ARGUMENTS AGAINST MONOTHEISM 155sufficient reason for doing so, what follows is that doing so is something one
should have a sufficient reason for doing. It may be that simply by virtue of
having created a grain of sand or a mountain “from nothing” – that is, not out
of pre-existing material – God has the right to do as God likes with the grain or
the mountain.
In any case, it is living, or living-and-conscious, species that typically are
the cause for greatest concern among those troubled by the disappearance of
natural kinds; not, say, electrons but species of living things. Regarding living
things that are not persons – plants and animals – there are again the two
alternatives: that even plant and animal life has only pure extrinsic value or
that it has intrinsic value of some sort K*. The argument that we should not so
act as to cause species to go out of existence because we may discover that
some feature of some plant, insect, or animal may provide the cure for some
dread disease, insofar as that is the whole argument, is based on a pure
extrinsic value view of the plants, insects, and animals concerned. Those who
claim it is an evil that plant and animal species are allowed to become extinct
typically take this to be so because they take plants and animals to have pure
intrinsic worth. Otherwise, as above, their ceasing to exist is not an evil unless
persons who have pure intrinsic value also exist or cessation of plants and
animals will prevent the existence of persons. Suppose, then, that plants and
animals are held to have pure intrinsic worth.
That something has intrinsic natural worth does not by itself entail that it
would be wrong to cause or allow it to cease to exist. Even if it would be wrong
to allow it to cease to exist without sufficient reason for doing so, what follows
is that in order to do so blamelessly one must have such a reason. The sheer
fact of species disappearance – and of course an enormous number of species
have gone extinct – seems by itself no evidence of anything gone morally
awry.^45
It is clear that various species of living and of living-and-conscious,
beings have become extinct. The ecological argument from evil goes:
E1 There being non-extinct species of living, and/or living-and-
conscious, beings has natural worth.
E2 Species of such beings that were once not extinct now are extinct.
E3 It is wrong to permit species of beings that have natural worth to
become extinct unless one has sufficient moral justification for doing
so.
E4 If God exists then God has permitted species of beings that have
natural worth to become extinct, and this was wrong unless God has
sufficient moral justification for doing so^46 (from E1–E3).
E5 There is no moral justification that God could have for permitting
species that have natural worth to become extinct.^47
E6 God does not exist (from E4, E5).