The Problem of Evil - Common Sense Atheism

122 The Sufferings of Beasts
gift from God or a product of evolution or socially inculcated or stem
from some combination of these sources. Why should we suppose that
any of these sources would provide us with the means to make correct
value-judgments concerning matters that have nothing to do with the
practical concerns of everyday life? (As I said in Lecture 4, I think we
must be able to speak of correct value-judgments if the argument from
evil is to be at all plausible. An eminent philosopher of biology has said
in one place that God, if he existed, would be indescribably wicked
for having created a world like this one, and, in another place, that
morality is an illusion, an illusion that we are subject to because of the
evolutionary advantage that being subject to it confers. These two theses
do not seem to me to add up to a coherent position. 14 ) When I addressed
the question, How does one go about designing a world?, I (in effect)
advocated a form of modal skepticism: our modal intuitions, while they
are no doubt to be trusted when they tell us that the table could have
been placed on the other side of the room, are not to be trusted on
such matters as whether there could be a ‘‘regular’’ universe in which
there were higher sentient creatures that did not suffer. 15 And if this is
true, it is not surprising. Assuming that there are ‘‘modal facts of the
matter’’, why should we assume that God or evolution or social training
has given us access to modal facts knowledge of which is of no interest
to anyone but the metaphysician? God or evolution has provided us
with a capacity for making judgments about size and distance by eye
that is very useful in hunting mammoths and driving cars, but which
is of no use at all in astronomy. It seems that an analogous restriction
applies to our capacity for making modal judgments. How can we be
sure that an analogous restriction does not also apply to our capacity
for making value-judgments? My position is that we cannot be sure,
and that, for all we know, the value-judgments that people are inclined
to make about cosmic matters unrelated to the concerns of everyday
life are untrustworthy. (Not that our inclinations in this area are at
all uniform. I myself experience no inclination to come down on one
side or the other of the question of whether massive irregularity or vast
amounts of animal suffering is the graver defect in a world. I suspect
that others do experience such inclinations. If they don’t, of course,
then I’m preaching to the converted.) But then there is no prima facie
case for the thesis that the actual sufferings of beasts constitute a graver
defect in a world than does massive irregularity. Or, at least, there is no
case that is grounded in our intuitions about value. And in what else
could such a case be grounded?