Craig on Animal Pain *Again*

Mooch and friend

I've written before on William Lane Craig's curious views on animal pain, which amount to a dismissal of it as a phenomenon we need to worry about morally. Here I discussed the views he put forward in a debate with Stephen Law, that suggested that animal pain, following work done by Michael Murray, did not exacerbate the problem of evil for theists, and here I followed up that post with a statement by one of the co-authors of a paper that Murray used to support his findings, philosopher of mind David Rosenthal, who countered Murray and Craig:

Anybody who insists that pain and its attendant effects are not very bad for the creature even when the pain is not conscious pain seems to me to be looking for an excuse not to bother with what is plainly a significant case of suffering.  There is no sound empirical reason nor any or valid theoretical reason to count pain as suffering only if the pain is conscious.  This is simply a matter of defining suffering away by stipulation.

In a new Question of the Week entitled Animal Consciousness Once More, Craig again dismisses animal pain. Joshua, having examined the Cambridge Declaration of Consciousness, is concerned that this puts animals on the same footing (before God) as humans:

If animals do have the same states of consciousness as we do, that animals have the same value and importance, biologically speaking, than us.

The Cambridge Declaration says, amongst other things:

...the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.

In his reply, Craig says this:

...there is no evidence that animals other than the higher primates have a consciousness of self that enables them to think I myself am in pain. That has huge implications for the problem of animal suffering and so-called natural evil. For even though animals may have an awareness of pain (are conscious), they are not aware that they themselves are in pain (are not self-conscious) and so do not suffer as we do.

He draws the distinction between awareness and self-awareness, which I think is an important distinction, but one that does not mean we can discount awareness. The curious thing about this answer is that Craig concedes that higher primates have a consciousness of self, so presumably he thinks that chimpanzees etc are moral agents, and he already has a significant problem to address.

But, in any case, his 'answer' does not cut the mustard because, as Rosenthal says above, it's the suffering that should be the concern for us as moral agents, not the sense of self. I think it's plausible that a sense of self might change the quality of pain, but it's possible that lacking a sense of self might make awareness of pain worse. For example, lacking self-consciousness one would always be living in the moment - there would be little sense of pain passing, just happening. As self-conscious beings we can often endure periods of pain and comfort ourselves with it passing, or with rewards of future pleasure.

Craig explicitly denies that suffering is morally relevant, instead suggesting that moral obligations simply arise from God's mandate:

Lacking God as a foundation for objective moral values and duties, the naturalist must find something in animals themselves to warrant their ethical treatment. That will be their awareness of pain. ... This naturalistic attempt to ground ethical treatment of animals is doomed to failure, however, since not all animals are sentient--not to speak of rainforests and oceans! A sound environmental ethic, including the ethical treatment of animals, will be grounded in the creation mandate given by God to man to steward the Earth as God’s good gift.

(Note that Craig even bizarrely suggests that rainforests and oceans don't deserve any ethical consideration under naturalism, because naturalists can only ground morality in awareness of pain. Even if they did (and other considerations can be brought in), clearly rainforests (if we're just talking about the wood) and oceans (if we're just talking about the water) wouldn't deserve any ethical consideration per se, but since they are the very environment of many forms of life that can feel pain, they obviously would deserve ethical consideration. Conversely it seems obvious that his morality, if grounded in God's mandate, is arbitrary. If God has imposed a moral duty on us to look after rainforests and oceans as we should look after humans, then will Craig save a tree before a person? Perhaps God has instructed him to protect humans before trees; but is he really committed to a morality that is simply dictated by God? Well, of course, he is!)

The questioner, while confused, is bringing up a significant problem for theists. Why are humans exceptional? Craig's answer seems to be because of self-awareness. But not self-awareness per se, I guess, but self-awareness as evidence that humans have a self or soul that is the object of moral considerations. But even if that's the case, in this quote Craig concedes the problem of animal pain, because he says 'not all animals are sentient'. No naturalist would deny that, but even Craig allows that some animals are sentient, so he has not successfully drawn a distinction between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom, so the problem of animal suffering remains.

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Richard Dawkins FOR Children Believing Santa Claus, Christian Apologist AGAINST

The common perception of Richard Dawkins is of a baby-eating, kitten-crushing ultra-realist, denying fun to everyone, especially children. See here, here, here and here, for example, in which various papers accuse him of wanting to deny all the fun of Santa Claus to the kiddy-winks, and MP Tom Watson calls him a 'soulless bore' for wanting to 'ban fairy tales'.

In fact, Dawkins sees some values in fairy tales; as he explained:

Fairy stories might equip the child to reject supernaturalism when the time comes … Santa Claus again could be a very valuable lesson because the child will learn that there are some things you are told that are not true. Now isn't that a valuable lesson? Unfortunately it doesn't seem to have had the desired effect in some cases, because after children learn that there is no Santa Claus, mysteriously they go on believing that there is a God.

So the media caricature of Dawkins is wide of the mark again, even if he is still somewhat Professor Yaffle-like.

William Lane Craig has weighed into this momentous and seasonal debate with a new Q&A, in which he recommends children are not led to believe in Father Christmas, but to 'make-believe' him:

Saint Nicholas was a historical figure, an early church bishop. We can teach our children about who he was and explain how people like to make-believe that he comes and brings children presents today at Christmas time. Children love to make-believe, and so you can invite them to join in this game of make-believe with you. When you see a Santa at the shopping mall, say, “Look, there’s a man dressed up like Saint Nicholas! People pretend that he is Saint Nicholas. Would you like to tell him what you want for Christmas?”

Hoorah for Xmas! Ho-ho-no! There's a pretend Santa over there! Would you like to tell pretend Santa what you want for Christmas? 'What the hell for?' might be the reasonable reply.

How nice it would be if the media advertised the religious who want to banish magic and fun from the festive season as much as they do puppy-murdering atheists.

Craig's parenting has led to some unhappy friends, I suspect:

My daughter said that our policy of telling the children Santa is make-believe led to “some interesting conversations” at school with children who said that Père Noël exists. “No, he doesn’t!” Oops! I find it rather ironic that it was our children who were the free-thinkers and sceptics when it came to Santa Claus. Best to tell your children that while we know Santa is a just a fun, make-believe figure, they shouldn’t upset other parents who haven’t been so honest with their children as we have.

So Dawkins is less the killjoy than Craig on this occasion; one can imagine the other parents advising their kids not to listen to Craigs Minor. Stop spoiling the magic, WLC! At one point he seems to be channeling Dawkins when he says 'Maybe the whole Christmas story is a myth which thinking adults should outgrow'. Hallelujah! But, sadly I think he means the story of Saint Nicholas, not the Nativity.

Nevertheless, good to see Craig instilling some scepticism in his children; maybe they can carry that through to their religious beliefs too.

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Craig describes SSM as 'a sort of legal fiction'

William Lane Craig has revealed some homophobia in the latest Q&A on his Reasonable Faith site, as well as recommending some seditious behaviour. In answer to someone questioning the Supreme Court's decision on SSM, and what Christians should do about it, he says:

[Same sex] marriages are a sort of legal fiction which we must respect.

He thinks there is an essence to marriage that resists legal re-definitions, just as horses and chairs could not be re-defined. This shows a curious blindness to the complexity of social institutions, which, by their very nature (one may say 'essence'), are defined by their social milieu. Simply perusing the Wikipedia article on marriage presents a bewildering variety of types, many of which do not feature just one man and one woman (WLC's preferred flavour). Of course, to describe the marriage of two people in love as any sort of fiction is deeply offensive to those involved.

Craig says:

The Supreme Court did not legalize, nor is anyone advocating for, gay marriage. What it legalized was same-sex marriage, regardless of sexual orientation.

...and he is right, strictly speaking. But let's not pretend that Craig is railing against two heterosexual men getting married; it is the homosexuality he is prejudiced against, and his language shows his prejudice:

Suppose you are a baker who is approached to make a wedding cake for a same-sex wedding or that you are a wedding photographer who is hired to photograph a same-sex ceremony. It’s hard to see how you can justifiably resist legal authority here and refuse to comply, regardless of how distasteful it may be to you, since your activity is not sin on your part.

Craig supposes it may be 'distasteful' to provide a service for a same-sex marriage; why 'distasteful'? Sin is not a matter of taste, after all. Plainly it's the homosexuality that is not to Craig's taste, rather than some contravention of his definition of marriage. If somebody redefined a horse as a chair, no-one would find that 'distasteful'; simply incorrect.

As for government authority, he says:

...we should and must resist authority if it requires us to act contrary to God’s will. 

So, he thinks it's necessary for Christians to impose God's will over and above the law of the land. As at least one study suggests, what God wants tends to be the same as what the individual believer wants. This is a recipe for insurrection, or at least civil disobedience à la Kim Davis, even if one has some sympathy for conscientious objectors in general.

It's nice to see that Craig can see the way the wind is blowing, though:

As our secular culture becomes more and more accommodating to same-sex marriage, the pressure upon Christians to compromise and conform will be heavy and unrelenting.

Yes, the repeal of anti-miscegenation laws delivered legal justice and, as a consequence, generated social pressure on racists to drop their prejudices; so too, now, will the pressure build upon the homophobic to drop their prejudices now that equality before the law has been granted to those of every sexual orientation.

Craig's response reveals the problem with a morality embedded in the aspic of ancient mores; they give the prejudiced ammunition in their fight against overwhelming reason and evidence. Just as many sensible practices and beliefs have arisen through our genetic and cultural history, so too has prejudice. We need the freedom to challenge our practices and beliefs to sort the sensible from the insensible, and religion, amongst other things, hinders that process.

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Concluding Comments - 2014 Greer-Heard Forum

A panel discussion concluding the Greer-Heard Forum.

Excellent response by Tim Maudlin to William Lane Craig's assertion that moral objectivity requires theism, @ c30mins, who also makes a good point about blind luck in his concluding comments.

"Let a thousand flowers bloom", Craig says in his concluding comments, which I tend to agree with, although theism does not have a good record on that score!

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Rosenthal on Murray

Mooch the cat

Following my previous post on William Lane Craig's question of the week, Animal Pain Re-visited, I wondered about the distinction that Michael Murray drew between first order and higher order mental states. I could see that Murray was right in the sense that there is a debate about the distinction, but I couldn't see he was right about what that distinction entailed. In particular he wrote:

Do we know that any of the possibilities I describe (that animal pain is like blindsight—experienced but not felt (response 1)—or like “lobotomy pain”—felt but not undesirable (response 2)) are true in the case of animals? Absolutely not. But do we know that they are not the case? I argue that we don’t. That is, for all we know, animal pain works as described in one of those options. The scientific data do not resolve the philosophical question. And thus we don’t know if we have a problem of animal pain.
Do people disagree about this? Yes. However, I think that most scientists who think about these questions do not have the full range of distinctions that philosophers of mind do when reasoning about these matters. So I think that the scientists who disagree don’t fully appreciate the relevant philosophical subtleties. (However, some neuroscientist/philosopher collaborations have been looking at exactly such issues, indeed suggesting that the prefrontal cortex plays just the sort of role I suggest when it comes to phenomenal consciousness—whether of pain or other sensory states. See for example, Lau and Rosenthal, “Empirical Support for higher-order theories of conscious awareness,” Trends in Cognitive Science, August 2011, vol. 15, no 8.) - my emphasis

Murray says that Lau and Rosenthal's paper suggests that the prefrontal cortex 'plays just the sort of role' he suggests - that is, that pain is experienced but not felt, or felt but not undesirable - so animal pain should not count as evil.

Having read Lau and Rosenthal's paper, I still could not see that it supported this view. However, I may not have understood it (!), so I asked philosopher of mind and co-author of the paper David Rosenthal if he cared to comment on it. He very kindly gave me this response, which I quote in its entirety; I think it speaks for itself:

Mark Jones has kindly called my attention to a blog post by Michael Murray about pain and nonhuman animals, at http://www.reasonablefaith.org/animal-pain-re-visited.  In that post, Murray appeals to higher-order-thought theories of consciousness, such as that which I have advanced (http://tinyurl.com/drpubn) and, in particular, to "Empirical Support for Higher-Order Theories of Conscious Awareness", coauthored by Hakwan Lau and me, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15, 8 (August 2011): 365-373.

I have written a few remarks in that connection and sent them to Mark Jones with my permission to quote them.

The term 'phenomenal consciousness', as currently used in philosophical, psychological, and neuropsychological research, is used to cover both the qualitative character of mental states--e.g., what differs between seeing red and seeing green or between a pain and a tickle--and the subjective awareness that goes with conscious cases of such states.  The point of most higher-order theories of consciousness--including the one I have advanced in many writings and the version Lau and I defend by a very compelling array of empirical findings--is that these two factors do not always occur together.

The appeal to phenomenal consciousness, therefore, is theoretically loaded in an unfortunate way, tying together two mental phenomena--qualitative character and subjective awareness--that need not cooccur.  In the context of Murray's post, it effectively begs the question.
The qualitative character of pain, e.g., can occur without subjective awareness.  The pain, with its qualitative character, would be a first-order mental state; the subjective awareness on our theory--supported by a very great deal of empirical work--can occur distinctly, and is a higher-order state whose content is in some suitable way directed onto the first-order pain state. Genuine pain can, and does, occur without being conscious.

But the qualitative character of pain--even in the absence of subjective awareness--is plainly a bad thing.  It impedes pleasurable activity and enjoyment and other mental processing, it distracts and commands attention, and it impedes a very great many normal bodily processes. Pain can occur without being conscious pain, and because of the effects of such nonconscious pain, it counts by any reasonable definition as suffering, often very intense suffering.  Suffering need not itself be conscious.  

Anybody who insists that pain and its attendant effects are not very bad for the creature even when the pain is not conscious pain seems to me to be looking for an excuse not to bother with what is plainly a significant case of suffering.  There is no sound empirical reason nor any or valid theoretical reason to count pain as suffering only if the pain is conscious.  This is simply a matter of defining suffering away by stipulation.

Lau & Rosenthal appeals to prefrontal cortex in humans as the likely neural mechanism for the higher-order processes that result in subjective awareness.  There is solid empirical evidence that this so for primates generally and likely in many other mammals.  But that finding for humans does not preclude other neural mechanisms' being responsible for such higher-order awareness in other animals.  The studies have not been done so far except for primates.  So prefrontal cortex is not known to be necessary for subjective awareness--of pain or any other types of mental state--for nonprimates generally.

(End quote)

Of course, I understand Murray's point that his appeal is only one suggestion he is making to mitigate the problem of evil, and others may be successful, but I think this one approach, championed by Craig in at least one debate, does not work and should be abandoned.

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Craig adds to the Pain

Mooch the cat (and friend)

In a debate with Stephen Law, William Lane Craig claimed that science shows that animals aren't aware of the pain they are in, and this might be an answer to the perennial theistic problem of evil. It's not at all clear to me how that follows, and Stephen Law subsequently pointed out, with the help of a film made by skydivephil, that Craig simply had the science wrong anyway. Jerry Coyne also posted on the subject, noting:

But there’s no difference between feeling pain and being aware that you’re feeling pain. Pain is a “quale” (plural “qualia”)—a conscious and subjective sensation—which demands awareness, unless it’s simply a sensation that you have learned (or evolved) to avoid.  But if you’ve learned or evolved to avoid it because it’s unpleasant, then you are indeed aware of feeling pain! Finding a sensation unpleasant demands sufficient consciousness to experience qualia.

I tend to agree, although I could concede there may be a difference between the pain felt by animals that have self-awareness about pain, like humans, (what Craig calls third-level pain) and those that don't (second-level pain). However, I cannot see that self-awareness alone renders the pain morally relevant. Oddly Craig did ask himself this question on a question of the week some time ago:

So let’s grant, for the sake of argument, that Murray has got it right about the science concerning animal pain: sentient animals do experience pain, but they (apart from the higher primates) are not aware that they are themselves in pain. What ethical implications for the treatment of animals would this affirmation have?

The only answer I can see him offering is this:

Inflicting unjustified pain on animals would be morally prohibited to us by God. Yes, remember that on the view we’re discussing, sentient animals do experience second-level states of pain, which should not be needlessly inflicted. So stunning animals before killing them for food is, indeed, a good idea. Even with regard to animals which do not experience second-level pain, the theist can maintain that we should not needlessly impair or kill them.

...which appears to concede that animal pain is morally relevant (it's 'a good idea' to avoid it), even if his distinction between second-level and third-level pain stands.

Craig has now added a follow-up with a response from Michael Murray, who originally drew the distinction. Craig seems to think the strongest point that Murray makes is:

...that non-human animals do not have a first-person perspective on their experiences, including experiences of pain, that is to say, they cannot adjoin to their experiences the prefix “I think/feel that. . . ,”so that animals, even if in pain, are not aware that they are themselves in pain.

Once again, he does not argue here why that makes the pain morally irrelevant, but he does think that:

Dr. Murray shows that his critics have not shown that animal suffering of a morally significant sort really exists.

That's a pretty weak claim; likewise one presumes that Craig and Murray also think that no-one has shown that baby suffering of a morally significant sort really exists either, if the distinction is simply that the organism cannot adjoin to their experiences the prefix "I think/feel that...". Further, it is a betrayal of the cautionary principle: that if animals, and babies, display the symptoms of pain, we should assume they are feeling pain.

Murray appeals to the possibility that animals have pain without any “negative-feeling”, based on reports of humans that have reported such a thing after disruption to their prefrontal cortexes. Well I'm no scientist, so I will leave that one to them, but it seems far from clear why we need to prove the precise nature of animal pain before we consider it relevant to our moral calculations. Murray's argument is simply that:

...perhaps most animals do not experience negative-feeling-pain (because they lack a PFC).

But either animal pain is not negative, in which case avoiding it is neither a good idea nor a bad idea, contra Craig above, or it is a negative, in which case the problem of natural suffering is not answered by this argument.

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William Lane Craig, Agony Uncle

In a remarkable question of the week, William Lane Craig responds to a common conundrum for theists: what to do when you fall in love with a non-believer, and in marrying them thereby go to hell!?

Yes, really; this chap (I assume) is worried that he will go to hell if he marries a non-believer. Rather than celebrating the joyous confluence in the lives of two human beings, and revelling in it for what it is, he seems pre-occupied with just his own well-being. This does not sound like the sort of selfless behaviour that characterises a healthy loving relationship. Whatever happened to true altruism?

His lover has said, sure, I'll convert to any religion to be with you (pretty selfless for a non-believer!):

So my question is this: if she does convert, how could I be sure that she really believes in Christianity? 

One might ask: how can one be sure anyone believes in any religion? The differences between religions are largely a result of arbitrary cultural currents, since their beliefs occupy that territory beyond the universally verifiable, so on the plus side it's pretty easy for someone to commit to something that might be as true as the next belief system; but on the minus side, theists are typically not impressed by people who treat their specific belief as a happy accidental one.

Craig's initial thoughts seem to hint at the difficulty of determining another's beliefs:

When I first read your question, Shane, I thought, “He’s got nothing to worry about! She’s ready to become a Christian, and the sincerity of her commitment is between her and God.”

But, he's worried:

But the more I thought about it, the more I came to think that you do, indeed, face a rather difficult situation.

Is he concerned about this couple's well-being? Well, not so much:

Forget about going to hell. What you should worry about, rather, is ruining your life by marrying someone who is a nonbeliever and therefore not God's will for your life. You don’t want to wander off the trajectory that God has in mind for you and so miss all that He has in store for you.

Craig agrees that this guy should be worrying about himself first of all. Apparently God has some trajectory in mind for him that, despite his omnipotence, could be diverted by this heathen-ess.

Well, the problem is that in this case her motives for becoming a Christian seem not to be that she has fallen in love with Christ but that she has fallen in love with you!

How could she have made such a schoolgirl error?!

A person who says that “she would convert to any religion” to be with you reveals that she has not understood that Christianity makes objective truth claims about reality.

Sure, but by saying that she would convert to any religion to be with the guy, she may have noticed that the objective truth claims of various religions are not objectively verifiable.

She seems to think of embracing a religion as akin to following fashion: you can change fashions without concern for truth. Such a woman has not yet arrived at the point that she can be trusted. For she seems willing to say or do whatever it takes to get the object of her desire.

And a Christian is doing what, exactly? Should not a Christian say or do whatever it takes to get the object of their desire, Jesus Christ?

You need to wait until you have proof-positive that she has fallen in love with Christ for his own sake, not for yours, and wants her whole life to be lived in obedience to him as Lord.

Despite homophobic Christian talk on the sanctity of marriage as one man, one woman, here Craig seems to be insisting that there be three people in every marriage: a husband, wife and Jesus Christ.

The difficulty, Shane, is that meanwhile you are in danger of getting inextricably bound up emotionally with her, so that your love of her will seduce you to do something that your mind tells you not to do. So you need to create some emotional space between you and her while you wait to see if her commitment to Christ is genuine.

Nice. Much better to eschew the possibility of a lifelong relationship with a potential soul mate than to risk the wrath of an imaginary god.

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Craig Slips Down the Fallacy Slide

William Lane Craig's serious response to same sex marriage advocates is to say that if marriage is treated as a social construct (which it is) rather than something with an essence (which it is not), this means 'anything goes', including goat marrying.

In his latest Question of the Week in which he allows that the law should be blind to the sexual orientation of those who want to marry, he says:

Marriage is by its essence a relation between a man and a woman.

...

The real question here, it seems to me, is whether marriage has an essence or is merely a social construct akin to driving on the right- versus left-hand side of the road. Those who espouse same-sex marriage want to deconstruct marriage so that what counts as marriage is just a matter of convention. Once we start down that route, anything goes: a man and two women, a man and a child, two men and a goat, etc. I see no reason at all to start down that road.

This is obviously the slippery-slope fallacy. There really is no more reason for the law to change to allow inter-species marriage after same-sex marriage is recognised than before it. It's revealing that one of the leading apologists for Christianity would resort to such a poor argument.

The history of marriage is the history of a social construct, although to say it is 'merely' a social construct is akin to saying that religion is merely a social construct. Of course it is, but there is more to it. The word represents a vast range of real world activities past and present, and normally it would hardly matter about the word, because it would simply come to also represent marriage between two men or between two women - which it has, for many of us, as a matter of fact. It's interesting that Craig considers the phrase 'gay marriage' misconceived, yet still says:

Laws permitting gay marriage would be clearly unconstitutional, since they would not be blind to the sexual orientation of the persons involved.

It's entirely clear what this means; Craig understands that the phrase is readily understood, even if he thinks it misconceived because he thinks marriage has an essence. But, of course, 'marriage' represents something that is going on in society, and it already exists, whether he likes it or not.

So the battle is not to stop marriage from changing; it has changed before and will change again, so the start down the road that Craig so fears has already happened - and it was nothing to do with same sex marriage, note.

The opposition here is just down to good old fashioned religious bigotry, I'm afraid.

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Craig's Communist Manifesto

William Lane Craig has produced some booklets for children:

Ah, sweet, and delightfully illustrated.

For forty years Dr. Craig has been drawing for his family pictures of the endearing characters Brown Bear, Red Goose, and their two children Charity and John. Now through the wonderful renderings by Marli Renee, these characters help to make deep theological truths accessible and exciting for your children. Brown Bear, Red Goose, and their children form a traditional—though rather unusual!—loving family in which Papa models the biblical role of fathers in bringing up children in the instruction of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4). The ten booklets in this series aim to stimulate intellectual curiosity in your children when they have questions about God. The stories thereby serve as a springboard to further conversations with them about spiritual things.

What's that? Brown Bear and Red Goose? The bear has long been representative of Russia, and the redness of Mother Goose shines from the front cover. Could it be any more obvious that these 'illustrated booklets' aim to spread communist lies to brave American children? And him posing as a supposedly mild-mannered God-fearing pater familias. Albeit one who is satisfied that a divinely inspired genocide is a good thing. Could it be that his life's work presenting frankly ludicrous apologia for Christianity was all along driven by an atheist agenda? It would explain some of his arguments. Or maybe I've been watching too much Homeland.

It's nice to see him promoting inter-species harmony, but even Rupert Bear observed the biological facts of the matter, reproductively speaking. I'll be interested to read the booklet where Brown Bear and Red Goose explain where babies come from, and then present the evidence for the evolution of species by natural selection ("Mummy, why are you and John of the order Anseriformes? Why shouldn't I eat you again?"). It seems obvious that this is a thinly veiled attack on opponents of same-sex marriage. Just because Brown Bear and Red Goose cannot have sexual intercourse a la Adam and Eve is no reason that they shouldn't feature in a Christian (or communist) booklet extolling the virtues of the Christian way of life (note the coded "traditional—though rather unusual!" reference to their arrangements).

Kudos to Dr Craig! A bold rebuttal of his own expressed bigotry against homosexuals. I never thought I would see the day.

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Craig's Odd Views on Animal Suffering

Stephen Law has drawn attention to the above video, by SkyDivePhil (good work), that presents the scientific evidence to debunk William Lane Craig's odd view of the animal kingdom:

God has shielded almost the entire animal kingdom throughout its history from an awareness of being in pain! For those of us who are pet owners and lovers of animals, this is a tremendous comfort and a cause of praise to God for His goodness and wondrous, even ingenious, care of creation. Who would have guessed that God had done such a thing? These neurological insights, documented by Murray, greatly reduce the force of the problem of evil posed by animal suffering.

(The quote from Craig shows at least that he accepts that there is a problem of evil, or he wouldn't even bother to make such a silly unscientific suggestion. That is, if there is enormous suffering in the world, then this is evidence against his god.)

As the video points out too, Craig bases this determination of the science solely on the writings of Christian apologist philosopher Michael Murray. The video details what the science really says by asking, er, scientists:

Dr Anita Alvarez, Imperial College/UCL
Prof Stuart Firestein, Columbia University
Prof Joaquinn Fuster, UCLA
Prof Bruce Hood, Bristol University
Dr Lori Marino, Emory University
Dr Diana Reiss, City University NY

They say that Craig is wrong.

So, he gets the science completely wrong, which is odd for someone who wants to present himself as a scientifically-informed philosopher. As Law says, in the comments:

Of course Craig might well be entirely unaware it's misleading thing for him to say. He may have been misled by Murray into thinking this was a scientifically well-attested view.

This appears to be the situation. Craig himself has written this about his investigations into this key plank of his apology against the problem of evil, in a response in his weekly Q&A to a questioner who was not at all keen on his Cartesian dismissal of animal suffering:

So your attacks on Michael Murray’s credibility are quite unwarranted. True, Murray is a philosopher and not a scientist. But he has done a responsible job of studying the scientific literature on animal pain, and his book contains citations of the literature which the interested reader may pursue. 

This suggests that Craig wasn't an interested enough reader himself to examine the citations, else he would not have been so easily misled!

Clearly Craig got a lot of pushback from the Q&A that I quote at the top, since he said in this follow-up post:

I’ve been surprised by the emotional reactions I’ve received to last week’s Question! It almost seems as if some atheists would actually prefer that animals experience terrible suffering than have to give up the objection to theism based on the problem of animal pain! 

This is a daft thing to say. Atheists are responding to the uncomfortable facts that science has revealed about animal suffering, not rejoicing in their implications for theism. The facts show that we humans are part of the animal kingdom and that human exceptionalism cannot be used to justify ill treatment of our fellow travellers. That we share vast amounts of DNA with them, share much of the same ancestry and share many of the same features and functionality. These facts combine to show us we have no more reason to dismiss animal suffering than we do to dismiss the suffering of friends, relatives, or indeed strangers, in need.

In fact, Craig seems mightily confused about the whole issue. He uses Murray's arbitrary three level pain hierarchy:

Level 3: Awareness that one is oneself in pain
Level 2: Mental states of pain
Level 1: Aversive reaction to noxious stimuli

So this leads to the unfounded notion (as the video shows) that "Other animals lack the neural pathways for having the experience of Level 3 pain awareness." and  "So even though animals like zebras and giraffes, for example, experience pain when attacked by a lion, they really aren’t aware of it." What a relief for them, as they writhe on the ground being eaten alive!

The purpose of this nonsense is obvious: to show that animal suffering is not 'real' in some sense, to extinguish the problem of evil:

Viewed theologically, this discovery magnifies the mercy and goodness of God. God has shielded almost the entire animal kingdom throughout its history from an awareness of being in pain! For those of us who are pet owners and lovers of animals, this is a tremendous comfort and a cause of praise to God for His goodness and wondrous, even ingenious, care of creation.

The implication is clear that only third level awareness of pain matters. So the questioner the next week asks the obvious follow-up question:

If animals can not experience pain, is there anything wrong with committing acts against animals which if committed against humans would be expected to cause pain? 

After a lot of poorly thought out objections to a naturalistic grounding for morals, the only reason he suggests it is wrong is because his god has told us to be good stewards:

The theist enjoys the advantage that the ethical treatment of animals can be grounded in God’s commands to human beings to be good stewards of the Earth.

...and...:

Inflicting unjustified pain on animals would be morally prohibited to us by God.

There's no other reason not to inflict animal suffering? He can't think of one other than that someone told him not to do it? In what sense are we being 'good stewards' by avoiding acts towards animals as if they would cause pain, when in fact they don't? Carving a rock into the shape of a kitten would not be inconsistent with good stewardship, and neither would carving a kitten into the shape of a rock, if animal suffering does not contribute to the problem of evil. But then he says:

Yes, remember that on the view we’re discussing, sentient animals do experience second-level states of pain, which should not be needlessly inflicted. So stunning animals before killing them for food is, indeed, a good idea. 

But this is a back-pedal. If the second level pains should be avoided as well as the third level ones then we still have a massive problem of evil to resolve. He could argue that they are lesser evils, which he does based on incorrect science, but his previous response left the impression that there was little left to worry about - remember he wrote:

For those of us who are pet owners and lovers of animals, this is a tremendous comfort and a cause of praise to God for His goodness and wondrous, even ingenious, care of creation.

But there is still a massive amount of second level pain which could be avoided if god was benevolent, even granting Craig's nonsensical proposition. This is no solution to the problem of evil, for any pet owner or animal lover.


(Incidentally, another curious point of Craig's apology is the idea that pain requires a pre-frontal cortex. Pain is a quale of the mind, and the pre-frontal cortex is material. So Craig is saying that minds require a material grounding, which rather blows his dualism. Do disembodied minds not have qualia? Is pain a peculiar quale? Now he could say, I guess, that this is just a feature of embodied minds only, but this is falling foul of all the usual problems that even Descartes saw in dualism - there is no way to relate the immaterial meaningfully to the material. Check out QualiaSoup's video for a good summary of its problems: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS4PW35-Y00&list=UUc_xdkOBgSYLmXTn-VSQ4uA&index=2&feature=plpp_video)

UPDATE: Jean Kazez has written a good analysis of the video, and how the scientists' responses relate to Craig's claims, here. Or, at least, to what Craig appears to claim because, as I say above, it's not too clear what Craig is arguing for, imo.

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William Lane Craig advises Gay Man to stay on the Straight Path

A gay Catholic has written to William Lane Craig asking: What Should Homosexual Christians Do?

I'm not sure if this is an example of WLC's humour, but he includes in his reply that:

You [Haydn, from the UK] need to stay on the straight and narrow path to avoid disaster.

He distinguishes between the desire, which is not sinful, and the act, which is:

I agree with you that it’s no sin to have a homosexual orientation. That’s probably something you didn’t choose and aren’t responsible for. But you can choose and are responsible for how you act.

But he then appears to contradict this concession that Haydn didn't choose his orientation nor is he responsible for it:

Second, I’d encourage you to seek Christian counseling to help you deal with your homosexual orientation. You may never completely shed your homosexual desires, but the testimony of many persons like yourself who have sought help is that one can reshape one’s orientation to a considerable degree. There is hope of change.

Well, is he responsible for his orientation or not? Advocating change to something as fundamental as one's sexual orientation is a reprehensible thing to do, and perpetuates the view that there is something wrong with homosexuality. WLC's homophobia is confirmed after he advises Haydn to find a Christian girl to marry and have sexual relations with:

Forget the unbiblical idea of finding some other man with whom you can build a monogamous love relationship. Not only is that a fantasy that will lead you only to heartache and profound disappointment, but, more importantly, it is contrary to God’s will for your life, as we know from Scripture.

It's a terrible thing to say that a homosexual monogamous love relationship is a fantasy that will lead 'only to heartache and profound disappointment'. I personally know gay couples who are very happy in their monogamy. I certainly see no evidence that they are any more likely to lead to disappointment than heterosexual couples and, more importantly, I see no reason to even assess this difference, to deny them marriage, just as I wouldn't assess it for different races, religions or social classes.

I hope Haydn sees the error of his ways and re-considers his religious beliefs in the light of their effect on the harmless lives of so many.

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Christian Philosophy

In William Lane Craig's latest newsletter, talking about a recent visit to Hungary, he says:

A senior Norwegian philosopher joined me for lunch one day to share his story. He told me that he had long been a Christian, but his faith was completely privatized. As a professor of philosophy at a secular university, he never told his students that he was a Christian nor did he make any attempt at all to integrate his Christian faith with his discipline. He then fell into a deep depression, which lasted about two years. During that low time, unable to do any productive work, he began to listen to my Defenders podcasts, which he came across on the internet. As a result of listening to the class, he came to realize that he could do Christian philosophy, an idea which had never crossed his mind. Coming out of the depression, he decided to change everything in his teaching. He now announces to his students that he is a Christian and that he will offer a Christian perspective on the philosophical issues under discussion in his classes. He makes no apologies for taking this bold approach. He not only has Intro level classes of around 350 students, but he also supervises Ph.D. students in philosophy at this secular Norwegian university! Can you imagine the impact that will have on the future of the university environment in Norway?

I was puzzled why doing 'Christian philosophy' had 'never crossed his mind. Never? This seems an odd thing to say, since plainly there are Christians out there doing it, such as William Lane Craig himself, Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne and Wes Moriston. The philosophy I've studied has included elements of what I would call 'Christian philosophy', such as Aquinas and Anselm. I couldn't imagine why the thought of doing Christian philosophy would never cross a Christian philosopher's mind.

So, I thought I would ask him directly. Guessing from this list of speakers, I sent an email to Ralph Henk Vaags, an assistant professor at the University of Agder in Norway, and he confirmed in a friendly email that the story was about him. In response to my query wondering why he never thought to do Christian philosophy, he said:

It is not my view that we can come to philosophy with empty sheets. We created a worldview, and have opinions about right and wrong, true or false, etc. before we became professional philosophers. I am no exception (though I was not a Christian when I come to philosophy). Our worldview will be challenged when we enter the field of philosophy, and if we are open and listen to the arguments, things can really change. I become a Christian through philosophy.
When I got a position in philosophy, holding lectures and writing philosophical books, etc. I regarded religious faith and professional philosophy as two separate fields, and we should not mix them. Of course, my answers to philosophical questions were consistent with my religious beliefs, but I regarded this as irrelevant to my teaching and philosophical research at the university. Religious convictions were my private section. What happened after my period of depression was that I became open to the possibility of doing Christian philosophy today. Listening to dr. Craig’s lectures was an important opener for me. Through his lectures I became convinced that I should do Christian philosophy too, and I could do it without stepping outside the philosophical circle. My research later has confirmed and support this decision.

No doubt we don't come to philosophy with empty sheets; but assumptions and axioms can change, subject to evidence and argument, and that is surely the point of philosophy. Which seems to me anathema to Christianity, or any religion that demands adherence to a dogma.

Of course, this reply doesn't really answer my query; it rather re-states what puzzles me (and makes me wonder how he came to be a Christian):

Of course, my answers to philosophical questions were consistent with my religious beliefs, but I regarded this as irrelevant to my teaching and philosophical research at the university.

Why would anyone regard one's own beliefs as irrelevant to one's teaching and philosophical research? I do think that is odd. Of course one must endeavour to be even handed in philosophical teaching and research, but that doesn't mean one has no opinion; quite the opposite, I would say. A philosopher should state a position and defend it.

Professor Vaags founded the Institute of Christian Philosophy in 2008. In an interview on that website, he says this about Christian philosophy:

If we already have an idea of what philosophy is or should be, we could then say that Christian philosophy is a philosophy that is developed in harmony with a Christian interpretation of life or a Christian worldview. How a Christian interprets life is very much conditioned by the person who does the interpretation. However, certain things are central beliefs within the Christian faith, as for example that God exists, that God is a Trinity, that Jesus raised from the dead and that we are saved through our faith in Jesus Christ. Variations related to this type of beliefs are relatively small.

So it is those central beliefs that could be wrong, by Professor Vaags own admission, if he is doing philosophy correctly. To be fair, in his letter to me he says:

I still make a distinction between religious faith and philosophy, because I am open to the possibility of regarding Christian philosophy as a bad philosophical project – even if Christianity is true. We cannot reduce Christianity to philosophy. The difference is that I am now doing Christian philosophy as a professional philosopher. That means Christian philosophy has to play by the rules of philosophy, and only those. 

I'm not exactly sure what that first sentence means; he's open to Christian philosophy being a bad philosophical project 'even if Christianity is true'? Christian philosophy seems descriptive in the sense that naturalist philosophy is descriptive of philosophy informed by naturalism, but one can be a naturalist and entirely open to naturalism being false in a way that a Christian is not open to Christianity being false. In that sense, this term 'Christian philosophy' is oxymoronic.

He has plainly had some pushback from colleagues (and maybe students?); again from the interview:

Q. But isn’t this to mix philosophy and religion – more specifically Christianity? How can one combine a Christian faith with philosophy? I thought that philosophy is about reason, not about faith...A. There are some who see a problem here. There is skepticism among my philosophy colleagues. Several significant philosophers, however, see it differently. There are of course challenges, as it is for any philosophy or interpretation of life, but this is not something special for a Christian philosophy. 

Hmm. Returning to WLC's newsletter, Craig says:

Can you imagine the impact that [offering the Christian perspective] will have on the future of the university environment in Norway?

I would be surprised if it has much effect. For centuries philosophers and scientists have studied and taught from the Christian perspective, and all that has happened is that naturalism has become a more prominent position amongst those who think deeply about the world. It's a fair criticism of enquiry that what it uncovers is tainted by pre-existing beliefs, but that criticism cannot be levelled against the evidence that supports views that are counter to the prevailing view. That Christians have searched for centuries for evidence to support their view, but failed, doesn't make Christianity false, but it certainly counts against it. That the evidence disproves Christian beliefs is surely the final nail in the coffin, or stone in the tomb entrance.

Thanks again to Professor Vaags for taking the time to respond.

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Harris on Divine Morality

This debate, Does Good come from God?,  is an interesting contrast of styles. Some have 'awarded' the debate points to William Lane Craig, since he responds more formally to Sam Harris's points, while Harris sticks, mostly, to his agenda, and doesn't really expose WLC's argument. This may be because he didn't want to spend too much time on WLC's nonsense so as not to legitimise it.

But, while not formally objecting to WLC's particular argument, Harris did rather brilliantly expose the poverty of the divine command theory. In his original statement, Harris sets out his stall: because there is a worst possible state of affairs that we want to avoid, we can therefore safely assume that morality is the attempt to make the world better than that. And so, human flourishing determines morality. This is a pretty controversial position to say the least, and not necessarily true; I'm just putting that up there to set the scene for Harris to address WLC's Christian world view:

Ask yourselves: what is wrong with spending eternity in Hell?

So Lane Craig has laughed at the idea that well being could be a sufficient determinant for morality (which it may well not be), but his philosophy is built on the very same idea. And Harris goes on to show how the nature of Christian consequentialism can logically lead to immoral behaviour, and because of that, *is* an immoral doctrine to hold and preach.

Well I'm told it's rather hot there, for one. Dr Craig is not offering an alternative view of morality.The whole point of Christianity, or so it is imagined, is to safeguard the eternal well being of human souls. Now happily, there is absolutely no evidence that the Christian hell exists. I think we should look at the consequences of believing in this theistic framework in this world, and what these moral underpinnings actually would be.

Nine million children die each year before the age of five. Picture an Asian tsunami, of the sort we saw in 2004 that killed a quarter of a million people. One of those every ten days, killing only those under five. 24,000 children a day, a thousand an hour, seventeen or so a minute, that means before I can get to the end of this sentence some few children will have died in terror and agony. 

Think of the parents of these children. Think of the fact that most of these men and women believe in God, and are praying at this moment for their children to be spared. And their prayers will not be answered.

According to Dr Craig, this is all part of God's plan. 

Any God who would allow children by the millions to suffer and die in this way, and their parents to grieve in this way, either can do nothing to help them, or doesn't care to. Is therefore either impotent or evil. And worse than that, on Dr Craig's view, many of these people will be going to hell because they're praying to the wrong God. Think about that. Through no fault of their own, they were born into the wrong culture, where they got the wrong theology, and the missed the revelation. 

There are 1.2 billion people in India at this moment, most of them are Hindus, most of them therefore are polytheists. In Dr Craig's universe, no matter how good these people are, they are doomed. If you are praying to the monkey god, Hanuman, you are doomed. You'll be tortured in hell for eternity. Now is there the slightest evidence for this? No, it just says so in Mark 9, Matthew 13and Revelations 14. Perhaps you'll remember from The Lord of the Rings, it says that when the elves die, they go to Valinor, but they can be reborn in Middle Earth. I say that just as a point of comparison. 

So God created the cultural isolation of the Hindus; he engineered the circumstances of their deaths in ignorance of revelation, and then he created the penalty for this ignorance, which is an eternity of conscious torment in fire. 

On the other hand, on Dr Craig's account, your run-of-the-mill serial killer in America, who spent his life raping and torturing children, need only come to God, come to Jesus on Death Row, and after a final meal of fried chicken, he's going to spend an eternity in heaven, after death. One thing should be crystal clear to you, this vision of life has absolutely nothing to do with moral accountability.

Please notice the double standard that people like Dr Craig use to exonerate God from all this evil. We're told that God is kind and loving and just and intrinsically good, but when someone like me points out the rather compelling evidence that God is cruel and unjust because he visits suffering on innocent people of a scope and scale that would embarrass the most ambitious psychopath, we're told that God is mysterious. Who can understand God's will? This merely human understanding of God's will is precisely what believers use to establish his goodness in the first place. If something good happens to a Christian, he feels some bliss while praying, say, or he sees some positive changes in his life, then we're told that God is good. But when children by the tens of thousands are torn from their parents' arms and drowned, we're told that God is mysterious. This is how you [Christians] play tennis without the net. 

And I want to suggest to you that it is not only tiresome, when otherwise intelligent people speak this way, it is morally reprehensible. This kind of faith is the perfection of narcissism; God loves me, don't you know? He cured me of my eczema. He makes me feel so good while singing in church. And just when we were giving up hope he found a banker who was willing to give my mother a mortgage. Given all that this God of yours doesn't accomplish in the lives of others, given the misery that's being imposed on some helpless child at this instance, this kind of faith is obscene. To think in this way is to fail to reason honestly, or to care sufficiently for the suffering of other human beings. 

And if God is good and loving and just and kind, and he wanted to guide us morally with a book, why give us a book that supports slavery; why give us a book that admonishes us to kill people for imaginary crimes like witchcraft? Now, of course, there are ways of not taking these questions to heart. According to Dr Craig's Divine Command theory, God is not bound by moral duties, God does not have to be good, whatever He commands is good, so whenever He commands the Israelites to slaughter the Amalekites, that behaviour becomes intrinsically good because He commanded it.

Here we're being offered a psychopathic and psychotic moral attitude. Psychotic because it's completely delusional, there is no reason to believe that we live in a universe ruled over by an invisible monster, Yahweh. But is is psychopathic because this is a total detachment from the well-being of human beings, that so easily rationalises the slaughter of children.

I should point out here that the well-being of humans is being ignored by theists in this world, because of the pre-occupation with the afterlife, for which there is absolutely no evidence.

Just think about the Muslims, at this moment, who are blowing themselves up convinced that they are agents of God's will. There is absolutely nothing that Dr Craig can say against their behaviour in moral terms apart from his own faith based claim that they're praying to the wrong God.

If they had the right God what they were doing would be good, on Divine Command theory.

Now, I'm obviously not saying that Dr Craig or religious people are all psychopaths and psychotic, but this to me is the true horror of religion. It allows perfectly decent and sane people to believe by the billions what only lunatics could believe on their own. if you wake up tomorrow morning, thinking that saying a few Latin words over your pancakes is going to turn them into the body of Elvis Presley, you've lost your mind. But if you think more or less the same thing about a cracker and the body of Jesus, you're just a Catholic.

A good demonstration of how religion legitimises ridiculous beliefs.

And I'm not the first person to notice that it's a very strange loving God that would make salvation depend on believing in him on bad evidence. If you lived two thousand years ago, there was evidence galore and he was just performing miracles but apparently he got tired of being so helpful. And so now we all inherit this very heavy burden of the doctrine's implausibility, and the effort to square it with what we now know about the cosmos and what we know about the all too human origins of scripture, it becomes more and more difficult. It's not just the generic God that Dr Craig is recommending, it's God the Father and Jesus the Son. Christianity, on Dr Craig's account, is the true moral wealth of the world.

I hate to break it to you here at Notre Dame: Christianity is a cult of human sacrifice. Christianity is not a religion that repudiates human sacrifice, it is a religion that celebrates a single human sacrifice as though it were effective. God so loved the world that he gave his only Son - John 3:16. The idea is that Jesus suffered crucifixion so none may suffer hell. Except those billions in India. And billions like them throughout history.

This doctrine is astride a contemptible history of scientific ignorance and religious barbarism. We come from people who used to bury children in the foundations of new buildings as offerings to their imaginary gods. Just think about that. In vast numbers of societies, people would bury children in postholes, people like ourselves thinking that this would prevent an invisible being from knocking down their buildings. These are the sorts of people who wrote the Bible.

If there is a less moral framework than the one Dr Craig is proposing, I haven't heard of it.

Well said, Sam, imho.

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