Tag Michael Murray

Why Skeptical Theism Fails

The Problem of Evil is a powerful argument which takes its form in various ways, both the logical and evidential format. I was watching a video debate on the problem of evil and animal suffering between Michael Murry and Daniel Breyer. I really enjoyed it. I don’t buy the skeptical theistic approach, but, as Breyer said, if I was a theist, that would have to be the approach I would take to the claim of gratuitous evil.

Interview with skydivephil, creator of superb videos

Many of you will have come across the superb videos of skydivephil on You Tube and embedded across various forums. That is, unless you have had your heads buried in the sand. I first came across them when they critiqued william Lane Craig on the Kalam Cosmological Argument as can be seen here:

BOOM! – Craig is, um, owned on animal suffering. Twice.

If you, like me, were at the Stephen Law vs William Lane Craig debate, your jaw will have dropped when Craig, in defence of God vis-a-vis animal suffering and the problem of evil, claimed that animals don’t suffer pain.

He claimed that most animals didn’t have the conscious awareness of pain that humans and other primates do. He was solely relying on the work of Michael Murray in Nature Red in Tooth and Claw: Theism and the Problem of Animal Suffering. This book sets out that there are, broadly speaking, three levels of pain suffering and related awareness, amoebas in the first, humans in the last, and most higher animals in the middle. They feel pain but are not consciously aware of it in the same way as humans are.