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Pain and Suffering - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Suggests pain has biological value
      - However, pain often felt when not useful
      - Perhaps pain is useful for evolution purposes
      - Hume asks why an absence of pleasure cannot be used instead of pain, surely this is kinder?
        
        Hick responds: If this were the case then the hedonic scale would shrink. It is relative and would the least pleasurable thing would become pain.
  - - - Do not need the challenges of pain to create a better moral character
      - animals experience pain as a byproduct of interacting with their environment
    - - Higher vertebrates
        
        Behave in a way which is similar to how a human would if in pain
        
        Can be taught with pain, and pleasure as rewards
      - Lower vertebrates
        
        Can be argued to not have the same experience of pain, but this is not necessarily true
    - - You rarely see animals die from old age (they normally die from things like being eaten), whereas this is the standard for humans
        
        This means that animals are a part of the wider environmental system
    - - Augustinian theodicy
        
        'Principle of Plenitude' - “Thus the sub-human animals exist because they represent possible forms of being, and therefore of goodness, and because their existence is accordingly necessary to the fullness of the created world.”
      - Epistemic distance
        
        “man's embeddedness within a larger stream of organic life may be one of the conditions of his cognitive freedom in relation to the infinite Creator” - therefore free to choose
      - Escatology
        
        Heaven could not relieve the issue of animal pain and still function
      - But why do specific species exist?
- - - - There would be non consequences for anyone's actions
      - There would also be no love
  - - - New Testament supports this with instances of God and Jesus setting right the work of fallen
      - Same criticisms as the Augustinian theory and would also need the creation of evil ‘ex nihilo’ which has been previously discussed and discounted
      - If the world were ruled by evil beings, we wouldn’t find the earth and nature to be as good and bountiful as they are
  - - - In a world without suffering, or where suffering was only given to those observed, there would be no sympathy