Animal Suffering

As a note to anyone reading this, I may delete or significantly change this post later, as while I think I got through all the novel points I wanted to make, (at least, novel to me, I'm not familiar with anyone who has explored things in the way I intend to bellow) it could serve for me to add in things which have already been touched upon by other writers, to make the point more complete; and clarify my line of thought. None the less, I wanted to get these thoughts out there, because I think they're worth writing down for now. With that said, here's my thoughts here:

Alex O'Connor, an atheist YouTuber, often puts forth the problem of animal suffering as his key argument against Christianity. 

The general idea is that in Christianity, there may be at least some somewhat persuasive theodicies to explain human suffering, but none which truly account for animal suffering. Given that we expect God to be good and loving, then all else equal, animal suffering reduces the probability of Christianity being true, and indeed, of any form of theism positing a benevolent, all knowing, all powerful God. 

In the past I felt that this argument had a great degree of force, as it was greatly intuitive; but as I have reflected upon the argument, I have come to feel that it's force is ultimately illusory. Indeed, my general view of the various forms the problem of evil take is precisely that they are all, in the last analysis, pseudo-problems. 

To wit, this is not to dismiss the real and serious practical and existential reality of these problems. Psuedo-problems are resolved not by being solved, but being 'dissolved' that is, shown to be illusory; but it must be noted that until it has been dissolved, a pseudo-problem in principle remains a real problem in practice. Until the illusion has been shown for what it is, we cannot justly blame those who are caught up in it; for people have a right to trust their faculties. 

We can and should humbly acknowledge the fallibility of our faculties, and this intellectual humility should lead us to be open to at least hearing out a critique, but it is not reasonable to doubt our faculties have any reliability whatsoever, for in that case we could not even rely upon them enough to justify acting upon the doubt. Such a doubt undercuts itself, and so our faculties, though fallible, must be held to have some degree of reliability. They must at least have enough reliability that we can identify and dismiss certain extreme forms of skepticism which would undercut even the very doubts they put forth. There is such a thing as reasonable doubt, such a thing as reasonable skepticism, but any form of doubt or skepticism which would seek to undercut reason itself is not one of them. There are many paradoxes and intellectual difficulties in philosophy (and also, of course, in theology) and in our every day lives that we have to deal with, but as St. Cardinal John Henry Newman would say "A thousand difficulties do not make a single doubt". 

Thus, it is one thing for the skeptic to point out these difficulties, this is valuable, as it points out avenues of inquiry we can pursue to deepen our understanding on a matter. However, it's another thing for him to advocate for a complete renunciation of all beliefs on those grounds; for then we should renounce belief that advocacy is worth listening too; and so ignore them, and in that case, we'd miss out on the value of the paradoxes they would point out, and so on the avenues of inquiry they enlighten us of; and that would be a terrible shame. Thus, precisely because I must listen to the skeptics regarding difficulties, I therefore must not listen to them when they advocate for their doubts. 

However, as it stands; I am here taking up more the position of the skeptic, I am here today to advocate for a doubt; a doubt in the soundness of the argument from animal suffering, and so, a doubt in what moral intuition grounds are belief in the premises of the argument, that animal suffering is a gratuitous evil. As per what I noted above, a reasonable reader should be willing to at least hear my case out (provided, of course, they have the time: I do tend to be a bit verbose) but by my own principles, that same reader ought to be wary of too quickly doubting their faculties in this matter. I myself advise caution in considering my argument; for while I think my view is true, and my arguments sound; I also think they can over-applied. I think our intuitions on the evil of animal suffering being gratuitous are a malfunction, but I do not say that our moral intuitions on the evil of the matter are wrong 'all together'. With that, Consider the following arguments:

The Balance of Moral Intuition

it seems easy enough to conceptualize how our moral intuitions could malfunction in the human case.

 Thus there is a proper reaction we ought to have against certain egregious crimes as rape, torture, and murder; we ought to be greatly angry with those who have committed these crimes, and experience great sorrow for those who are the victims, all the more so if they are persons we know. Our anger and sorrow should not overcome our reason (though the more intimate the crime, the more understandable it would be if we were momentarily overcome) but reason itself already gives room for quite a degree of anger and sorrow; for there is just cause in the injustice of the crime, and the greater the crime, the greater the intensity of anger at the criminal and sorrow for the victim is justified. We would not want someone to go on a rampage in blind rage, nor waste their lives away in sorrow and grief, but to have intense emotions in the moment, and to hold onto the memories causing those emotions and allowing them to occasionally stir or rekindle the emotions back up when appropriate (rather than to resist such a motion, as though resisting temptation) until justice is acquired and either healing of the victim or commemoration of their life at appropriate times (funerals and anniversaries of death and such like) are accomplished, this is all perfectly within the domain of reason and good morals. 

Clearly though, we might feel there is something wrong with someone who feels no emotion whatsoever at these. We might accept it for those who have to work frequently within criminals and victims, as they have to have a slightly harder skin in order to do the job of justice, healing, embalming, and so forth; and again for those who have suffered great trauma in their life to the point that their emotions were dulled form overuse, we can sympathize and accept these; but for those who have no such significant reason for lax emotions in response to great injustice, we should feel at least there is something off. Again, perhaps some defect of birth has prevented them from developing rightly, and so we will not blame them for it; but for those who could feel, but who (as noted above parenthetically) refuse to feel it as though resisting temptation, or who have done so so often as to not feel such things, and all this without any real reason; such a failure of emotion seems also a failure of morals. One who can feel emotion but refuses, or who has refused for so long that the emotion no longer comes, there is something wrong with them.

Likewise, in the equal and opposite direction; if someone where to feel the same rage and anguish as they do for those committing and suffering murder for some those committing and suffering say, accidentally bumping into someone in a hallway, then we'd say that there is something very wrong here. We'd suspect at least something is off, some imbalance of chemicals, some neurological trauma; because that degree of rage or sorrow is not proportionate. If the issue was not explicable medically though, then it would have to have a moral source. it would bespeak of a moral fault on the person, that they were so unreasonable in their anger, so hysterical in their sorrow, that simply seeing or hearing of another bumping into another would seem to them worth the same degree of sorrow or rage as rape, torture, or murder. 

Clearly then, we all have some sense of how moral intuitions can have a proper degree, and can also have defect or excess; which defect or excess may be reasonable for circumstances, or if not, may have a medical explanation, but which finally, may well have a moral explanation, and so suggest moral fault on the side of the person lacking a moral intuition and feeling properly aligned with reason. 

Now I have given examples of cases of our moral intuitions with other human beings, and this makes sense; both because we spend most of our time around one another, and because we have evolved in large part in response to each other; so that both our instincts and our reasoning is best trained in dealing with our fellow human beings. We can measure our intuitive emotional response by the standard of experience to see what is or is not proportionate. Animals however, are clearly in many ways like us, and in many other ways different than us; so it is reasonable to suppose things are not apt to translate perfectly well one to the other. As regards our similarities, there is surely great import; but the differences are apt to be relevant to discerning whether our intuitions on animal suffering are proportionate to the case or not; for given certain differences between humans and non-human animals, there is apt to be a corresponding difference in the proportion of reasonable moral intuition and emotion on that account, and as reason is the proper measure in the above cases to determine whether someone's moral intuition and emotions responding to human pain, suffering, and loss are in due proportion, so shall it be regarding our response to animal suffering. 

Suffering from Animal Suffering

Now the first thing I would like to note on this topic is this, only humans suffer 'due' to the problem of animal suffering. To be clear, I am not saying animals do not suffer; it is most sorrowfully evident that they do, and in great degree, and it is this which leads to the problem of animal suffering in the first place. What I mean by saying that they don't suffer from the 'problem' of animal suffering though, is that it is not the 'abstract idea' of animal suffering, considered precisely in the abstract, that causes animals suffering. We humans, on the other hand, may be genuinely distressed even at the mere 'idea' of this, and all the more at it's being factual. This is the case even when ourselves are not personally undergoing the suffering animals undergo, or indeed, even when we are not presently observing it happening. The mere thought if it's occurring, of it's even so much as possibly occurring, is something which can inspire great sorrow and anger in the hearts of human beings, and rightfully so. 

While I will argue that we go too far in our moral intuitions regarding animals; I none the less want to make clear that I do believe that we humans have a grave responsibility over animals. Thus I believe that the idea that they might needlessly suffer, that they in fact are needlessly suffering; when we could prevent it, should cause us great sorrow. Likewise, the idea that there is some personal agent causing this needless suffering, by neglect, sadism, hatred of animals, selfishness, or some other such malice, this too should cause us great anger and rage at such persons, even at ourselves in cases where we fail to do what we can. The rage and sorrow we have however, ought to be in proportion to the multitude and magnitude of the evils suffered by and committed against animals, subtracted in turn from the extent to which our minds can handle such great emotion while still handling our other responsibilities.

As we are finite beings, and as the evils of this world are so great, we cannot suffer in full the emotions proportionate to the full magnitude and multitude of the evils of this world. We would not merely go mad, but would immediately die on account of the fact that the quantity of chemicals needed to simulate such emotion in our brain would fill oceans, if not whole ocean planets. Our skulls would not last under the pressure. This is the case were we to try to take on a sorrow and rage strictly proportionate even to the evils animals undergo, let alone the evils which we humans suffer. The whole universe, indeed, not even infinitely many universes, could contain the chemicals needed to experience such rage and sorrow, much less so our poor human skulls. 

However, as noted above, reason is the measure of due proportion here, and so the due proportion must be measured by whether our other responsibilities free us to feel such things, and also, as to whether such feeling would serve the preventing, reducing, and/or ending of such evils and miseries. If our feelings are useless to doing or contributing to such good, and all the more so inhibitive to doing other goods which we hare responsible for, then we ought resist any movement in our hearts towards such excess emotion. However, if the emotion measures to be in line with our responsibilities and to have some help, then we are not only permitted, but obliged to feel greatly about the matter, in rage against criminals and sorrow for victims. This is true for both human and animal victims of crime. 

Despite all this, as I noted; animals themselves do not actually suffer 'due' to the problem of animal suffering as we do. They simply do not reflect upon it in the way we do. Pigs do not go to pig university to write philosophical papers on the injustice pig slaughter. Deer do not draw up and hand out elaborate posters and pamphlets on the evils of deer hunting. Cows do not congregate amongst one another in city streets to give and hear public speeches on the indignity of farm conditions. We might want to propose that they may do some primitive equivalent to this; but even the most primitive of human tribes with the most obscure of human languages still have a certain recognizable structure in how such things are communicated; but animals simply do not. 

Hence likewise; The Alpha Wolf does not get voted into his office, he wins it through force. The Elephant Matriarch may be preferred due to her memory and age, but she comes in through precisely that, preference, not by some convention set by constitution or covenant. Animal social organization is typically fixed for a given species, changing at most from season to season, or by some environmental trigger; and is thus evidently guided by something more in-built for the species. Very few non-human animals vary organization within the species without such triggers, and even these don't come anywhere near to the diversity and complexity of human organization. Animals have societies, but they do not make social 'institutions' as we humans do. Animals can think and learn, but they do not formalize their learning into communicable and developable 'systems of thought' as we humans do. Yet it is by means of such systems and institutions that we humans work to communicate our ethical concerns to one another, both about the evils we humans suffer, and also the evils of our fellow inhabitants of this planet suffer. Animals simply show no sign of this kind and degree of formal abstract reasoning. They can have a kind of informal, intuitive, concrete kind of reasoning; they can make diverse and complex associations between things, understand particulars, empathize with emotions both of members of their own species and outside; they have many similarities to us leading them to have a great depth of being, movement, and life; but there is clearly a cut off point. They don't systematize, they don't formalize, they don't institute. 

However, dealing with something like the problem of animal suffering 'requires' this. We have formal arguments dealing with systems of thought communicated by means of institutes of higher learning, and it is the midst of all this that we humans suffer greatly at these ever more clear and distinct thoughts on a variety of matters. We develop our thoughts, and suffer for it. Animals don't do this . . .  ever. And so, this is a pain they simply cannot suffer. Hence again, animals do not suffer due to the problem of animal suffering itself. 

As such we have to understand that when we reflect upon the problem of animal suffering, the very suffering we undergo 'due' to that reflection may itself be 'amplifying our moral intuitions' beyond what is reasonable. The more we reflect upon the suffering of others, be they human or animal, the more we suffer for their sake; but animals litterally can't do this; not for us, not for each other, and not even for themselves. As terrible as animal suffering is, and as aware as animals may be of the suffering they undergo, that awareness does not arise to the level of a considering their own suffering in the abstract; as some terrible idea and image detached from all causes; from all effects, as though some terrible eternal torment bound up in a single idea. Animals do suffer, they even have a certain acquaintance with abstract ideas in how they encounter them in the particulars; but for them it is always and only 'in the particulars'. Since the do not formalize, they never truly separate the idea of their suffering from their actual concrete case of suffering; since they do not systematize, the do not work out the implications of that now separate idea with other realities to any degree; since they do not institutionalize, they do not communicate these ideas to see how others might reflect upon their formalisms and systems to develop them. Humans can and do this, and we suffer for it. Animals don't. 

The suffering of animals is contained entirely in the particular realty and moments of their injury; but human suffering not only includes this, it 'transcends' it. Both animals and humans have the abstract idea of their own suffering, but humans alone have this abstract idea 'in' the abstract i.e. have it in a manner simultaneously united to the suffering concretely (as animals do) and 'apart' from it. Humans suffer twice, and the second time often endures much longer than the first. One can forget the initial moment of suffering after a while, it is harder to forget the 'idea' of one's suffering. Animals do not have that problem. Indeed, they don't have 'any' problem; for a 'problem' by its very nature, is a species of uniquely human suffering. Problems are formal, systematic, and frequently institutional realities; and animals have no participation in such things. So likewise, animals may suffer, but unlike human beings, animals do not have 'the problem' of animal suffering. Humans alone have this problem; humans alone suffer from it; and this is something we ought to keep in mind when considering it; lest we suffer more than we need. 

Consider however how this relates to the gratuity of animal suffering. 

The Measure of Animal Suffering

When we consider something gratuitous, we say it is such on account of the fact that it is beyond what is intelligible. We're led to ask: How can the idea of an all loving God even 'make sense' in light of animal suffering? Well I'd note that the above makes this problem seem a lot less terrible than it is. Yes animal suffering is terrible, but it's 'animal' not human. It's informal, unsystematized, and uninstituted, and so does not strike 'them' with the harshness and inviolability as such things strike us humans with. Even the most nominal of nominalist still feels the force of certain abstract realities, even if they don't hold them to be real or even mental; for they feel the force of the formalism (and all the behavioral and mental rigor that goes into it) of the system (all the pain of thought and reflection applied to it) the instituion (all the effort and cooperation of building it, upholding it, and developing it) for these are not abstract realities or mentalities, they are concrete realities of uniquely human behavior, really present in human reality, really sensed and remembered by us, and really having effects upon us; and at times greatly wonderful to us; but made all the more horrible to us when we feel that all this effort is wasted in failing to produce good, or worse, perveted by being brought to cause and even amplify injustice. Animals do not suffer this. Animal suffering does not include this. Human suffering however, does; even the suffering of an individual man will include the horrible feeling of his own thoughts upon his suffering, in all his institutional training, all his own genius of systematizing, all the formal tools he uses to try and deal with this situation; and yet the apparent futility of it all. Animals feel none of this in their suffering; they simply don't have the faculties for it. 

As such, there is a fundemental issue of equating animal suffering with human suffering. Animal suffering is immense and great, this is sure; but it is still 'finite'. Human suffering however, even a single moment of it, has something of the infinite in it; because it has something which is cut off from the very instance of the suffering. We suffer not from this or that particular, but from the very 'idea' of our suffering, and in our mind, that idea is not limited to the particular which brought it to mind, it stretches out, extends without limit to all the possible things we could have done to avoid it but failed to, all the people who could be helping us but aren't, all the things our tormenters could be doing other than causing us to suffer, but by their ignorance, weakness, or malice, have turned instead to cause us pain. Animals can't think about all that, they only have the current moment and whoever is presently there. Yes they try all means they can to escape pain, yes if the pain is caused by say, an abusive owner, this will amplify their sorrow; and should they escape they can even have great psychological trauma; but on a fundamental level, it is a trauma that is nowhere near as 'deep' as even the trauma a human can suffer. One might argue this is merely a matter of degree; but this is false. 

Animal suffering is finite even in its potential; and while human suffering is always actually finite; its potential opens up to the infinite. At any given Time we can only consider so many dimensions and aspects of a given concept, and so can only suffer finitely at a given Time on that account; but the concept itself none the less opens up to the infinite; in all it's possible variations; so that over time, in our consideration of our suffering and it's injustice, there is no upper limit to how much we 'could' end up suffering. Animals are bound only to the suffering in the initial moments of abuse, and to the memories of those concrete cases. New memories are frequently sufficient to heal animals of trauma; memories of kindness, patience, love; and we humans have the means to solve that. Humans however can deal with trauma which is so deep and complex that there simply is no solution for it, at least, not one that our fellow humans can provide; not by their own power. In a certain sense, animals are far more practical and pragmatic about their trauma; while we humans are more impractical, more existential in how we approach it. 

A human can spend his entire life writing poetry, fiction, or any number of such things due to a single case of trauma, indeed, even a trauma not personally but vicariously experienced; as when hearing a horror story of the life one suffered, or indeed, even hearing the terrible suffering of a single animal; and in all this they still wouldn't be fully healed. Animals don't do this; they don't even feel the need for it as we humans would. At the very least, I'm aware of no evidence of animals doing such things. 

Human and Animal Dignity

Clearly then animals do not suffer as terribly as humans do. Still, they do suffer terribly, and so one might be inclined to ask how this is to be accounted for. Even if animal suffering is not as bad as we might initially think it is, that does not mean it is not bad enough to be gratuitous. 

Before going into this however, I think we need to consider again the nature of moral intuition. 

It seems to me that there are three ways of sincerely (and so, morally) posing the problem of animal suffering, or indeed, of posing any moral concern one puts forth. For whatever the moral evil of concern, the person putting forth the concern is sincere in their putting it forth if and only if, they either (i) have a direct moral intuition about the case which they are articulating, (ii) have a good positive relationship with someone who has such an intuition, such that while they themselves may or many not intuit the evil, they may trust the intuition of the other well enough to believe there is such a problem, or (iii) they may have neither personal intuition or a relationship with one who has such an intuition; but may have moral concern enough to consider in the abstract such persons as may have that; and be concerned to consider such concerns in the abstract, so as to explore their ethical implications, and come to the right ethical conclusion about them. 

The philosopher is typically (though not always) in camp iii, either because they genuinely lack the friends or intuitions, or because their responsibility as philosophers requires them to momentarily place themselves in that mindset; even if they do normally have such intuitions or friends; they have to try to be neutral to them, bracketing such concerns that the ethical scenario can present itself to them most clearly. 

In light of this however, I need to note that philosophy and theology, or really academia as such, are 'not' the proper domain of ethical consideration per se. Academics are theoritcians, but ethics is not a matter of theory, but of practice; not a matter of conjecture, but of every day life and lived experience; not a matter of one's own insight, but of real life. Theoreticians are useful for handling ethical issues of a more new and abstruse sort; ethical concerns requiring specialized knowledge of some special field that is just emerging, and so to which there is no great history of applying ethical answers to; for such things a degree of ethical theorizing by competent philosophers and theologians is apt to be required in the beginning; but this is because there is as of yet little to no data of lived expereince to go on; and so all one has is the abstract moral principles to govern one's behavior. As real life catches up to the application of such matters though; the ethical principles of theoreticians begin to fade through the trial of various events they simply could't have anticipated in working up their principles. The initial principles are apt to have some value, but as legislators cannot anticipate all possible scenarios in writing laws, so that laws have to be treated with a view to their imperfection, so too are ethical systems and theories to be treated. The source of the 'data' of ethics and moral theology, outside of abstract reasoning, is the actual lived experience of persons placed in diverse ethical situations. it speaks of something perversely detached (as one with a deficient moral intuition, as spoken of above) for one to fail to attend to the data of people's lived experience in being put through real ethical dilemmas of real life, and dealing with the real consequences of them. 

The reason for this is rather simple and straightforward. Ethics and moral theology are simply practical reasoning applied to question of value, and when we deal with the value of individuals as to how reason tells us in what circumstances if any we are to respect and revere them, then we are dealing with that value we call 'dignity'. In turn, when that value is rooted in the kind of being they are, then we are dealing with 'ontological dignity' (as opposed to moral dignity, dealing with how they choose to act; or again, with social and existential dignity; dealing respectively with their material standard of living on the one hand, and quality of their relationships to themselves, others, and reality as a whole on the other) as reason is the measure of moral intuitions as to whether they are sufficient for what is good, or either deficient or excessive to what is good. A good will is a will in line with right reason, an ill will (malice) is one out of line with right reason. Likewise a right reason is one in line with what is valid, true, and neutral, while wrong reason is one out of line with it; which wrong may be caused either by ill will, or else, by a malfunction of faculties. 

We have to consider, in any case, the nature of the kind of being we're dealing with, for this will inform us of their ontological dignity, and so of the measure with which evils done to them must be approached. 

I have noted above in some detail how animals and humans are different in what they can suffer, on account of humans being able to approach abstract matters 'in the abstract' (via formalism, systematizing, and instituting institutions for aid) while animals are fundamentally unable to do this. Already this could ground a morally relevant difference in kind between humans and animals, but I shall explore this a bit more to show why this is so. 

For consider that Animals may frequently be trained to imitate humans, and some of the more social animals can perhaps come to such things; but for most animals it is a difference in kind, and for those higher animals, If it is a difference in degree, it is of so great a degree it may as well be a difference in kind. As quantity has a quality all its own; so likewise after a certain point, a sufficiently wide difference in degree just is a difference in kind. When a man plans, he rarely needs a precise difference between a little bit of a given resource or a lot of it; the rough distinction is adequate for his purposes. However, realities fitting that rough distinction are still useful for very different kinds of things; a little money cannot only do less in degree than a lot, it can do less even in kind. So likewise the difference between a little and a lot, even though by strict measure is a matter of degree, is none the less, in the practical order of planning, a difference in kind; so too then in the order of thought about such orders, is 'a lot' and 'a little' a difference in kind; for they are two kinds of 'degree'. So likewise even if by empirical measure the difference in humans and animals is frequently more of degree; still in practical considierations, and so, in the metaphysical correlates of those practical considerations; the difference is not merely of degree, but of kind. All the more so the greater the distance in degree between them.

Quantitive differences 'become' qualitative after a certain point; even when they remain commensurate; but qualitative differences are discerned by the qualitatively distinct effects they can produce; where the effect is no longer measurable in greater or lesser degree, but must be sorted into different categories of effect. So though the cause differs from other causes only in degree, the effect differs in kind, thus indicating a different in kind in the cause, on account of having a new causal power that causes of lesser degree lack, on account of their lesser degree of the relevant quantity. Such then is the difference between humans and the higher animals; a genuinely difference in kind, arising from a difference in degree. For the lower animals, it is not even a difference in kind from degree, it is a difference even in kind from kind; as they d not even approach us as by a limit, as the higher animals do. 

Thus we see, even if the measures along which animals and humans are differentiated are merely matters of degree; in the practical (and thus, moral) domain; it still inevitably implies a difference in kind. i.e. the ontological kind of humans and animals are different, and so in terms of moral consideration; humans have an undeniably higher dignity than animals do. Indeed, as per the earlier explored point on infinity; human dignity is infinite, while animal dignity is finite. Correspondingly, human suffering is an infinite indignity, while animal suffering, through a real indignity, is only a finite one. 

God's Justice in Animal Suffering

The consequence of this though is that justification for the indignity animals suffer in their suffering need only be a finite one. And I'd say that many Christinas have in the past already given adequate answers for this. Human suffering is harder to answer due to it's infinite nature, but this is answered through the just punishment of an infinite sin of man, and is resolved by God's answer through the infinite sacrifice of his son, and offering of the opportunity of infinite joy and avoidance of infinite suffering through union with God in heaven. Animal suffering is, in this measure, rather easily answered. Animals suffer, but it is due to the choices of personal beings; namely humans and fallen angels. God did not need to make the world such that they would suffer, but their suffering serves a purpose in aiding and preparing humans, in line with their free will, for the coming of Christ. Hence the suffering of animals through animal sacrifice was used as a symbol for Christ's sacrifice; and as a diverse means by which God, to many cultures, could teach lessons to man, again to prepare him for the greater lesson of the gospel, by which he may evade the just consequences for his sin; which is a neccesery consequence of his free will. The pains and sufferings of animals then, since they serve this higher purpose, seem justified as a means to this greater end.

Animal Innocence

one may however object that, even if animal suffering is 'useful' for human salvation, that does not make it just; and that it is egregious to suggest this, in light of animal innocence. 

However human children are innocent as well, and if one accepts the typical theodicies for the suffering of children, it should trivially follow for the suffering of animals, in light of the preceding points on animal's having a real but lesser dignity. Their dignity does demand an answer for their suffering; but they are not equal to human beings. It is not accurate to call animals innocent, not because they are guilty, but because they are not moral agents. It is like calling a rock blind because it has no eyes, or the earth numb because it has no pain sensors. This is perhaps valuable as a metaphor in some context, but taken litterally, it is nonsense. So likewise, a moral intuition who still takes issue with animal suffering at this point bespeaks of one which is over-reacting, as one spoken of above. Reason does not measure it in proportion. Animal suffering should distress our conscience, but not so much as to treat them as equal to humans in dignity; and so n to so much that their dignity should make us feel that their suffering somehow violates the coherence and meaning of the existence of a good and loving God. 

Rather, in light of all the good animals experience, and for all that they suffer, they do experience much good, (for people often exaggerate how much they suffer; for they do suffer terribly when they suffer, and they do suffer frequently; still thy also frequently have happiness and contentment) and this good is a sign of God's benevolence to them, as their suffering is a singn of his benevolence to us; that they can suffer in our stead, that we may learn our lesson, and come to him; that their suffering may cease.