The Problem of Animal Pain

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

   PDF

2. The Plan of This Book

   • Trent Dougherty

   Pages 1-15

3. The Problem of Animal Pain

   • Trent Dougherty

   Pages 16-35

4. The Bayesian Argument from Animal Pain

   • Trent Dougherty

   Pages 36-55

5. Is There Really a Problem?: The Challenge of Neo-Cartesianism

   • Trent Dougherty

   Pages 56-76

6. There Is a Problem: The Defeat of Neo-Cartesianism

   • Trent Dougherty

   Pages 77-95

7. The Saint-Making Theodicy I: Negative Phase

   • Trent Dougherty

   Pages 96-117

8. The Saint-Making Theodicy II: Positive Phase

   • Trent Dougherty

   Pages 118-133

9. Animal Saints

   • Trent Dougherty

   Pages 134-153

10. Animal Afterlife

    • Trent Dougherty

    Pages 154-178

11. Concluding Summary

    • Trent Dougherty

    Pages 179-182

12. Back Matter

    Pages 183-197

    PDF

Animal suffering constitutes perhaps the greatest challenge to rational belief in the existence of God. Considerations that render human suffering theologically intelligible seem inapplicable to animal suffering. In this book, Dougherty defends radical possibilities for animal afterlife that allow a soul-making theodicy to apply to their case.

• Problem of evil
• evil
• theodicy
• sceptical theism
• Bayes
• Bayesian
• Probabilism
• Evidentialism
• Evidence
• bibliography
• Cartesian
• existence of god
• god
• knowledge

“The soul-making position that Dougherty defends here is interesting, subtle, and bold. It represents the first serious and sustained defense of a position that, as I noted, most have written off in a sentence or two. I suspect that this book represents the beginning of a trajectory of scholarship defending soul making theodicies for animal pain and as a result is an important text for philosophers interested in the topic to read with care.” (Michael J. Murray, International Journal of the Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 78, 2015)

• Baylor University, USA

  Trent Dougherty

Yujin Nagasawa is Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Co-Director of the John Hick Center for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Birmingham, UK. He is the author of God and Phenomenal Consciousness: A Novel Approach to Knowledge Arguments (2008). He received the Templeton Award for Theological Promise in 2008.

Policies and ethics