I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs, a very endearing sight, I’m sure you’ll agree. And even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged onto a half submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters, who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature’s wonders, gentlemen. Mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that is when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.
Interestingly enough, C.S. Lewis (sort of) agrees:
Carnivorousness, with all that it entails, is older than humanity. Now it is impossible at this point not to remember...that man was not the first creature to rebel against the Creator, but that some older and mightier being long since became apostate and is now the emperor of darkness and (significantly) the Lord of this world...
...It seems to me, therefore, a reasonable supposition, that some mighty created power had already been at work for ill on the material universe...The intrinsic evil of the animal world lies in the fact that animals, or some animals, live by destroying each other...
....It is, of course, true that the immense mortality occasioned by the fact that many beasts live on beasts is balanced, in nature, by an immense birthrate, and it might seem, that if all animals had been herbivorous and healthy, they would mostly starve as a result of their own multiplication. But I take the fecundity and the death rate to be correlative phenomena. There was, perhaps, no necessity for such an excess of the sexual impulse: the Lord of this world thought of it as a response to carnivorousness – a double scheme for securing the maximum amount of torture...
...It may have been one of man’s functions to restore peace to the animal world, and if he had not joined the enemy he might have succeeded in doing so to an extent now hardly imaginable.
- The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis, Chapter 9 on “Animal Pain”
Lewis’ animal ethics are pretty silly in some ways, but when I read this chapter, I was shocked by how many of Brian Tomasik’s points were recognized by a Christian writing in the 1940s.
-Lord Vetinari from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.
Interestingly enough, C.S. Lewis (sort of) agrees:
- The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis, Chapter 9 on “Animal Pain”
Lewis’ animal ethics are pretty silly in some ways, but when I read this chapter, I was shocked by how many of Brian Tomasik’s points were recognized by a Christian writing in the 1940s.