Hong Kong Liberal Religious Forum

Michael J. Murray, Nature Red in Tooth and Claw: Theism and the Problem of Animal Suffering, Oxford University Press, 2008, 209pp., $70.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780199237272.

Reviewed by Mylan Engel Jr., Northern Illinois University
http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=15425

Michael Murray's provocative book addresses 'the Darwinian problem of evil' for theism. In Murray's words: "the Darwinian problem consists in the vast and unquantifiable array of nonhuman-animal suffering that is endemic to the evolutionary machinery -- machinery which has been winnowing unfit organisms from the planet (often kicking and screaming) for nearly three billion years" (pp. 1-2). Murray then cites Darwin's poignant explanation of the problem: "'the sufferings of millions of lower animals throughout almost endless time' are apparently irreconcilable with the existence of a creator of 'unbounded' goodness" (p. 2). Darwin is not alone in expressing this worry. It has seemed to many that the magnitude, variety, intensity and duration of animal suffering provides compelling evidence that God does not exist. Murray's goal is to defang this argument for the irrationality of theism by offering a series of possible explanations for animal suffering, the truth of any one of which would render theism compatible with such suffering.
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