Ants and the Problem of Evil
This is a philosophy paper. The actual word limit is 700 words. Follow the prompt and use the article I provided as a source.
Requirements
● Your paper must be in response to the paper prompt below. Papers that do not meet thisrequirement will receive zeros.
● Your paper must be at most 700 words in length. Papers that are more than 700 words in lengthwill consequently be docked one third of a letter grade. A paper will not be read beyond its700th word, if it has one. There is no minimum permissible word count.● Your paper is due Friday, December 9, 8:00 a.m. EST. A paper that is late but less than 24hours late will consequently be docked one third of a letter grade, a paper that is at least 24 hourslate but less than 48 hours late will consequently be docked two thirds of a letter grade, and soon. Papers never submitted will receive zeros.
● Email me a Word (.doc or .docx) version of your paper at the following email address:xxxxxx Don’t email me a .pdf version of your paper or give me a hardcopy!Paper PromptIn “The Problem of Evil and the Suffering of Creeping Things,” Dustin Crummett presents anargument that “the harm of a large enough amount of arthropod suffering is worse than the worstbetrayals” (p. 81). Identify one step in this argument—either a claim that Crummett makes inthis argument, or an inference that Crummett makes in this argument from some claim orclaims to some other claim or claims—explain this step in your own words, and present anobjection to it. Don’t summarize Crummett’s whole argument!
Some Things to Keep in Mind
● In your paper, you must do everything required of you by the paper prompt.
● Purge your paper of anything that does not contribute, in some way or another, to your response to the paper prompt. Your paper should suggest obsession on your part with responding to the prompt.
● The content of your paper must go beyond anything that we covered during class. You may not just repeat things (even plausible and interesting things) that your classmates, you, or I said during class and call it a day.
● In this paper and in all other papers for this course, you should feel no pressure whatsoever to defend views that you actually accept (though it is of course often easier to defend views that you accept than to defend views that you don’t accept). Write the best paper you can, even if you disagree with every claim in it. (If you wish to add a footnote at the beginning of your paper saying that you don’t believe all of the claims in your paper, then feel free to do so. The footnote won’t contribute to your word count.) 1
● Your paper must be clearly written throughout. Try your hardest to prevent me from ever having to reread a sentence of yours.
● Your paper must have a conspicuous and easily interpretable thesis. Strive to make it possible for me to identify and understand your thesis within 10 seconds of skimming your paper.
● You won’t get (or lose) any points for defending views that I happen to share (or happen not to share). Don’t waste your time speculating about my beliefs about the topic at hand.
● Other things being equal, shorter papers are better than longer papers.
● Jim Pryor’s essay “Guidelines on Writing a Philosophy Paper,” which is easy to find on the Internet, is a very helpful resource.
● I encourage you to discuss your paper with me during office hours
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Ants and the Problem of Evil
People who faithfully believe in the existence of an all-powerful creature called God are known as theists. The problem of evil is one that theists must solve to explain why the world is such a miserable place if God is good and all-powerful. The suffering of humans and, barely, that of endearing non-human animals like insects is the main subject of philosophical discussions on the issue of evil (Tooley 10). However, others question why God allows what they see as the suffering of insects and other similar creatures. Asa Grey, a contemporary of Charles Darwin, noted that he could not comprehend why a benevolent God would make Ichneumonidae wasps, some of which deposit their eggs inside of caterpillars, with their larvae hatching and devouring the caterpillars from the inside out.
In this section, I'll make the case that there's a good chance the debate is considerable. I do not defend a stronger claim partly because I need to know if a stronger claim is true. After all, I would require more if I could do it. However, the claim is compelling enough for two reasons worth considering (Crummett, 79). First, I must demonstrate that the methodological assertion that the argument and its consequences are worthwhile investigating is plausible. Second, even if it turns out that the Premise is fairly likely to be untrue after all, if its truth would represent extremely strong evidence against theism (as I argue below it may), then it would still be the case that theism is false.
Why, then, does ant suffering worsen the problem? One fact supports this claim. Individuals cannot easily apply many common theodicies attempting to explain why God permits evil to explain an ant's suffering. This assumption suggests that theists may need to explain...