ARGUMENTS AGAINST MONOTHEISM 157ducks (and no duck eggs or DNA) there is no duck species either. They
seem typically to think that all the value lies, not in the particular deer
that is now feeding on the salt lick that one put out last night, but in
there being some deer or other, who cares which? Nonetheless, there
cannot be intrinsic value in there being deer without there being
intrinsic value in the deer that is now feeding on the salt lick. To put the
relevant point positively, it is a necessary truth that:
(C) For any class C, if C’s having members has intrinsic worth, then
for any item X that belongs to C, X has intrinsic worth.
But then the death of any given deer involves the loss of something that
has intrinsic natural worth.^49 If there is something requiring moral
justification in a species becoming extinct, there is also something
requiring moral justification in the demise of one of that species’
members.
Monotheism typically contends that creation was a matter of grace.
God created things that might never have been, not only freely but also
without obligation. It was (so to say) morally permissible for God not to
have created at all, as well as morally permissible for God to have
created as God did create, or to have created in lots of ways in which
God did not create, but might have created. Monotheists also hold that,
at least in the case of things not strictly created in God’s image – in the
case of things not persons – being X’s creator entails being permitted to
cease to sustain X in existence without needing moral justification. If
this is so, the E1–E5 argument fails. It is then false that
(E*) If X has intrinsic worth, and God permits X to cease to exist
without having some morally sufficient justification for so doing,
then God acts wrongly.
In sum: the critic who bases her case on alleged ecological evil needs
(E) or something like it, and strong arguments for (E) are scarce at
best.
Exchangeable intrinsic natural worth
Still, there remains the question as to what morally sufficient reason for
allowing a species whose members possessed intrinsic natural worth to
go extinct might amount to whether or not God would need such a
reason. Suppose that: