138 ARGUMENTS: MONOTHEISTIC CONCEPTIONSconsequences for the sufferer, at least on traditional notions concerning
the nature and status of such beings, do not arise. They do not arise even
if the idea that the suffering of animals serves some human good is not
itself morally problematic.
Strictly speaking, it seems false that animal suffering is an evil for we
can conceive no possible point. Suppose that all animal suffering that
occurred before human beings existed was caused by unembodied moral
agents who exercised their freedom in ways that involved making innocent
creatures suffer. They thereby went from being angels to being demons.
Suppose further that there being moral agents whose exercises of freedom
determine their moral character is itself, independent of how that character
turns out, a highly good thing. Then even if some unembodied moral
agents^22 cause animal suffering, it is not wrong that they have been allowed
to do so. This seems a conceivable point for animal suffering. Given some
ingenuity, it seems that we can find some conceivable point for any evil we
have any good reason to think has occurred.
It does not follow that there is no evil whatever that God could not
wrongly permit. Suppose God were to create seven persons who existed
only for twelve years. At each moment they suffered as much agony as
they were capable of experiencing while feeling a deep hatred of God
and one another that inevitably arises from features built into them at
creation. Then God annihilates each of them for ever. Suppose, finally,
that these are the only things that God ever creates. Within the
constraints of these assumptions, it seems that the evils these persons
suffer can have no point.^23
Rowe very plausibly believes that the sort of case he describes –
commonly called “the Bambi case” – including various species of
animals, have actually occurred in a time-span overlapping that of the
human race. Further, most animal suffering occurred before there were
any human beings. Consider propositions:
(K1)Knowledge that there has been massive animal suffering, most of it
occurring in particular cases not known by any human being, serves
to cause in human beings a moral or religious state not otherwise
obtainable save at comparable cost,
and
(K2)That state is sufficiently valuable to justify the suffering requisite to
it.
While (K1) and (K2) are not in any obvious manner self-contradictory, it is
hard to see what the alleged moral or religious state might be, and there