God and Pets

Here is the observation that prompted this essay:
Earlier in the day, I saw a German Sheppard sticking his head out of his owner’s ride, enjoying the always-decent Vancouver breeze. This reinvigorated my sentiment about pets and their qualities of life.

The thought is essentially this: Domesticated pets that are born in Hong Kong, or other regions and cities where the temperatures and humidities are high, the populations dense, and the air polluted, live in much more dismal conditions than those that are born in, say, North America, where (for the most part) there is less pollution, but more importantly, there is usually lots of space for pets.

Note that the scope of this essay is limited only to pets; this means that I will not be discussing issues regarding species extinctions and their causes.

In this regard, I would agree with Richard Dawkins in that it is very important

The religious usually divide into two categories: Creationists and non-Creationists. But it is safe to say that the vast majority of those who believe in the existence of a God also believe that he were the source of all.

Creationists branch off into two sub-categories:
1. The Deists, who believe that the entity we know as ‘God’ is indeed the creator of the universe, but more specifically, the intricacies of physics, chemistry, and biology that allowed the world, as we know it to come about. Deists believe that God has not intervened in the universe since its creation. And;
2. The Interventionists. These are the religious folks who believe that not only did God create the world, but that God has influences on what goes on in our daily lives. Some of them, for example, believe that natural disasters are a work of God to punish human beings for their sins.

My argument here does not concern the Deists; I do not wish to dispute or debunk how the world was created. The interventionists, however, could help me answer a few questions:

If an omnipotent God is supposed to be omniscient, omnipresent, and omni-benevolent, then that means that God used his power to make it so that some pets are born under rough conditions fully knowing that he was doing so. And, if one were to explain the ‘all-nice’ part, then one could say that God put pets through rough times because he wants to ‘test’ their faith

Anybody see the problem here? As far as we know, human beings are the only species on earth that are capable of complex thoughts such as faith and the concept of God. Therefore, it is no surprise that so many people are led to believe that when they hit a rough patch, it is because God was testing their faiths. On the other hand, it hardly seems to make sense that we can apply the same logic to animals such as dogs or cats, since they are incapable of thinking that their faiths were being tested. Since this logic does not apply, it would seem to conclude that God picked animals at random and decided that some ought of live miserable lives while others get to have it easy, and he does not have a reason for it.

Ultimately, what this means is that one cannot justify God’s actions of putting some pets through tough times while not so for others, because the pets cannot comprehend the reasons. Because of this lack of rationality, God is not being fair, and therefore not omnibenevolent.

Keep in mind that by ‘God’, I am principally referring to the Christian God, and notions such as karma or reincarnation do not apply. This means that the actions of the pets’ ancestors would not have factored in to God’s decision in sentencing some animals to live wretched lives.

This little observation was just one of tens of thousands of attempts to refute the logic of God. But it more specifically tackles the issue of questioning God and his supposed fairness. There is no better way to think about whether if one should believe in God than to ask questions, literally, about everything. ‘Why do innocent civilians in the Third World live in such horrendous conditions?’ ‘Why do naturally-occurring forest fires destroy God’s own creations, in this case, countless acres’ worth of trees?’ Hopefully logic would lead some people to come up with answers other than God.

But then again, has there ever been a time when logic is compatible with religion?