (Macmillan, 1885), 117.
  34. Temple, The Relations between Religion and Science, 122.
  35. Joseph LeConte, Evolution and Its Relation to Religious Thought (D. Appleton, 1888), 329, italics original.
  36. See among others James R. Moore, The Post-­Darwinian Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America 1870–1900 (Cambridge University Press, 1979); David N. Livingstone, Dealing with Darwin; Gijsbert van den Brink and Harry Cook, “‘I Am Inclined to Look at Everything as Resulting from Designed Laws’: Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species as a Specimen of Natural Theology,” Christian Scholar’s Review 50, no. 1 (2020), 25–37.
  37. John H. Newman, “To J. Walker of Scarborough,” The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman. Volume XXIV: A Grammar of Assent (January 1868 to December 1869) eds. Charles S. Dessain and Thomas Gornall (Oxford University Press, 1973 [1868]), 78, italics original.
  38. Temple, The Relations between Religion and Science, 113–114. In the early 19th century, the Anglican clergyman William Paley wrote a book in which he emphasized how all of creation showed God’s power, wisdom, and goodness, even its seemingly less pleasant aspects. This work would have a long-­lasting influence. That it continued to be regarded as authoritative after Darwin is further evidence that Darwin’s theory of evolution did little to change the way his contemporaries interpreted God’s involvement in his creation. See William Paley, Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature (John Morgan, 1802).
  39. Some authors quote contemporaries of Darwin as evidence for the view that Darwin’s evolution theory was since the moment of its publication seen as a threat to belief in a benevolent God, see Southgate, The Groaning of Creation, 1, 10–12; Michael J. Murray, Nature Red in Tooth & Claw: Theism and the Problem of Animal Suffering (Oxford University Press, 2008), 3–4; and Schneider, Animal Suffering and the Darwinian Problem of Evil, 42–43. However, close reading of the authors to whom they refer reveals that their concerns are not because of evolution in general or of Darwinism in particular but for other reasons as will be shown in the main text. For more details about the authors who are said to see their view of God threatened by Darwinism, see Jon H. Roberts, Darwinism and the Divine in America: Protestant Intellectuals and Organic Evolution, 1859–1900 (The University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), 134–136.
  40. John Richardson Illingworth, “The Problem of Pain: Its Bearing on Faith in God,” Lux Mundi. A Series of Studies in the Religion of the Incarnation, 10th ed., ed. Charles Gore (John Murray, 1890), 111–126 (113–114).
  41. Clement Charles Julian Webb, Problems in the Relations of God and Man (James Nisbet, 1911), 268–272 (270). The author does not elaborate further on the nature of this force opposing God.
  42. Again, see Southgate, The Groaning of Creation; Michael J. Murray, Nature Red in Tooth & Claw; and Schneider, Animal Suffering and the Darwinian Problem of Evil.
  43. Borden P. Bowne, Philosophy of Theism (Harper & Brothers, 1887), 211–240 (232).
  44. Henry W. Beecher, Evolution and Religion (Fords, Howard, & Hulbert, 1886), 233. For documentation of Beecher as a staunch supporter of Darwin, see Benjamin T. Lynerd, “The Purpose-­Driven Darwinist: Henry Ward Beecher and the Theology of Progress,” Political Theology 17, no. 1 (2016), 47–72.
  45. Beecher, Evolution and Religion, 3. The quote in Murray, Nature Red in Tooth & Claw, 4, cited to attribute to Beecher a less positive attitude towards evolution—“neither in Nature nor in Providence are His ways like our ways”—fails as evidence for this assumption because the quote is not from Beecher, but from Joseph LeConte, “Evolution in Relation to Materialism,” The Princeton Review 57 (1881), 149–174 (164–165). Murray’s interpretation of this quote also misses the point. The context shows that it is not an expression of concern but rather an expression of awe and admiration: “there should be no longer any doubt that the truth or error, the acceptance or rejection, of evolution cannot affect any fundamental question of religious belief” (LeConte, Evolution in Relation to Materialism, 174).
  46. Again, see Southgate, The Groaning of Creation; Michael J. Murray, Nature Red in Tooth & Claw; and Schneider, Animal Suffering and the Darwinian Problem of Evil.
  47. John Fiske, Outline of Cosmic Philosophy, Based on the Doctrine of Evolution, With Criticisms on the Positive Philosophy, 2 vols. (MacMillan, 1874), 2: 405.
  48. John Fiske, The Idea of God as Affected by Modern Knowledge (Houghton Mifflin, 1899 [1885]), 123, italics mine. We also find it expressed nowadays that it does not matter morally whether God created the world through evolution or otherwise. See Rope Kojonen, “Why Evolution Does Not Make the Problem of Evil Worse,” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 39, no. 3 (2022), 388–406.
  49. Chapman Cohen, God and Evolution (The Pioneer Press, [1925]); Bertrand Russell, Religion and Science, The Home University Library of Modern Knowledge (Thornton Butterworth, 1935).
  50. “Sous la conduit et direction d’un Dieu tout puissant qui seroit infiniment bon et infiniment sage, nulle creature ne seroit defectueuse, ni vicieuse, ni malheureuse.”Quoted from Jean Meslier, Oeuvres Complètes. Tome II (Éditions Anthropos, 1971 [c. 1729]), 274. See also Paul Henri Thiry d’Holbach, Common Sense: or, Natural Ideas Opposed to Supernatural. Translated from the French (unknown publisher, 1795), 47. “One animal, or mite, that suffers, furnishes invincible arguments against divine providence and its infinite goodness.” That it was not only after Darwin that the suffering of animals called into question the existence and attributes of God is also evident from the articles published in the 1840s in The Oracle of Reason, a journal by the publisher characterized as “the only exclusively ATHEISTICAL print that has appeared in any age or country.” See “Preface,” The Oracle of Reason, or, Philosophy Vindicated 1 (1842), ii. “To the Atheist, a moth in the candle’s flame, or a poor fly in the fangs of a spider, is a proof that the world could not have been designed by one being, infinitely wise, infinitely good, and infinitely powerful. Infinite goodness would not desire evil, infinite power would not have created it, nor could an artist infinitely wise fashion an imperfect universe,” quoted from Charles Southwell, “Is There a God? VIII,” The Oracle of Reason, or, Philosophy Vindicated 1 (1842), 109–111, (111), italics in original. For more details on the pre-­ and post-­Darwinian philosophers hostile to the Christian faith who exploited animal suffering to strengthen their arguments see Turner, Without God, Without Creed, 204–207; Topham, Reading the Book of Nature, 354–373; and Slootweg, Teeth and Talons Whetted for Slaughter, 289–293, 343–347.
  51. Peter J. Bowler, Reconciling Science and Religion, The Debate in Early-­Twentieth-­Century Britain (The University of Chicago Press, 2001), 122–159, 407–420. That animal suffering played no role in the debate over the acceptability of Darwin’s theory of evolution in the first decades of the 20th century is also illustrated by the Scopes Trial (1925), which was initiated in response to the state of Tennessee’s ban on teaching anything that undercut the biblical Genesis account for the origin of humans. Neither those who embraced the law as a protection against blasphemous propaganda, nor those who saw it as a threat to freedom of education incorporated the issue of animal suffering into their arguments, something they certainly would not have failed to do if they had considered it relevant to the subject. For more information about this famous (or notorious) event, see Edward J. Larson, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion (Harvard University Press, 1997); or more recently Brenda Wineapple, Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation (Random House, 2024).
  52. Austin Farrer, Love Almighty and Ills Unlimited (William Collins Sons, 1962), 77–105. That pain is important as a protective mechanism without which life would quickly perish is also emphasized in contemporary literature, see Sasa Horvat, “Pain, Life, and God: Theodicy Informed by Biology and Evolutionary Medicine,” Religions 14 (2023), 319.
  53. Andrew Elphinstone, Freedom, Suffering & Love (SCM Press, 1976), 107.
  54. John Hick, Evil and the God of Love (Collins, 1974 [1966]), 350.
  55. See footnotes 52–54.
  56. See Southgate, The Groaning of Creation, 10–12.
  57. A. R. Peacocke, Creation and the World of Science: The Bampton Lectures 1978 (Clarendon, 1979), 182.
  58. Richard W. Kropf, Evil and Evolution. A Theodicy (Associated University Press, 1984), 27–28.
  59. Kropf, Evil and Evolution, 119.
  60. Holmes Rolston III, Science and Religion: A Critical Survey (Temple University Press, 1987), 91.
  61. See Murray, Nature Red in Tooth & Claw; Nicola Hoggard Creegan, Animal Suffering & the Problem of Evil (Oxford University Press, 2013); Sollereder, God, Evolution, and Animal Suffering; Southgate, Monotheism and the Suffering of Animals in Nature. The contemporary literature about the tension between God’s goodness on the one hand and animal suffering on the other is voluminous. I consider the authors mentioned here to be representative of the way this issue is being discussed. For my definition of Christians and atheists, see footnote 1.
  62. Peacocke, Creation and the World of Science, 182; Rolston III, Science and Religion, 137; Southgate, The Groaning of Creation, 12.
  63. Again, see footnotes 52–54.
  64. Peter Singer, Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals (Jonathan Cape, 1976). Another sign of the animals’ increasing status in these decades is the value assigned to the scientific study of their behavior; the awarding of the Nobel Prize to the founders of this branch of science in 1973 bears witness to this. See Enrique Font, “50 Years of the Nobel Prize to Lorenz, Tinbergen, and von Frisch: Integrating Behavioral Function into an Ethology for the 21st Century,” Frontiers in Ethology 2 (2023), 1270913. For a personal testimony of one of the pioneers in this field, see Konrad Z. Lorenz, The Foundations of Ethology, trans. Konrad Z. Lorenz and Robert Warren Kickert (Springer, 1981).
  65. David L. Hull, “The God of the Galápagos: Review of Darwin on Trial by Philip E. Johnson,” Nature 352 (1991), 485–486. That the allegedly cruel process of evolution is incompatible with the existence of God is also the conviction of young-­earth creationism but its adherents draw an opposite conclusion; because the existence of God is irrefutable, evolution cannot be true. It is noteworthy that this input of young-­earth creationism also started in the 1960s. See John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and Its Scientific Implications (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1961). For the history of creationism and its various offshoots, see Ronald L. Numbers, The Creationists. From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design, expanded ed. (Harvard University Press, 2006). The arguments of the young-­earth creationists are the same as the objections raised in the early 19th century by those who wanted to hold on to the biblical chronology of creation and just as then, the majority regard these views as unscientific and hence irrelevant to the debate over how to reconcile animal suffering with God’s benevolence. See Lynch, Creationism and Scriptural Geology, xix-­xx.
  66. Peacocke, Creation and the World of Science, viiiff, 162ff; Kropf, Evil and Evolution, 103ff; Rolston III, Science and Religion. A Critical Survey, 105. Authors to which they refer are Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford University Press, 1976); and Jacques Monod, “The Secret of Life,” 1976, https://creation.com/jacques-­monod-­and-­theistic-­evolution.
  67. Callum G. Brown, The Death of Christian Britain (Routledge, 2001), 170–198; Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Harvard University Press, 2018 [2007]), 471–504.
  68. Colin E. Gunton, Act and Being (SCM Press, 2002), 97–104, 116–123; Cornelis van der Kooi, As in a Mirror: John Calvin and Karl Barth on Knowing God: a Diptych (Brill, 2005), 322–362.
  69. It is remarkable that theologians, when talking about God’s revelation in nature, focus primarily on his love, while the theologian responsible for believing that God reveals himself first and foremost in his love—Karl Barth—emphasizes that we should not look in nature for that revelation, see van der Kooi, As in a Mirror, 311–315. For more information on how Karl Barth rejected nature as a source of information about God and the response of other theologians to this view, see Rodney D. Holder, “Natural Theology in the Twentieth Century,” The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology, ed. Russell R. Manning (Oxford University Press, 2013), 118–134.
  70. Piet Slootweg, “An Inconvenient Truth: What the Bible Says about God’s Way with the Animals,” Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 59, no. 1 (2024), 25–36. In the contemporary debate about the morality of God’s dealings with animals, some authors seek a solution in the assumption that animals lack the mental capacities required to suffer. See Michael J. Murray and Glenn Ross, “Neo-­Cartesianism and the Problem of Animal Suffering,” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 23,no. 2 (2006), 169–190; Andrea Aguti, “Animal Suffering as a Challenge to Theistic Theodicy,” International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 78, no. 4–5 (2017), 498–510; Calum Miller, “Do Animals Feel Pain in a Morally Relevant Sense,” Philosophia 49 (2021), 373–392. Others believe that God is not subject to our moral standards; see Georg Gasser, “Animal Suffering, God, and Lessons from the Book of Job,” Religions 12, no. 12 (2021), 1047; and Georg Gasser, “Reply to Cordeiro-­Rodrigues, “Tutuism and the Moral Universe. Comment on “Gasser (2021). Animal Suffering, God and Lessons from the Book of Job. Religions 12 (2022): 1047,” Religions 13, no. 3 (2022), 264. The latter paper is in reply to the criticism expressed in Luis Cordeiro-­Rodrigues, “Tutuism and the Moral Universe. Comment on Gasser (2021). Animal Suffering, God, and Lessons from the Book of Job,” Religions 13, no. (2022), 251.
  71. Taylor, A Secular Age, 389.
  72. Hugh Miller, The Testimony of the Rocks; or, Geology in Its Bearings on the TwoTheologies, Natural and Revealed . . . With Memorials of the Death and Character of the Author (Gould and Lincoln, 1867 [1856]), 103–104.

Piet Slootweg

Piet Slootweg is a retired professor of pathology at Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, The Netherlands

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