156 ARGUMENTS: MONOTHEISTIC CONCEPTIONSIt is not clear that E4 is true. Nor is it clear that E5 is true. Suppose, simply
for the sake of the argument, that E4 is true, and focus on E5. If God were
to have the sort of reason E5 says God could not have, what might it be?
Dinosaurs were living and conscious. There now aren’t any. Assume that
their presence was a natural good. Is their absence an evil which God could
have no good reason for allowing? Presumably the following is true:
(GN) For any number N of types of living and conscious things a world W
contained, there is a possible world W such that W contains N + 1
types of living and conscious things.
Ecological or systemic considerations might make sheer addition
impossible in certain worlds at certain points, but there is nothing in (GN)
that requires that W* be produced, so to say, from W by adding some new
species. If (GN) is true, then for any number of non-extinct species
containing living, or living-and-conscious, beings, there could be yet
another. Hence whatever world God creates, God is “guilty” of not having
produced as much natural value as there might be, and such “guilt” is
vacuous.^48
One might claim that while it is true that God could also have created
living-and-conscious things that God did not in fact create, still it is wrong
that God in fact did create living-and-conscious things and then let them
cease to exist. This claim has two versions, one concerning individuals and
one concerning species, as follows:
(P) For any item X, if X is a particular, actual living-and-conscious thing
then it is wrong of God to allow X to cease to exist.
(S) For any species X, if X is a species whose particular, actual members
are living-and-conscious things, and there are particular members of
X, then it is wrong of God to allow there to cease to be members of X.
The idea that individual members of animal species have intrinsic worth
seems to enjoy little popularity among ecologists, whereas the idea that
species have such worth enjoys high ratings. If there is any plausible
reason, as opposed to sheer fashion and taste, behind preferring (S) to
(P), presumably it is (or is closely related to) this: where X ranges over
natural kinds of living-and-conscious things, that there being Xs is a
good thing but it does not matter which Xs there are. The worth of a
duck lies not in being the duck it is but in its being some duck or other.
For any biological species Q, if there are no things that belong to Q,
then there is no Q; those who talk about species having vanished take
exactly this view though they also talk about the value of the species,
not the value of its members. They agree that when there are no more