T-Rex dung as a problem for Christians
Pearson International Airport in Toronto has decent FREE wi-fi so here y’are. A mid-day post free of charge. This is prefatory to John Loftus’ essay in The Christian Delusion on natural evil. (I will present an actual review when I get back to Edmonton next week and have the book in front of me.)
I liked John’s esssay overall and was sympathetic with the argument (more sympathetic than with any of the arguments in the book thus far). In fact I have written a chapter on the problem that predation, carnivory, suffering and death in the natural world presents for Christians (simply titled “Why did God create carnivores?” and to be part of my book The Crazy Things We Believe.) So I’ve thought about the topic a fair bit myself.
What really captures my attention is how many Christians — including many highly educated Christians — continue to think and speak as if the natural world was created trouble free without predation, carnivory, suffering and death. In other words, they still inhabit the vegetarian world of Genesis 1:
Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.
Nor am I talking about young earthers here. I’m talkin’ about people who accept without a qualm the old age of the earth and yet never pause to consider how to reconcile the fact that triceratops frill has been found in fossilized T-Rex dung (or as I prefer to call it, “rocky dino poo”). Now assuming Big-T didn’t go on a murderous rampage on the eighth day of creation, how is the Christian to explain such basic, universally accepted facts? He (or she) has to concede that the world was created with death in the natural world. It can’t all be pawned off on a single couple of homo sapiens sapiens who misbehaved in a garden several thousand years ago.
So what do Christians say? What should they be saying? What can they possibly say? John’s essay is a good opening salvo for a debate on just this issue and I look forward to getting back to it.
Tags: John Loftus, natural evil, The Christian Delusion, theodicy, Tyrannosaurus Rex
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[...] of Evil.” My last blog post setting up this topic was, you will recall, a little ditty on dinosaur feces (or “faeces” if you prefer). John’s essay is a good discussion (yes, I said a [...]
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MGT2 says:
Friday, November 19, 2010 at 4:52pm
Rauser,
This then begs the question: Will the new earth have carnivores as well since it is supposed to be “good?” Or will there be no animals apart from redeemed people?
it seems to me that the argument will have to consider both initial creation and the final world to come.
randal says:
Tuesday, November 23, 2010 at 3:00pm
Good question. I think there will be animals in the new creation for sure, probably many if not all of the animals that exist now. And I think it is our anthropocentrism and lack of imagination that has kept us from saying otherwise. Why wouldn’t God love not only the species he created but the individuals as well? Now in terms of how can a lion be a lion in the new creation I can offer many speculations. Maybe the lion will no longer be a carnivore (the lion will lie down with the lamb, after all). Or maybe the lion will eat tofu flavored meat. I talk about these problems a bit in the chapter I wrote on the topic.
Alexander says:
Sunday, November 21, 2010 at 11:08pm
You typed “sapiens” twice.
Maybe all of Genesis is just one big metaphor that God created in his ever-so Holy Book to explain the complications of creation to a simple-minded people?
randal says:
Monday, November 22, 2010 at 2:11pm
Alexander,
Human beings are homo sapiens sapiens. No typo (as you seem to imply).
R. Eric Sawyer says:
Monday, February 7, 2011 at 1:40am
Randal, I just stumbled across your blog here, and I can see that I am about to spend a little time.
A while back, I had a short meditation on the subject of predation over at my place. I normally wouldn’t cross-post, but you said “What do Christians say?”
The issue remains at bottom, a mystery to me. We don’t even really know, in the spiritual realm, what animals are, or how much this issue may be athropomophic projection. Nevertheless, I feel the weight of it intensly.
What follows are my thoughts.
====================
There is a particular fact about the known life forms in this universe that I find very distressing in view of my assertion that there is a creator God, who is Good. I don’t know if it is currently in fashion in atheist circles or not, but it has always appeared to me a pretty strong point for their side. That point may be summarized thusly:
If creation is at heart “good” why is it that all animal life, and even some plant life, lives only by the destruction of other life? Even herbivores and “vegans” consume, digest and destroy other living things, harvesting that which they did not make and killing the maker in the process. Once we have left the plants with chlorophyll, and the relatively few organisms that power their chemical processes with thermal or chemical energy, it is constant predation from there on up. Nowhere above that level is there an organism that does not destroy life. The exception would be the scavengers, from worms to vultures, who consume their prey after some other force has killed it, but even they are fueled by, and depend upon, death.
I can hear the snickers, not only am I objecting to eating meat, I’m exhibiting scruples about eating grass! But the issue is not whether plants can be eaten (I am strictly an omnivore!), it is that the pattern of life subsisting only by the death of other life is poetically very depressing. It is so close to a universal pattern, how can we say a “Good God” dreamed it up? I have heard some Christians attribute it to “the fall”, saying that in the beginning it was not so, and in the fullness of the Kingdom of God, it will not be so again. “The lion shall lay down with the lamb” and that the lion will eat straw, as the prophet says.
Leaving the issue of grass as life destroyed by both lion and lamb in that vision, I am not satisfied. I am not placated by just saying that someday the problem will disappear, that it means nothing.
Anyway, this state of affairs seems to me so ugly that it argues against the idea that any benign entity is behind it.
I have said elsewhere that one of the ways to know if a new idea is true is to see what effect it has on old knowledge. Does it fit what is already known? even better, Does it throw light on what is already known, and draw isolated facts into a pattern?
As a Christian, I claim that the central point of all history, of all creation, is the incarnation, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. I also claim that creation has been corrupted, and that many things we now see are twisted copies of the truth.
What then is this center point, and how could it relate to predation being a nearly universal feature of life; what could that universal feature be, of which predation is the twisted image?
I think there is a link, the true life principal of which the Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross is the archetype, and predation is the twisted echetype. The principal is that of vicarious life. Jesus died so that I might live. Even as a Christian, I have trouble articulating how this “works,” but interestingly enough, it seems in accord with a pattern we see, and proclaims itself the unfallen example of that pattern. I live because of the sacrifice of another. I “eat his flesh” and “drink his blood” in the Eucharist. Life based on the sacrificial death of another creature is so prevalent in this creation that it must somehow be part of a central theme.
I think that theme is a “Me first” twist on a Ideal of self sacrifice for the good of another. The distance between “Give” and “Take” is very small. If one examines only the transaction, where things start and where they end up, giving and taking are identical. The twist is the attitude of the participants. Taking is “what’s yours is mine”, giving is “what’s mine is yours”; almost the same, and yet how different could they be!
So predation can perhaps be seen as a fallen and twisted remnant of a great good running through Edenic creation: Life always exist by the sacrifice of other life, but perhaps one can imagine, only just barely imagine a scene where the lamb willingly gives it’s body so that the lion can live, and the lion eats, full of wonder and humility towards this incredible being that would so lay its life down for its friends.
Themes run through the creation, and everything bears the mark of that which (or who) made it. I think that there is a theme here that fills me with awe and wonder.
randal says:
Monday, February 7, 2011 at 1:54pm
Eric,
Thanks for your thoughts.
First, I don’t have a problem with grass being eaten. It seems to me that the whole problem is centered on suffering in sentient creatures. Since grass is not sentient it does not suffer and there is no problem. This is why if I take my lawnmower and mow down a million blades of grass I simply enjoy the smell of newly mown grass but if I take out my AK-47 and mow down a hundred dogs I need to go for therapy.
Second, I’m appreciative of your honesty: “this state of affairs seems to me so ugly that it argues against the idea that any benign entity is behind it.” There is a certain degree of subjectivity here but I nonetheless share your basic intuitions. That drives me too to look for an explanation of the state of affairs.
Third, I have mused in the past about the extent to which creation emulates atoning forms of life (for wont of a better term). One could even think of such a proposal in accord with Psalm 19 and like passages. The main problem is that the suffering remains through it all and is knit into the original structure of creation while the atonement is a response to sin. I guess one could argue that God included predation and carnivory in the beginning as anticipations of the felix culpa but I’m not sure this is wholly satisfactory.
I think we need a number of explanations. One could accept yours, for instance, and also argue that there is the possibility of animal resurrection as compensation for sufferings endured in the present state of affairs. I argue this in a book chapter in a forthcoming book.
William Dembski talks about the problem in The end of Christianity. Michael Murray has an important book on the topic called Nature Red in Tooth and Claw and Christopher Southgate also has a book on the topic called The Groaning of Creation.
Thanks again for your comments!