suffering, animals, faith

In an earlier post you claimed that atheism “degrades and devalues love” on the ground that it can provide no reason to prefer love to envy or other destructive emotions. My response was that neither can theism, and therefore the contrast on the basis of which you make this claim about atheism is illusory. I don't think anything you wrote addresses that specific point. You do make the claim that since “all our earthly loves only seem to bring us misery” the “solution” is belief in a being who loves us unconditionally. I am not sure I quite follow this argument, or that I accept the premise. If love “only” brought us misery and nothing else, then I don't see why it would be of value. In any case, this has not been my experience. But anyway, you have said that all love entails desire, and I agree. In particular, I would say that love (when we use the word in the correct sense, as it is used in the Gospels) is a subjective desire or disposition to seek to bring about the beloved's good and to prevent their injury and suffering. If God's love for his creation is real, then he prevents the suffering of his creation if he can. Otherwise, what do we mean by love? The word becomes meaningless. And since God is omnipotent, nothing prevents the realisation of his will. But then we face the problem that this is inconsistent with the universe that we inhabit. I have read all sorts of theodicies that seek to justify human suffering. Let us suppose that one of them is successful. Let us suppose, with John Hick, that humans must experience suffering in order to develop moral qualities such as courage and compassion. Of course, this has the slightly awkward result that Adolf Hitler could justly claim to be God's instrument, but never mind. The problem is that none of these theodicies address the problem of the suffering of animals, which is a form of suffering that is both widespread and peculiarly and glaringly useless. It may be that, historically, Christianity, being an Abrahamic faith, has not greatly valued animal life. Indeed, this does seem to me to be the case. Presumably the Israeli settlers who a few days ago tortured a donkey to death by dragging it behind their vehicle had not the slightest regard for animals. I cannot even begin to tell you the horror this arouses in me. The mental world of these people is in a different universe altogether from mine. I am afraid that the record of the Christian religion during the centuries when it was dominant in Europe was, quite frankly, utterly disgusting. (Christians are better now, but not because of Christianity. At least, I see no evidence that Christians are kinder to animals than atheists.) But, to be honest, the truth is that I could never believe what Christians believe. Do you, for example, believe that Jesus, after having been clinically dead for a period of one and half days, was miraculously restored to life on the third day? If you interpret this “allegorically” then I think you are sucking the essential substance out of Christianity. If Jesus died and is buried, then he is no longer alive, there was no resurrection, nor promise of resurrection for Christian believers. If you do believe that this miracle occurred then all I can say is that this would be simply impossible for me to believe – psychologically impossible. In the first century it was possible to believe such things. Now, we know that the universe operates according to laws that are not capricious, and are not suspended due to the arbitrary interventions of invisible spirits. In my universe, the world has sharp boundaries, it exists in bright sunlight. There is nothing supernatural; there is only the natural. Life is better than death, and we must extend our love to all living creatures. I admire the Jains, but the only truly acceptable religion for me would be the (fictional) religion of Mercerism, which does not require belief in anything supernatural.