One
argument which one hears from time to time against
evolution is that it is immorally
painful, as theories go. Specifically, this is used in small measure against purely scientific evolutionists to bemoan their assertedly cruel vision of our
Universe, but in large measure against theistic evolutionists -- those who claim that evolution was a
God-initiated process. This notion of evolution as an intentionally established process is generally shared by
Deists and
Pandeists, but is found even amongst scientifically-minded
Christians and
Jews and
Muslims.
Evolution by natural selection is a process which, indeed, requires that such "selection" be made -- and the process by which
Nature makes it is hardly often pleasant.
Animals (and
plants in their way) are born; some die
in utero or in
infancy, others at any other stage along their existence all the way up to being ancient for their kind. They face the ravages of
weather and
fire and
flood and
natural disaster. Those amongst the
prey animals face the constant threat of
tooth and
claw of the
predator (and indeed, some predators are prey to others); and because of these
threats, these
dangers, these
variables, those animals survive to reproduce which are best adapted to the set of threats they find surrounding them from the moment of their birth. And yes, there is much
pain and much
suffering, including the most horrific events of large prey animals being brought down and essentially eaten alive even as they struggle for their lives against their predators. And for the evolutionist, this suffering necessarily occurs billions of billions of times over billions of years, a necessary consequence of the time needed for life to come to immense variety, originating from but the simplest single-celled
universal common ancestor.
And so, the specific
lament of the theist is that no good and compassionate and reasonable God could set forth a system requiring
so much suffering -- repeatedly over a course of those billions of years -- in order to operate. To a degree, this argument necessarily holds that suffering over thousands of years in biological
stasis is preferable to suffering over a vastly longer term which yields biological
progress. After all, suffering is an observed facet of life in the
animal kingdom, whether evolution exists or not. For as long as humankind has existed, we have noted the cycle of
birth and often painful
death which punctuates and defines the lives of our animal brethren (indeed, we've ourselves made a business of contributing to their suffering and demise, often for food or for their skins, sometimes simply for
pleasure). Even in a creationist universe, nothing actually abates this suffering -- though in the biblical account at least, it is claimed that
all life was initially herbivorous, and so at least death by predation did not exist. Biblically, the introduction of such suffering is accredited to "sin" in some way, although the
mechanism for such a transformation is never made clear, and the liability of the creator of a system in which such an event inevitably arises is hardly absolvatory to their author.
It is not without merit to question the
morality of a design which depends on an immeasurable volume of death and dying, predation and deprivation, to achieve its ends. But then, it is equally meritorious to question a design which,
without obtaining any evolutionary advantage from these injurious conditions, bothers to exhibit them anyway. In delving into the moral question of a created evolutionary Universe, it is necessary as a corollary to assess the qualities of its Creator. If it is presumed that this Creator is an absolutely
omnipotent being, then it seems that it ought to be able to bring about all its goals relating to humans (or other intelligent life) without causing any suffering at all to anything non-human (and indeed it may be argued that
all other-suffering is simply an illusion). But if this Creator is limited in the means available to it, then it may simply be that an evolutionary Universe, pain-filled as its processes may be, may be the most efficient program available to it for bringing about results like the world we now inhabit. In pandeistic/panendeistic models especially, the Creator having becomes the Creation (in whole, or in part) bears all of the suffering of the world within itself; a bearing which one would hope would be offset, even drowned out, by the multitudinous pleasurable experiences which define most of those days in the life of an animal on which it
doesn't die.
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For THE IRON NODER CHALLENGE: 9 FAST 9 FERROUS