The problem of animal suffering (a version of the problem of evil) has recently been described as the biggest problem for Christianity. However, a new paper in the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion suggests that the problem is far worse than imagined. Here, we explain why and counter attempts by theists to reply.
The film has 3 sections:
Section 1
We meet the authors of this paper and others who explain the EPAS (The Expanded Problem of Animal Suffering).
Sections 2
We review various theistic replies to animal suffering and show how atheists, agnostics and other religious skeptics reply.
Section 3
We discuss claims made by leading Christian thinkers like CS Lewis, Michael Murray, Richard Swinburne, and William Lane Craig that neuroscience implies we should downplay animal suffering. This is something we tackled many years ago, but since then, a rare patient who had key cortical regions knocked out enables us to do a direct experimental test of the claims of these theologians. Namely testing his pain perception. The results were published in a paper in Philosophical Psychology, and the authors of that paper are in this video explaining why these findings are devastating for the one explanation that might undermine the Expanded Problem of Animal Suffering.
This film stars the authors of both of these papers, including lead author Phil Halper (aka skydivephil), philosopher of consciousness Ken Williford, neuroscientist David Rudrauf, pain expert Perry Fuchs, as well ethicists Peter Singer and Mark Bernstein, and philosopher Joe Schmid and Within Reason host Alex O'Connor (the artist formerly known as cosmic skeptic).
A timeline of the film is below.
0:00 Introduction
1:16 The problem of time
1:55 The problem of creation
3:00 The problem of divine commands
4:15 The problem of divine actions
7:53 The problem of the Anthropocene
8:42 Answering theists' replies introduction
8:48 Nomic regularity
11:33 Soul making
14:02 Justified genocide?
16:23 After-life compensation
18:29 A Pre-Adamic Fall
20:39 Skeptical Theism
25:32 Other arguments
26:07 The Expanded Problem vs. Theists replies
28:17 Do animals suffer? Neocartesianism
28:51 CS Lewis on Animal Pain
29:35 William Lane Craig's infamous quote
31:21 Replying to Craig and Lewis
32:10 Self Awareness
32:52 Three bogus levels of pain
33:01 What is pain affect?
33:28 The Pre-frontal cortex
33:50 The importance of Patient R
35:59 The most critical experiment in theology
38:12 Where does the brain generate pain?
38:51: Sub-cortical regions and the distribution of pain in animals
44:07 The anterior cingulate cortex, another mistake by Theologians
45:14 A justification for Neocarteisanism?
45:50 Convergent evolution
46:52 Lobotomy and Craig's contradiction
49:10 Summing up and reversing Craig's argument
