Sorry for the late response! I meant to respond earlier but forgot. Big fan of the blog!
First of all, I don't have anything like certainty in bug sentience nor in theism. So even if I concluded they were incompatible with each other, I would just think that bugs were probably not sentient, but were likely enough to be sentient for the EV of tending to bugs to be very high.
Second, I think theists will need some theory on which God allows many terrible things to happen (see here for one such story https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-archon-abandonment-theodicy). But whatever your theory is of why God doesn't make the world utopia and paradise can also generalize to bugs. In short, I don't think the exact amount of evil matters much evidentially--once you realize that the world is filled with seemingly pointless evil, whatever it is that explains the presence of pointless evil should generalize.
Even if the world was pretty nice, it would still appear on its face to be 0% as good as a world God could design. Theism thus shouldn't give you a big update against the world having lots of bad stuff.
I agree it might work for theism. I don't think it works *at all* for Christianity, for the reasons that I outlined. It is not just wild that God permits evil—it is the fact that insect suffering is not included in his *teachings,* and that makes *Christian morality* wildly incorrect. Which is quite different from evil being permitted—it instead suggest Christ himself is morally insufficient as a teacher. I don't think your response applies to the argument I'm making in the essay at all.
Oh oops, I didn't actually reread your essay before commenting. I think Christians will need some explanaation of why God left out lots of important teachigns (e.g. the germ theory of disease!)
Probably true! I just think the *magnitude* of wrongness that Christian *ethics* would have to be to leave out insect suffering entirely should suggest that Christian ethics are wildly incomplete. We weren't given germ theory, true, and that killed a lot of people. But it is not the worst catastrophe ever, and Christ by healing the sick at least showed signs to us that disease was bad and we ought to solve it. Why haven't any of the saints given a damn about insects? Why has Christianity completely turned a blind eye?
Thought provoking piece! I don't agree with BB that bug suffering is as bad as human holocausts, so I think it's important to poke and prod such a theory from all angles.
That said, while Christianity says nothing about insect suffering directly, I think there are sections of the new and old testament that can be read in a pro-animal welfare way. The writer Matthew Scully is the excellent at calling those areas out, if you want to explore his writing. There are also good posts on this topic by a Christian EA group: https://christandcounterfactuals.substack.com/p/should-christians-be-concerned-about-animal-welfare-part-1
Here are just a couple bible quotes that, if you squint, could be interpreted as meaning we should extend our care even to insects:
- In the Gospel of Mark, God says to “preach the gospel to every creature”.
- Another interesting case to consider is that of the post-flood second covenant, where we are told of “the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth."
I am no biblical scholar. Maybe I am misunderstanding. But the words are the words, and "every creature" includes the bugs!
Appreciate it! I agree that Christianity may be concerned with animal welfare, and correspondingly insect welfare. It just seems wild to me that there is not even *one* patron saint of the insects, *one* commandment about veganism, not even *one* mention of insects specifically, in all the Bible and I believe all Catholic doctrine. Of course, the Israelites weren't in a position to *do* much about insect suffering. But if God is omniscient, then he should know that we would reach this point, and would want to offer us guidance as to how to solve it—if it's really "the biggest problem ever."
Genesis 1:26 in the NIV: Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.
This pretty clearly states that humans have "dominion", whatever that is, over birds, fish presumably including someother aquatic creatures, livestock and wild animals (I'm guessing mammals since all the rest are wild animals by contemporary definitions), and creatures that move along the ground (snakes? not sure). I'm no Hebrew scholar, maybe one can chime in, but insects don't seem to be anywhere on this list. Unless they're in the last section?
I think your concern is not that there is moral evil (including insect suffering), which any religion will have to deal with. You’re concerned specifically that Christianity does not teach on insect suffering if it is the greatest moral tragedy ever. Presumably, many Christians will deny that insect suffering is a moral tragedy. But even if it is, several theological considerations may explain why Christian teaching does not include it. Some formulations of biblical inerrancy say only that everything the Bible teaches is true (with respect to moral and religious matters), not that the Bible teaches everything that is true. These doctrines allow that there are true moral propositions that we do not learn from the Bible. You might say that given the seriousness of insect suffering, we should expect that the Bible contains teaching on insect suffering. In response, the Christian might say that there are general moral principles in the Bible from which specific moral claims about insects can be derived. If the Bible teaches that one should respect all creatures and not cause excessive suffering, this might imply claims about insect suffering. One might also view Christian revelation as contextual. Since the Christian scriptures were written in an ancient historical and cultural context, it might be inappropriate to include teaching on insect welfare that emerges in the effective altruism movement.
Precisely! If Christianity is true, then I think it's almost certainly the case that there are moral truths that aren't in the Bible, simply because too many new moral considerations arise, and I think you're absolutely right that there are general moral principles.
You're also right that I'm going to disagree because of scope. I literally cannot imagine suffering hundreds of millions of times worse than all human civilization has gone through. That's just way too big a number. Not only would that make the Bible incomplete, it would make it morally trivial.
(And if human populations really do increase insect suffering, Christ should have been *way* more emphatic about increasing human population size and eliminating habitats. That *is* something the ancients could have done something about, historic context or no.)
Based on your title and introduction, I thought you would go in another direction here.
Consider these quotes from BB in There Should Be Less Nature:
“In all other contexts, we recognize that creating a being isn’t always good for it. It’s positively wrong to bring a being into existence if you know it will have a brief and wretched life. But almost every creature in nature has a brief and wretched life.”
“In population ethics, it’s relatively uncontroversial that there’s something bad about creating a person who lives a miserable life. If there was a button that created a person with a shitty life, it would be bad to just keep pressing the button.“
If this is true, what possible reason could an O3 God give for pressing the button trillions and trillions of times? As BB says, this would be “positively wrong.” A theist who believes in both insect suffering of this magnitude and a perfect, purely good God has to tie themselves in the most twisted knots to reconcile these plainly conflicting beliefs.
BB has given arguments before on the problem of evil, so I figured he would have an escape hatch for this one (wildly implausible as it may be). I agree with you, however, and BB has actually made me *less* inclined to theism than I was before by making me aware of the sheer magnitude of animal suffering.
>BB has given arguments before on the problem of evil, so I figured he would have an escape hatch for this one (wildly implausible as it may be).
Yes, in the form of the Archon theodicy. It explains suffering on earth by positing it as a necessary ingredient in making an eternal afterlife all that much more blissful. Unless heaven is overwhelmingly occupied by positively elated ants and termites, I don’t think it or any other conventional theodicy can be made to apply in this case.
The problem of God's silence on insect suffering is just another form of the problem of evil.
Consider this:
It wasn't really until the 1800-1900s or so that handwashing became standard practice.
Before then, millions, possibly billions of innocent children died from diseases that could have easily been prevented from hand washing.
So why didn't God tell us in scripture to wash our hands?
Why didn't Jesus incorporate handwashing into, say, the eucharistic rite?
One (partial) way out of this is to think that (for complicated reasons) God has not disclosed to humans all morally-relevant facts (e.g. that washing hands will prevent needless deaths, or that insects might suffer).
At one point, Swinburne tries to explain why God gave us imperfect knowledge about the causes and effects of our actions — why it is, for example, that we don’t always know that a seemingly harmless action might actually torture many insects:
“[One] reason why it is good that the human race should sometimes be in an initial situation of considerable ignorance about the causes and effects of our actions, is this. If God abolished the need for rational inquiry and gave us from childhood strong true beliefs about the causes of things, that would make it too easy for us to make moral decisions. As things are in the actual world, most moral decisions are decisions taken in uncertainty about the consequences of our actions. I do not know for certain that if I smoke, I will get cancer; or that if I do not give money to some charity, people will starve. So we have to make our moral decisions on the basis of how probable it is that our actions will have various outcomes—how probable it is that I will get cancer if I continue to smoke (when I would not otherwise get cancer), or that someone will starve if I do not give. Since probabilities are so hard to assess, it is all too easy to persuade yourself that it is worth taking the chance that no harm will result from the less demanding decision (the decision which you have a strong desire to make). And even if you face up to a correct assessment of the probabilities, true dedication to the good is shown by doing the act which, although it is probably the best action, may have no good consequences at all.” (Could a Good God Permit so Much Suffering? A Debate, pp. 52-53.)
Amos Wollen talks about it on the EA Christian substack
Interesting! But I don't think this is an out for anyone who believes insect suffering is millions of times worse than all human suffering forever. Germ ignorance killed a lot of people, and that already seems bad enough for me—but disease preventable by handwashing was not the biggest moral catastrophe *ever*. It's absolutely puzzling for an insect welfarist that God makes not committing adultery *one of the ten commandments* and does not spare a single word for the insects.
Insect suffering is not that hard of an idea to come up with—a lot easier than the germ theory of disease. The Buddhists and Jains and certain Hindus came up with it. None of the Christian saints did. On BB's view, that makes the Christian saints considerably less virtuous than the Jains, since insect suffering is more important of an issue than any kind of human suffering. That seems incompatible with Christianity—at least, any kind of Christianity that believes in saints (as does Swinburne's faith, Eastern Orthodoxy).
Maybe it’s not an out for a christian who believes insects suffering is millions of times worse than human suffering.
But it doesn’t have to be millions of times worse for a Christian to care about it and make it a top moral priority. It probably just needs to be as bad as millions of children dying from lack of handwashing?
Sorry for the late response! I meant to respond earlier but forgot. Big fan of the blog!
First of all, I don't have anything like certainty in bug sentience nor in theism. So even if I concluded they were incompatible with each other, I would just think that bugs were probably not sentient, but were likely enough to be sentient for the EV of tending to bugs to be very high.
Second, I think theists will need some theory on which God allows many terrible things to happen (see here for one such story https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-archon-abandonment-theodicy). But whatever your theory is of why God doesn't make the world utopia and paradise can also generalize to bugs. In short, I don't think the exact amount of evil matters much evidentially--once you realize that the world is filled with seemingly pointless evil, whatever it is that explains the presence of pointless evil should generalize.
Even if the world was pretty nice, it would still appear on its face to be 0% as good as a world God could design. Theism thus shouldn't give you a big update against the world having lots of bad stuff.
That being said, hearing "big fan of the blog" is such a bizarre and wonderful thing to hear for you. I come at you because of respect! :)
I agree it might work for theism. I don't think it works *at all* for Christianity, for the reasons that I outlined. It is not just wild that God permits evil—it is the fact that insect suffering is not included in his *teachings,* and that makes *Christian morality* wildly incorrect. Which is quite different from evil being permitted—it instead suggest Christ himself is morally insufficient as a teacher. I don't think your response applies to the argument I'm making in the essay at all.
Oh oops, I didn't actually reread your essay before commenting. I think Christians will need some explanaation of why God left out lots of important teachigns (e.g. the germ theory of disease!)
Probably true! I just think the *magnitude* of wrongness that Christian *ethics* would have to be to leave out insect suffering entirely should suggest that Christian ethics are wildly incomplete. We weren't given germ theory, true, and that killed a lot of people. But it is not the worst catastrophe ever, and Christ by healing the sick at least showed signs to us that disease was bad and we ought to solve it. Why haven't any of the saints given a damn about insects? Why has Christianity completely turned a blind eye?
It's certainly a puzzle, but seems to differ from other puzzles in degree rather than kind.
Thought provoking piece! I don't agree with BB that bug suffering is as bad as human holocausts, so I think it's important to poke and prod such a theory from all angles.
That said, while Christianity says nothing about insect suffering directly, I think there are sections of the new and old testament that can be read in a pro-animal welfare way. The writer Matthew Scully is the excellent at calling those areas out, if you want to explore his writing. There are also good posts on this topic by a Christian EA group: https://christandcounterfactuals.substack.com/p/should-christians-be-concerned-about-animal-welfare-part-1
Here are just a couple bible quotes that, if you squint, could be interpreted as meaning we should extend our care even to insects:
- In the Gospel of Mark, God says to “preach the gospel to every creature”.
- Another interesting case to consider is that of the post-flood second covenant, where we are told of “the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth."
I am no biblical scholar. Maybe I am misunderstanding. But the words are the words, and "every creature" includes the bugs!
Appreciate it! I agree that Christianity may be concerned with animal welfare, and correspondingly insect welfare. It just seems wild to me that there is not even *one* patron saint of the insects, *one* commandment about veganism, not even *one* mention of insects specifically, in all the Bible and I believe all Catholic doctrine. Of course, the Israelites weren't in a position to *do* much about insect suffering. But if God is omniscient, then he should know that we would reach this point, and would want to offer us guidance as to how to solve it—if it's really "the biggest problem ever."
Genesis 1:26 in the NIV: Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.
This pretty clearly states that humans have "dominion", whatever that is, over birds, fish presumably including someother aquatic creatures, livestock and wild animals (I'm guessing mammals since all the rest are wild animals by contemporary definitions), and creatures that move along the ground (snakes? not sure). I'm no Hebrew scholar, maybe one can chime in, but insects don't seem to be anywhere on this list. Unless they're in the last section?
I think your concern is not that there is moral evil (including insect suffering), which any religion will have to deal with. You’re concerned specifically that Christianity does not teach on insect suffering if it is the greatest moral tragedy ever. Presumably, many Christians will deny that insect suffering is a moral tragedy. But even if it is, several theological considerations may explain why Christian teaching does not include it. Some formulations of biblical inerrancy say only that everything the Bible teaches is true (with respect to moral and religious matters), not that the Bible teaches everything that is true. These doctrines allow that there are true moral propositions that we do not learn from the Bible. You might say that given the seriousness of insect suffering, we should expect that the Bible contains teaching on insect suffering. In response, the Christian might say that there are general moral principles in the Bible from which specific moral claims about insects can be derived. If the Bible teaches that one should respect all creatures and not cause excessive suffering, this might imply claims about insect suffering. One might also view Christian revelation as contextual. Since the Christian scriptures were written in an ancient historical and cultural context, it might be inappropriate to include teaching on insect welfare that emerges in the effective altruism movement.
Precisely! If Christianity is true, then I think it's almost certainly the case that there are moral truths that aren't in the Bible, simply because too many new moral considerations arise, and I think you're absolutely right that there are general moral principles.
You're also right that I'm going to disagree because of scope. I literally cannot imagine suffering hundreds of millions of times worse than all human civilization has gone through. That's just way too big a number. Not only would that make the Bible incomplete, it would make it morally trivial.
(And if human populations really do increase insect suffering, Christ should have been *way* more emphatic about increasing human population size and eliminating habitats. That *is* something the ancients could have done something about, historic context or no.)
Great post. Thanks.
Based on your title and introduction, I thought you would go in another direction here.
Consider these quotes from BB in There Should Be Less Nature:
“In all other contexts, we recognize that creating a being isn’t always good for it. It’s positively wrong to bring a being into existence if you know it will have a brief and wretched life. But almost every creature in nature has a brief and wretched life.”
“In population ethics, it’s relatively uncontroversial that there’s something bad about creating a person who lives a miserable life. If there was a button that created a person with a shitty life, it would be bad to just keep pressing the button.“
If this is true, what possible reason could an O3 God give for pressing the button trillions and trillions of times? As BB says, this would be “positively wrong.” A theist who believes in both insect suffering of this magnitude and a perfect, purely good God has to tie themselves in the most twisted knots to reconcile these plainly conflicting beliefs.
BB has given arguments before on the problem of evil, so I figured he would have an escape hatch for this one (wildly implausible as it may be). I agree with you, however, and BB has actually made me *less* inclined to theism than I was before by making me aware of the sheer magnitude of animal suffering.
>BB has given arguments before on the problem of evil, so I figured he would have an escape hatch for this one (wildly implausible as it may be).
Yes, in the form of the Archon theodicy. It explains suffering on earth by positing it as a necessary ingredient in making an eternal afterlife all that much more blissful. Unless heaven is overwhelmingly occupied by positively elated ants and termites, I don’t think it or any other conventional theodicy can be made to apply in this case.
The problem of God's silence on insect suffering is just another form of the problem of evil.
Consider this:
It wasn't really until the 1800-1900s or so that handwashing became standard practice.
Before then, millions, possibly billions of innocent children died from diseases that could have easily been prevented from hand washing.
So why didn't God tell us in scripture to wash our hands?
Why didn't Jesus incorporate handwashing into, say, the eucharistic rite?
One (partial) way out of this is to think that (for complicated reasons) God has not disclosed to humans all morally-relevant facts (e.g. that washing hands will prevent needless deaths, or that insects might suffer).
At one point, Swinburne tries to explain why God gave us imperfect knowledge about the causes and effects of our actions — why it is, for example, that we don’t always know that a seemingly harmless action might actually torture many insects:
“[One] reason why it is good that the human race should sometimes be in an initial situation of considerable ignorance about the causes and effects of our actions, is this. If God abolished the need for rational inquiry and gave us from childhood strong true beliefs about the causes of things, that would make it too easy for us to make moral decisions. As things are in the actual world, most moral decisions are decisions taken in uncertainty about the consequences of our actions. I do not know for certain that if I smoke, I will get cancer; or that if I do not give money to some charity, people will starve. So we have to make our moral decisions on the basis of how probable it is that our actions will have various outcomes—how probable it is that I will get cancer if I continue to smoke (when I would not otherwise get cancer), or that someone will starve if I do not give. Since probabilities are so hard to assess, it is all too easy to persuade yourself that it is worth taking the chance that no harm will result from the less demanding decision (the decision which you have a strong desire to make). And even if you face up to a correct assessment of the probabilities, true dedication to the good is shown by doing the act which, although it is probably the best action, may have no good consequences at all.” (Could a Good God Permit so Much Suffering? A Debate, pp. 52-53.)
Amos Wollen talks about it on the EA Christian substack
https://christandcounterfactuals.substack.com/p/what-the-worlds-best-christian-philosopher
Interesting! But I don't think this is an out for anyone who believes insect suffering is millions of times worse than all human suffering forever. Germ ignorance killed a lot of people, and that already seems bad enough for me—but disease preventable by handwashing was not the biggest moral catastrophe *ever*. It's absolutely puzzling for an insect welfarist that God makes not committing adultery *one of the ten commandments* and does not spare a single word for the insects.
Insect suffering is not that hard of an idea to come up with—a lot easier than the germ theory of disease. The Buddhists and Jains and certain Hindus came up with it. None of the Christian saints did. On BB's view, that makes the Christian saints considerably less virtuous than the Jains, since insect suffering is more important of an issue than any kind of human suffering. That seems incompatible with Christianity—at least, any kind of Christianity that believes in saints (as does Swinburne's faith, Eastern Orthodoxy).
Maybe it’s not an out for a christian who believes insects suffering is millions of times worse than human suffering.
But it doesn’t have to be millions of times worse for a Christian to care about it and make it a top moral priority. It probably just needs to be as bad as millions of children dying from lack of handwashing?