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Evolution, God, and Modal Skepticism: Thoughts
Terminology (see Paul Draper)
O1- Pain felt by moral agents (humans) that makes biological sense. It results in some beneficial action, like the evasion of further pain, danger, or death.
O2- Pain felt by non-human, sentient creatures that makes biological sense. It results in some beneficial action, like the evasion of further pain, danger, or death.
O3- Pain felt either by moral or amoral sentient creatures that doesn’t appear to be useful to the organism. It is more in quantity or quality than necessary. For example: the pain felt just before dying in a fire that can’t be escaped, or the suffering felt just before one’s death as a lung collapses in a car accident.
So, let’s grant that I’m now a modal skeptic. I have been converted to the idea that I, being a human being with a rather capable brain, can contemplate what the weather is like, why oil seems to fix the creaking of doors, and why drunk driving is unsafe, but that I, being a human being with limited knowledge on a scale infinitesimal in comparison to the scale of the entire universe, can not know things of larger magnitude. For instance, why we inhabit the universe we currently do, rather than any other. I am left to know that which is relevant to our immediate existence, but most of the larger questions often posed are, given modal skepticism, unknowable.
With that in mind, I am left with a blank slate regarding all matters outside those of my “everyday” experience. I see examples of O1, O2, and O3 all around me. I hear accounts of them even more often than I see or experience them personally. I ponder about their origins and why they exist, but I consistently end this internal discussion by concluding that it is simply beyond my ability to know answers to such questions.
I hear propositions like “evolution alone is the cause of O1, O2, and O3” nearly as often, if not more so, than I hear the claim “God is the ultimate cause of O1, O2, and O3.” But because these claims assert to know the nature of something beyond what I feel is my ability to know, I do not decide either way.
It is difficult, however, not to continue to wonder which, evolution or God (among the many other options), may be correct. I might see a young child dying of an illness which she had no control over; I see news flashes filled with blood and tyrants looming out of the television; I see the numerical tattoo on the arm of a Nazi death camp survivor. I see photos of a zebra’s last moments in the mouth of a lion, and I see the charred remains of deer on a hike through burned lands. I wonder what the reason is for all of this pain, but I still, as a modal skeptic, reside myself to the fact that I cannot say for sure.
I can say for certain, though, that I do enjoy, among other things, my biology classes. They instill vigor and awe in every part of me, and they always leave me with more questions than answers. “Why are so many native Hawaiian bird species extinct?” “Why does turbidity have anything to do with water quality and wetland health?” “Why does this particular species of snake inhabit this particular region?”
While the list of questions continues to grow, I’ll have to be satisfied in the knowledge that I won’t have full knowledge in regards to all matters pertaining to life, however. It’s simply beyond my scope. I can learn some, of course, but not all.
Perhaps I can attest to the reasons for a reptile’s camouflage, but I can’t, in my current position, attest to all of the reasons for why matter degrades and reforms in the manners that it does or why the laws of physics, as they are currently understood, could have been different in the infinitesimal shards of time after the singularity.
One concept that I am rather comfortable in stating my (albeit basic) understanding of is that of natural selection. Evolution. Through years of combined education and observation, I feel that the most fundamental, and the most exciting, elements of the theory of natural selection can be understood not just by biology professors and veteran naturalists but by lay folk as well. Setting aside the debate over the current status of the American educational system in regards to science, I see little reason to doubt that a vast majority of those open to the possibility of such a concept are more than capable of learning the very basics of the theory.
After learning these fundamental concepts, the world around us seems to open wide, waiting for an observer to notice and observe and ponder the examples of adaptation.
With knowledge about the theory fresh in our minds, it might very well be easier to understand why the hummingbird’s well-adapted beak appears to match the length, shape, and angle of the flower for which it pollinates. These fundamental concepts provide the foundations for further understanding how life interacts with its environment, and with other life. These interactions need not always be hostile or competitive, but, as those fundamental conceptions should be reminding us right about now, they often are.
Teeth clenching, claws grasping, jaws crunching, blood streaming, flesh tearing, pain searing- all physiological phenomena, and all of them the indirect results of the evolutionary process. Some animals live to be predated, while others exist to predate. Regardless of where in the hierarchy an animal may fall, though, pain and suffering is felt by prey and predator alike. Humans included.
Thus far, the (newly born) modal skeptic inside of me isn’t firing any warning signals. No red lights flash between my eyes and eye lids, nor are any feelings signifying some kind of cognitive dissonance at all evident. It seems well within my “everyday” abilities, then, to understand the fundamental concepts of natural selection. If this is true, I see no reason to say that this understanding can’t then be used to comprehend the natural world around me. And if it is granted that I can comprehend more of the natural world around me given knowledge of the theory of natural selection, I then see no reason to deny why the results of these thoughts can’t be pondered as well. I will illustrate this with a thought experiment.
While on a pleasant hike, enjoying the beauty of an open oak woodland, I witness a hawk swirling in the sky. It swoops down to the ground, and lifts off back into higher altitudes with a rodent in its talons. Such a sight would usually signify a feast to come, but this particular hawk somehow manages to lose grip of the small mammal and allows it to fall back to earth. The bird circles in attempts to find its fallen prey, but flies away disappointed. I walk in the direction of the rodent, finally coming upon it on its side, immobile and breathing slowly. Now, It is well within my “everyday” abilities to assess that this rodent is suffering. I decide to end its pain with the blunt force of my boot, but not before a thought strikes me: “why is this rodent suffering?”
The simple solution would be to respond by claiming that “the hawk dropped it,” of course. But this does not seem satisfactory. The hawk did drop it, of course, but the reasons for its suffering seem deeper than that.
“The rodent is not just suffering because it was dropped by a hawk,” I might ponder, delaying the inevitable euthanasia that my boot will commence, “because animals like beavers, horses, and whales suffer as well, and they don’t suffer because they were dropped by a hawk.” There seems to be something in common between kinds of suffering, and it is not the event itself that caused the suffering that is what I’m searching for. There seems to be a reason not just for that rodent’s suffering but for all suffering, then. What could this be?
Pondering this question, there are still no warning lights flashing before my mind’s eye informing me of some grave departure from modal skepticism. I still feel comfortable pondering, then, in the context of this one rodent’s suffering, “why?”
At that very moment, something occurs to me. What arises out of the depths to greet my question is one single, exotic sounding word. “Evolution.”
Evolution is something I understand, because it’s within my “everyday” ability to understand, at least on some basic level. And it is a theory which I often contemplate in its relation to other goings-on in life. Might I somehow attach this event, this observation of clear and apparent suffering, to evolution?
Again, no warning lights, bells, screams, or yells. The modal skeptic inside is quiet, waiting to shut the door on the question but lacking sufficient reason to do so. Shall I proceed?
“Natural selection, evolution, does not seem like such a far-fetched connection to make, actually.”
As the rodent exhales its last breath, and as regret and remembrance of my original goal floods my mind, I wonder why evolution might explain the suffering before my eyes.
In his work, “Pain and Pleasure: An Evidential Problem for Theists,” Paul Draper claims that evolution explains the existence of biologically useful pain and suffering because it provides incentive for “goal- oriented systems” to avoid such pain in the hopes of surviving and reproducing. When bitten and grabbed by a predator, an animal rightly responds by feeling pain because a failure to do so would not incentivize any form of escape from danger. Creatures that do feel pain and suffering are thus more likely to survive and reproduce, passing along its genetic material which, among other things, hopefully confers this same ability to feel pain give certain stimuli. Those that don’t accomplish this are not able to pass along their genetic material and, eventually (assuming that an indifferent theory of evolution is true) go extinct.
Assuming that I had read Draper’s work just before this outdoor excursion (as everyone should) I might ponder something like this: “So, what about all those instances of pain which aren’t biologically useful, though? How might evolution explain these kinds of pain and suffering?”
Draper refers to this category of pain as O3, and claims that it is often “biologically gratuitous”- pain that is not useful. An example of this kind of pain is that which is felt by an animal slowly dying of burn wounds, or a person’s pain felt before the moment of death after receiving what will end up being a fatal gunshot wound.
Draper states that this kind of pain appears to be the byproduct of the body utilizing the reception of pain and suffering to ward off or escape the source of it, as evolution has guided its ancestors to do. In the case of an animal’s slow death of burn wounds, this kind of gratuitous pain makes evolutionary sense because, if the animal were able to escape death, it would most certainly utilize such intense pain to do so. It just so happens that the animal is in a scenario where such escape doesn’t exist. The pain is not biologically “useful,” but it is “appropriate.”
So, then, it seems reasonable to accept the possibility that evolution can explain this kind of suffering. And if I have reason to think I can grasp the concepts of evolution, and that I can also grasp the idea of suffering I have just witnessed, I see no reason to conclude that I can’t combine my observations with my understanding of evolution into one holistic theory- evolution explains suffering, even the gratuitous kinds. And if I can manage to theorize how evolution might somehow explain suffering, as it appears that I can, the modal skeptic inside still seems to lack reason enough to deny the adoption of this theory.
If we have accepted the above arguments thus far, it appears clear that, until given observable evidence to the contrary (evidence equal to or higher in its power to sway than the dying rodent was), I can be comfortable being a modal skeptic and believing that evolution explains suffering of the kind I observed.
Ockham’s razor (for the modal skeptic, especially) is often an ally in the war for understanding the nature of things within one’s “everyday” abilities. With this in mind, it seems that what I lack thus far is evidence contrary to that which claims evolution explains pain and suffering. The kind of evidence which claims that evolution is false, or that evolution and something else in addition, sight unseen, are the reason for that very same suffering. For now, I have grounds to claim that evolution, and only evolution, brought about an animal’s ability to feel pain and suffering. Defenses may be given, but the observations I have made, combined with the evidence supporting a theory which we have granted that is within my grasp, seem to outweigh the arguments positing other possibilities. Even if these possibilities include the theory of evolution in addition to some other possibility.
Am I then, on the positing of a defense contrary to my belief that evolution explains pain and suffering, supposed to give up my ability to acknowledge the apparent connection between evolution and suffering? If so, as stated above, the defense should require evidence equal to or greater in amount and believability than the evidence which I observed that is supported by knowledge of the fundamental concepts of evolution.
To date, it is my claim that the evidence for indifferent evolution as the source of pain and suffering seems much more numerous and believable than is the evidence to the contrary. “Evidence to the contrary” would include theories including evolution in its explanation, as well as the addition of premises or amendments to the claim. In regards to the specific case I have in mind, theism is often such a theory.
Scientifically minded theists grant that evolution might explain the kinds of pain and suffering we see quite well, actually. However, theism also posits the existence of a supernatural being, a creator-God that is all-powerful, all-knowing, and morally perfect. Granting the possibility for the existence of a God who is far superior to you or I in His power, knowledge, and love, however, then makes my newly acquired modally skeptical brain throw red flags, wave both its (metaphorical) arms, and flip the switch to every alarm system I had installed for this very purpose.
If I am limited to know only about that which is within the realm of everyday, relatively menial activities (Compare our most eventful day with that of God’s least. There would be no comparison), how am I then able to know about this all-powerful God at all? And if I can’t possibly learn anything meaningful about His existence because of Its infinite distance from my limited understanding and capability, why posit His existence at all? On what grounds do I have, as a modal skeptic, to state that God can exist at all?
If this is true, on what grounds do I currently have to also claim that evolution and theism are both true, rather than simply stating that, for all I know and can comprehend at this very moment as a fallible human being, evolution and evolution alone is the source of pain and suffering, and that evolution seems to do quite well at explaining the kinds of pain and suffering we see?
The mechanisms of evolution are well within the grasp of human understanding, and I fail to see why the positing of an unsupported defense like theism, even when it rests atop the theory of evolution, should result in my giving up the justified conclusion that indifferent evolution, and only an indifferent evolution, explains the pain observed in the dying rodent and in every other sentient organism that has ever existed.
On my understanding of it, then, modal skepticism fails to convince me of theism’s truth and its explanation for pain and suffering, especially in comparison to the theory of evolution and of evolution alone in regards to its source of all the kinds of pain and suffering in this world.
Works consulted
Paul Draper’s “An Evidential Problem for Theists.” 1989.
Peter Van Inwagen’s “The Problem of Evil, The Problem of Air, and The Problem of Silence.” 1991.
