implausible to modern, scientifically literate people. They must deny that the
present laws of nature are the key to understanding the past without which
paleontology and geology would be rendered null and void. And their answer
still doesn't help us understand exactly why animals should suffer simply
because Adam and Eve sinned. What did animals do wrong to deserve this
punishment?
J. W. Rogerson, emeritus canon of Sheffield Cathedral who was head of the
department of Biblical Studies at Sheffield University in England before retiring,
offers a similar defense of traditional view. He claims there is a contrast between
the creation that existed before the Flood and that which existed after it. Before
the Flood all creatures were vegetarians, but after it the dominion mandate
spoken of in Genesis 9:1-4 "introduces an element of hostility" among us,
especially between animal life and human beings. Paradise is lost. Animals now
fear and dread us because into our hands they have been delivered. After the
Flood "the human race is given authority to eat meat, provided that the blood is
drained from it."ls
Rogerson understands frill well that his understanding goes against the views
of modern readers-post-Darwinian readers-that there never was a "violence-free"
period of time in the evolutionary scheme of things before the supposed Flood.
He candidly admits the reason for holding his particular view is because he
cannot explain or justify the existence of natural evil and the sufferings of
animals otherwise. By his lights it "is preferable to say that natural evil is not the
will of God ... than to try to justify natural evil or to explain it away"19 Just look
at this Biblical scholar squirm, retreat, and take an indefensible position because
of the serious nature of the problem natural evil presents to his faith. It causes
Rogerson to deny the geological and biological evidence for the age of the
universe in order to maintain it. It requires him to either adopt a young six-
thousand-year-old creation, or more than likely, the idea that there were three
billion years before the arrival of human beings on earth in which all animals
were vegetarians. And he adopts this view based upon a historically conditioned
interpretation of an ancient, superstitious, mythological biblical text. His
viewpoint seems ludicrous to modern scientifically literate readers. This is a high
price to pay in order to hang on to his faith in the face of the Darwinian Problem
of Evil. In my opinion, such a faith isn't worth hanging on to.
Apparently Rogerson has never read where Augustine cautioned fellow
Christians against being ignorant of the sciences in front of nonbelievers who
know better. Augustine wrote:
It is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian,
presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on
these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing
situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh
it to scorn.... If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they
themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about
our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning
the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of
heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which
they themselves have learnt from the experience and the light of reason?20
But it's even worse than what Rogerson shows awareness of, for while he
rejects science in order to support his Biblical interpretation of the world despite
the overwhelming scientific evidence, not even the Bible supports his claims. It
is not the case that the God of the Bible created us all as vegetarians, and so it is
not the case that by returning to the vision of paradise represented in Isaiah that
we will return the supposed Garden of Eden's paradise.21
At least Paul Copan, the president of the Evangelical Philosophical Society, is
trying to harmonize what these specific Biblical texts lead us to accept. At least
he's trying to avoid Augustine's caution about scientific ignorance. Copan is not
completely consistent, for while he admits that "animal death occurred before
human beings existed," he also says that not until the fall of Adam and Eve did
human death enter the world. The reason why he accepts the results of
evolutionary biology for animals but not for humans is inconsistent with the
facts and shows deference for believing in an ancient socalled inspired text over
the results of modern science. Still, based on the Biblical texts, Copan argues,
"human beings and various animals were meat eaters before the Flood of
Noah."22
There is a good amount of biblical evidence for Copan's claim. After God
pronounced his sentence on Adam and Eve for their sin and as he was banishing
them from the Garden he made for them "garments of skins, and clothed them"
(Genesis 3:21). Where would these skins come from? What was done with the
meat of the animal killed? Or did God just kill an animal for its skin, like the
elephant poachers of today's African jungle do for ivory tusks? If the animal was
a burnt sacrifice to God on behalf of their sin, surely Adam and Eve ate some of
the meat too.
There is much more to consider. In Copan's words: "God tells human beings
to `rule over the fish of the sea' (Gen.1:28). What could this mean apart from
permission to eat them? Abel kept sheep, presumably to eat (4:2-4). Noah
himself distinguished between clean and unclean animals (7:2), which clearly
assumes the edibility of meat prior to the Flood." Copan is surely right about
this. We also read where Jabal, who existed before the Flood as a descendant of
Cain, "was the father of those who dwell in tents and have cattle" (Genesis 4:20).
The same problems arise. Why did Jabal raise cattle if he was a vegetarian? We
see this same carnivorous view reinforced when it comes to Psalm 104:20-22,
which speaks of the time when God created the world. Copan argues of this
Psalm: "There is no clear biblical indication that carnivorous activity is the result
of sin and could not have existed before the Fall; rather as Psalm 104 suggests,
all organisms have their rightful place in the food chain."23
In the poetical book of job we see God's discourse about the glory of his
original creation where there is carnivorous activity (Job 38:38-41, 39:26-30).
After mentioning these texts Copan exclaims, "No herbivore here!" and
concludes, "Animal death and the food chain are presupposed as part of God's
creation-without apology or qualification." He admits, "the
paleographic/geological evidence bears out that carnivorous animals-not to
mention thorns and thistles or earthquakes and hurricanes-existed before the
Fall, it was only after the Fall that human beings became vulnerable to and
endangered by them."24
This last comment by Copan needs to be examined more closely before we
move on. Again, he said, "it was only after the Fall that human beings became
vulnerable to and endangered by
them." Christian thinkers who believe all
suffering occurs after a human moral failure must deny that there was pain and
suffering before such a fall. Peter van Inwagen suggests one partial defense of
this traditional answer as it relates to human animals like us. As an inventor of
stories, Van Inwagen tells us one he thinks justifies the literal Genesis account of
the fall of Adam and Eve as the cause of all suffering in the world. He imagines
a world created and guided by God over the evolutionary span of time that first
produced clever primates and then Homo sapiens. God raised these primates to
rationality and made them into human beings who were given "preternatural" or
"paranormal powers." Van Inwagen writes:
Because they lived in the harmony of perfect love, none of them did any
harm to the others. Because of the preternatural powers, they were able
somehow to protect themselves from wild beasts (which they were able to
tame with a look), from disease (which they were able to cure with a touch)
and from random, destructive natural events (like earthquakes), which they
knew about in advance and were able to escape. There was thus no evil in
the world. And it was God's intention that they should never become
decrepit with age or die, as their primate forbearers had. But, somehow, in
some way that must be mysterious to us, they were not content with this
paradisiacal state. They abused the gift of free will and separated
themselves from their union with God. The result was horrific ... they now
faced destruction by the random forces of nature, and were subject to old
age and natural death.... and became playthings of chance.25
Van Inwagen's story is supposed to offer a conception, albeit bizarre, that after
Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden their "preternatural powers" were
stripped from them, and they consequently began to suffer at the hands of
predatory animals. Presumably animals themselves subsequently became
"playthings of chance," so they began to be subject to the power of evil and
fallen human beings at that point. Van Inwagen contends that given the existence
of God, "the story is true for all anyone knows." He "doesn't see any reason to
reject any of it," even if he admits he's not at all sure about "preternatural
powers."26
What are we to make of such a story? Does it sound reasonable to a "neutral
agnostic," as he thinks it should be? No, not at all. This is a bizarre story, an ad
hoc one, that although possible, for all we know is extremely improbable and not
supported by any evidence at all. If all we need are possibilities unrelated to the
actual evidence to help solve the problem of suf fering and sin, then any possible
story will do. Why doesn't he just tell the literal creationist story where God
instantaneously created the whole universe in six literal twenty-four-hour days?
Why not tell a story where human beings could make themselves invisible when
threatened by the environment so they couldn't experience any suffering before
the Fall into sin? Why not tell a story where snakes, scorpions, spiders, and
bullet ants had venom but that the venom was miraculously neutralized? The
whole reason van Inwagen doesn't tell such stories is that he knows the evidence
is against them. He knows such stories would be ad hoc, created out of the blue
to defend a position he cannot defend any other way. So the question Van
Inwagen fails to answer is why his particular story has any more going for it than
any of these other stories he could have told. The question for him is why the
evidence against these other stories doesn't count against his own particular
story. My claim is that he cannot answer this question. The only reason he even
entertains it is because he somehow thinks the Genesis story depicts a Fall,
something that biblical scholars themselves dispute.
What, then, can we make of the differences between the Genesis 1:26-28 pre-
Fall dominion mandate and the Genesis 9 post-Flood mandate? Given this other
biblical evidence on behalf of carnivorous behavior found in the Bible itself,
biblical scholars like Gordon Wenham argue that the post-Flood mandate is
merely "ratifying the post-Fall practice of meat-eating rather than inaugurating
it."27 And so the fear and dread of the animal kingdom toward human beings
mentioned in the post-Flood mandate "seems more likely to reflect the animosity
between man and the animal world that followed the Fall (Genesis 3:15)."28
Michael J. Murray seems to agree that if moral wrongdoing in the form of
Adam and Eve can leave "such catastrophic consequence in its wake, it must be
the case that God created things so that the integrity of the natural order was, in
some important sense, initially dependent upon the integrity of the moral order."
But if this is the case, then God would know that the created order was "fragile,"
he argues. So unless "there is some reason why the fragility of nature is
necessary, or why making it fragile in this way makes possible certain
outweighing goods, the fragility of nature itself seems to be a puzzling defect in
creation." He rhetorically asks, "What possible good reason could there be for
creating the universe in such a way that the Fall of the first human pair could
bring about a rewiring of brute nervous systems, thereby allowing for the
possibility of pain and suffering?"29 I know of none.
A second traditional Christian way to understand how the Fall caused animal
suffering is to say it did so antecedently. Michael Murray sums this view up with
these words: "God in his foreknowledge chose to prepare in advance a world
with genuine evil and suffering in anticipation of the fact that it would be the
dwelling of fallen humanity"30 This is what Emil Brunner argued for along with
Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, as well as Baptist theologian A. H. Strong, and most
recently with modifications by William Dembski. Strong argued for what he
called "anticipatory consequences," in that the world was not created perfect,
anticipating the time when Adam would sin. When Adam sinned, God's
protective hand was removed from humanity and they found themselves in the
real world with natural disasters, pain, and death.31 Accordingly, this solution
attempts to explain the reality of evil "not as a consequence of moral evil but
rather as among the necessary antecedent conditions for a universe which
provides morally appropriate conditions for postlapsarian free creatures" (i.e.,
after the Fall). Dembski argues that just as God can answer prayers retroactively
and just as the death of Jesus can forgive sins retroactively for Old Testament
people, so also the Fall of humanity caused natural evils retroactively. Left
unresolved is whether or not this is the case.32 Since Genesis chapter 1 describes
God's creative handiwork as "good," Dembski proposes a second creation prior
to the Fall that is described in Genesis chapter 2.33
Murray rejects such an explanation as "implausible," as I do, because:
[It] offers us no satisfying answer to the following questions: Why must the
world have a natural history that precedes the existen
ce of Adam at all?
Wouldn't God secure all the relevant goods and avoid a massive array of
evil simply by creating the universe in much the same way the
younguniverse creationist believes it was created? If God were to so create
it, none of the goods supposed to arise from animal pain and suffering
would be lost, and a great deal of natural evil would have been
eliminated.34
Christian philosopher Robert N. Wennberg concurs by arguing that it "still
remains unclear how animals, who do not sin and do not incur guilt, can
legitimately bear the penalty for human sin."35 Philosopher C. E. M. Joad
concludes as I do: "The hypothesis that the animals were corrupted [i.e., made
into predators] by man does not account for animal pain during the hundreds of
millions of years when the earth contained living creatures, but did not contain
man."36
OPTION Two
C. S. Lewis speculated on a different sort of answer to the problem of animal
pain based on a "Satanic corruption of the beasts" prior to the existence of
human beings. Having rejected the traditional answer, Lewis speculates "that
some mighty created power had already been at work for ill on the material
universe, or the solar system, or, at least, the planet Earth, before ever man came
on the scene ... If there is such a power, as I myself believe, it may well have
corrupted the animal creation before man appeared ... The Satanic corruption of
the beasts would therefore be analogous, in one respect, to the Satanic corruption
of man." According to Lewis, "living creatures were corrupted by an evil angelic
being."37 By "corrupted" Lewis means that the beasts were made to prey upon
one another. Richard Swinburne, a philosopher and prolific apologist for
Christianity, has likewise commented that human free will seems, "unable to
account for the animal pain [that] existed before there were men," so supposing
the existence of "fallen angels" who have brought on these other evils, "may
indeed be indispensable if the theist is to reconcile with the existence of God the
existence of... animal pain."38
Gregory A. Boyd, professor of theology at Bethel College, St. Paul,
Minnesota, argues in some scholarly detail that C.S. Lewis was essentially
correct to suggest such a thing, as does Michael Lloyd, who is supposed to
publish a three-volume work on the problem of evil.39 Boyd's theodicy comes
from his warfare worldview, which is defended in his book, Satan and the
Problem of Evil. Boyd believes we are part of a cosmic war, a war between God
and the good angels against Satan and his evil cohorts. This world is a war zone.
There is a cosmic rebellion taking place against God that was started even before
God created the world. In fact, Boyd argues, God had to fight back the forces of
evil just to create the world in the first place. When God's creatures did turn up
on earth we were all caught up in this cosmic war whether or not we like it.
There are casualties of war that take place because the battle is raging
everywhere around us, called "collateral damage." That's just what happens in
times of war. Innocents do in fact get hurt. Animals have gotten hurt ever since
creation because the evil forces corrupted them into beings that preyed upon
each other in defiance of God's intentions. Human beings have also sinned and
stepped over into rebellion against God, according to Boyd. As such we have
become failed ecological stewards and we do harm to animals and to each other
too. This is because "in this war zone, there are few guarantees.... [T]here is no
guaranteed security in this world."40 In Boyd's eyes, God is "a sovereign chess
master" who cannot predict with certainty what truly free-willed creatures will
do. While God cannot predict certainties, he can predict possibilities when it
Why Faith Fails The Christian Delusion Page 32