If God Exists, Then Why Does My Dog Hump My Leg?: How Animal Behavior Informs the God Debate

In 1860 Darwin wrote, "I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created [certain parasitic wasps] with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat would play with mice."

Interesting point. Let's take it a couple steps further.

If fornication is sinful and abhorrent to God, it's hard to believe he would create the mouse-like brown antechinus. "Insatiable to the core, he goes from female to female, mating until his immune system becomes suppressed, he develops severe ulcers and gets infected by parasites and dies at the end of the mating season."

If masturbation is sinful and abhorrent to God, it's hard to believe he would create the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, a self-fertilizing hermaphrodite, or that one spider monkey at the zoo.

If infanticide is at least as abhorrent to God as it is to me, it's hard to believe he would create gerbils because they tend to kill and eat their own young.

If lying and stealing are sinful and abhorrent to God, it's hard to believe he would create the tufted capuchin monkey who "will use alarm calls normally reserved for predator sightings ... to illicit a response in fellow group members and then take advantage of the distraction to pilfer food."

If suicide is objectively immoral, it's hard to believe God would create lemmings. Regardless, the lemming is the best swim team mascot ever.

If murder is abhorrent to God, it's hard to believe he would create the blue-footed booby. They're killers from birth. The stronger blue-footed booby chick "will kill the [weaker] chick if there is a food shortage. During lean times, the [stronger] chick may attack the [weaker] chick by pecking vigorously, or it may simply drag its younger sibling by the neck and oust it from the nest."

If homosexuality is abhorrent to God, it's hard to believe he would create any of the 500 species of animals that exhibit homosexual behavior, like bottlenose dolphins, African lions, or the Andean bird species called the cock of the rock.

If coarse language is offensive to God, it's hard to believe he would allow Adam to name a species of bird the "blue-footed booby" or the "cock of the rock."

The big question here is, Can animals sin? Are ethics and morality applicable to any species other than humans?

It's generally held that animals can't sin. Chimpanzees are considered the smartest animals, but they're only about as smart as a dumbass three-year-old. Animals don't have the cognitive skills to act contrary to their instincts. If "ought" implies "can," then "can't" implies "do whatever the hell you want."

If ethics and morality don't apply to animals, then either (1) morality is relative because things that are sinful for one species are righteous for another, ie. "Thou shall not hump thy groin against another's leg, saith the Lord, unless you're a golden retriever," or (2) God created animals with behaviors that really piss him off. 

If ethics and morality DO apply to animals, then humans are sinless lambs when compared to actual lambs. Humans screw up a lot, but not like those lecherous bonobos. Also, if animals were capable of sin, then wouldn't God have become a snail to die as a substitutionary atonement on behalf of all snails so that, if they accepted Jesusnail, they could be saved from eternal torment in salt?

If morality were absolute, and if the ideas of sin and redemption didn't apply to any species other than humans, then it would make a lot more sense if God made every animal species such that they instinctively exhibited perfect Biblical behavior. Which would be tough for Old Testament whales since krill isn't kosher.

Love, Coercion, Hell and PowerBall: Adventures in Theodicy

A theodicy is an attempt to explain how a good and omnipotent God can coexist with evil. It is not an epic poem by Homer.

Saint Augustine's theodicy denies the existence of evil at all. His view is that evil is not a thing unto itself; rather, evil is simply the absence of good, and therefore it doesn't exist. It's the same reason I can't be a vegan because vegan food doesn't actually exist; it's simply the absence of food that is delicious.

The most prevalent theodicy is an appeal to free will. God's main desire is for people to love and worship him (probably because, as the prime mover, he had an absentee father). Since love and worship that is either coerced or pre-programmed is not truly love or worship, he gives us the capacity for hate and apathy. In other words, love cannot exist without free will. We can't be forced to love. Therefore the existence of love requires the existence of both hate and apathy (or at bare minimum hate and apathy have to be to be possible). God wanted so badly to be the object of people's love that he chose to create a world with evil. (Just like how Neil Diamond wanted so badly to be the object of people's love that he created Song Sung Blue.)

At best this theodicy is an adequate explanation why humans do evil things. It's doesn't really help with the idea of natural evils like tsunamis, earthquakes and Gallup, New Mexico.

However, the free will argument has its limitations even with human evil. God doesn't want to coerce us into loving him, yet the mere possibility of eternal torment in hell is coercive. It's the math of Pascal's Wager: If there is a non-zero probability that Christianity or Islam (along with their respective eternal hells) is true, then that possibility - remote as it may be - is coercive. Any reasonable person would strive to love God because that would eliminate the risk of going to hell, and eliminating the risk of an eternity of the worst existence imaginable (Song Sung Blue will be played on loop in hell) more than justifies any resulting opportunity cost.

That was my story. The math of Pascal's Wager (that is, the possibility of eternal hell) coerced me into following (and loving) Jesus long after I determined that the claims of Christianity were highly improbable. Somewhat like how the California State Lottery coerces me into buying a PowerBall ticket despite the ridiculously improbable odds of winning.

I don't want to miss an opportunity to explore a possible explanation for my problem with God's hiddenness that is buried in all of this. Pascal's Wager isn't truly coercive. If it were, then everybody would be a believer.* It's only not coercive because there are at least two mutually exclusive worldviews that include eternal hell as a consequence of not loving the right god. However, if God's existence and identity were obvious - if he were not hidden - then hell would be truly coercive. Right?

Nope. The coercion argument is entirely BS because none of it applies to love. The greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. It's a gross oversimplification to think that love of that intensity is simply a choice that could possibly be coerced. I can't select a random person and choose to love that person with all my heart and soul and strength and mind, nor could anyone coerce that kind of love out of me.

To look at it from another angle, the God that I followed for 20 years - it was impossible not to love him, not because he forced you to love him, but because he was fucking amazing. The just and all-powerful God who created the universe knew everything I ever did or thought or felt, and He still loved me with all of his heart and soul. If it were true, how could you not reciprocate that love?

Ironically, I am prevented from loving God because I can't love someone if I'm not sure he exists; I can't love someone who never shows up. And please don't say, "But Jesus did show up and die on a cross for you." That's like telling someone, "Hey, your dad isn't an absentee father. Before you were born he set up a billion-dollar trust fund for you. And then he took off for the rest of your life."

This theodicy that says that love cannot exist without free will also seems to fall apart when applied to God himself. Does God have free will? He doesn't have the capacity for hate or apathy because those things go against his nature. Therefore, either God does not have free will and he's an automaton without true love for anyone, OR it was possible for him to have made us a skosh more in his image where we have free will but we're never evil because it's simply against our nature.

*It is interesting to note, however, that Christianity and Islam - the two main faiths with eternal hells - are the two biggest religions on the planet. Those two religions account for 54.8% of the world's population.