In this most recent addition to the Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion series, Trent Dougherty tackles the problem of animal pain. His book is an appropriate addition to the series as a ‘report from the frontier’ (3–4) of philosophy of religion for two reasons. First, Dougherty takes on a serious aspect of the problem of evil that has been historically neglected in most philosophical discussions of the problem (with the recent exceptions of Michael Murray's book, Nature Red in Tooth and Claw (2008) and Nicola Hoggard Creegan's treatment of the subject in Animal Suffering and the Problem of Evil (2013) ). Second, Dougherty's attempt to reconcile the ‘great profusion and intensity of animal suffering’ (31) with the existence of a maximally great Being is inventive and original: Dougherty argues that the only possible way that animal suffering could be justified is if animals are resurrected and deified in much the same way that humans will be at the eschaton (3). While Dougherty admits that his project might ‘strike the average reader as a bit far-fetched’ (2), he does an admirable and convincing job of defending his theodicy's natural fit with Christian theism.

Inspired by St Irenaeus' ‘soul-making’ theodicy, popularized in the twentieth century by John Hick in Evil and the Love of God, Dougherty argues that God's ultimate purpose for all his creatures is sainthood. Dougherty argues that this world is a finely tuned crucible filled with just the right amount of suffering to produce saintly creatures (121). Saintliness is a very great good, but Dougherty points out that even if this good outweighs the evil that produced it, evil must be ‘defeated’ if God is to be considered both good and just. Dougherty's notion of defeat is inspired by Marilyn Adams and Roderick Chisholm. He argues that evil is defeated when, in this life or the next, God's creatures look back upon their lives and embrace their suffering, endorsing ‘the events that have constituted [one's] path to virtue’ (114). For animals (and some humans as well) the lack of intellectual sophistication, early death, or other factors will cut short or prevent saint-making and the defeat of evil in this life. Therefore, for some humans (e.g. infants and the mentally disabled) but especially non-human animals, the defeat of evil can only occur in an afterlife where animals ‘will become full-fledged persons (rational substances) who can look back on their lives . . . and form attitudes about what has happened to them and how they fit into God's plan’ (3).

In chapters 1–3, Dougherty carefully grounds his arguments in the formal terms of Bayesian probability. Rather than formulating the problem of evil deductively (the most common approach to the problem), he frames the discussion by comparing the probabilities of two competing hypotheses: naturalism and theism. Chapters 1–3 give a brief sketch of how the simplicity of the competing hypotheses, the weight of arguments from natural theology, problems with updating, and the fit of hypotheses with auxiliary hypotheses bear on the probabilities of the theories in question. Also noteworthy in these chapters is Dougherty's rejection of sceptical theism as a solution to the problem of evil. He argues that while sceptical theists can claim agnosticism about God's reasons for allowing evil, thereby refusing to assign any probability to the existence of evil given theism, naturalism predicts the kind of suffering we observe in our world. Although sceptical theists may prevent theism from being directly disconfirmed by the evidence of evil, they cannot prevent theism from being indirectly disconfirmed by its comparative failure to predict the data of evil as well as naturalism (23). These chapters are a delight to read as Dougherty is exceptionally clear and makes what might be very difficult reading relatively accessible.

In chapters 4 and 5 Dougherty takes up the challenge of Neo-Cartesianism: the view that although animals appear to suffer, they are incapable of morally significant experiences of pain. By weaving strands of evidence from cognitive science, philosophy of mind, neurobiology, and cognitive ethology, Dougherty attempts to ‘drive [Neo-Cartesisanism's] probability down for the reader as low as [he] can make it go’ (69). He begins by arguing that Neo-Cartesians bear the burden of proof as it is a dictate of common sense or endoxa (the reputable options of the wise) that animals experience morally significant pain. Dougherty appeals to the consensus of the scientific community as expressed in various official reports that testify to the ability of all vertebrates to feel pain. Dougherty then examines various attempts by Neo-Cartesians to cast doubt on the common-sense view. One such attempt comes from the higher-order theory (HOT) of consciousness, which holds that phenomenally conscious states can only occur when a creature tokens a first-order mental state with a higher-order thought or belief. Many HOT theorists believe that animals lack the intellectual sophistication to notice their first-order mental states and therefore would be ‘blind, oblivious, or numb’ (67) to their pain experiences. While Dougherty is suspicious of any higher-order state being necessary for phenomenally conscious experience, he argues that if one does impose a higher-order requirement, there is no reason to think that the mental state must be very sophisticated. Dougherty points out that cutting-edge research on pain indicates that pain is best understood as emotive or affective and not rational or conceptual as many higher-order theories suppose. There is a great deal more in chapters 5 and 6 than can be summarized here, including an interesting discussion of the ‘lobotomy argument’ and insightful criticisms of Gordon Gallup's famous mirror tests for self-concepts in animals. Dougherty succeeds in showing that the Neo-Cartesian position is extremely implausible, and therefore the problem of animal suffering is as serious a problem for theism as it initially appeared.

In chapters 6 and 7, Dougherty lays out his adaptation of Hick's soul-making theodicy and Adams's notion of defeat (discussed above). Dougherty argues that the best kinds of worlds are those which produce saints and martyrs. But a necessary condition for sainthood is a very significant amount of suffering. Therefore, God has reason to create a world with the necessary conditions for these very great goods. Dougherty explains that our world has the ‘right frequency and right intensity’ (121) of suffering to produce creatures with saintly virtues. He argues that the evils (E) in this world are just what we should expect given the conjunction of theism and his theodicy (T & S):

However, Dougherty's claim that our world is finely tuned with respect to the frequency and intensity of the evil it contains is highly dubious. The support offered for this claim is largely anecdotal, consisting of Dougherty's personal observations that saints are more common than suicides and that evils of a soul-crushing variety are relatively rare (121). But this is far from obvious. The actual distribution of suffering and evil in the world seems to belie Dougherty's observation: especially in our time, suffering falls so much more heavily on some than on others. In some parts of the world parents watch their children die of hunger, girls are sold into sexual slavery, and deprivation of the most basic kinds of goods – clean water, basic sanitation, and a safe place to sleep – is pervasive. Even if one admits that these evils may be defeated in the afterlife, naturalism predicts the distribution, frequency, and intensity of evil in this world much better than the conjunction of T & S. Fortunately for Dougherty, a successful theodicy need not do a better job at predicting the evil in the world than naturalism; it need only screen off some of the disconfirmatory force of evil, so Dougherty's theodicy could be regarded as a success even if his fine-tuning argument from evil fails.

In chapters 8 and 9, Dougherty argues that animal resurrection and deification are a direct consequence of the conjunction of three facts: (i) animals have moral standing, (ii) animals suffer, and (iii) God's nature is good and just. He argues that because God is both just and good we should expect that God ‘will do justly and lovingly by animals’ (145). And God's justice and goodness require not only that He compensate animals for their suffering, but that their suffering should be defeated as well. For animals, this can only happen in an afterlife where they are transformed into intelligent persons capable of reflecting on their pre-mortem experiences. Dougherty points out that although this may sound strange to contemporary Protestant Christians, the deification of animals and the redemption of all creation is not a foreign or strange idea in Church history, especially not in the Eastern Orthodox tradition.

Dougherty then replies to two important objections. First, some might object that deification of animals is metaphysically impossible, as a ‘lowly’ dog, frog, or newt could not be numerically identical to the intelligent, meaning-making, animal-person that Dougherty envisions in the afterlife. Dougherty argues that the continuity of an immaterial soul would ensure the numerical identity of the pre- and post-mortem animal. He offers evidence from scripture, religious tradition, and philosophy of mind in a brief defence of the existence of animal souls, alongside a materialist account of pre- and post-mortem identity. This part of the book makes for a fun read as Dougherty indulges the reader in theories about four-dimensional time, wormholes, and split brains.

The second important objection that Dougherty addresses is the difficulty that resurrected animals would have in remembering their pre-mortem lives. In order for evil to be defeated, resurrected creatures must be able to embrace their earthly suffering. But if animals do not remember their earthly suffering, how are they to do this? Dougherty imagines that after death animals will enter a purgatory-like setting where an angelic guide will present animal-persons with their life stories. The animal-person will then have a choice about whether to embrace its suffering as constitutive of its journey to sainthood. Dougherty argues that if the animal is rational and of good will, it will embrace its suffering and in doing so the evil will be defeated (3). A critic might wonder if it is even possible to embrace and make meaning of experiences that one doesn't recall having. Dougherty's theodicy might be augmented here with memory research (Endel Tulvig). Research on memory shows that human infants and many non-human animals are able to retain implicit memories of important and formative events. So, for instance, a puppy that was abused might retain a fear of men with beards even if it doesn't remember, in a robust sense, being abused. The existence of implicit memories might help Dougherty's resurrected animal-persons make a meaningful connection with their pre-mortem selves. Another possible solution is just to propose that in the afterlife an all-powerful God can endow these new animal-persons with robust memories of their own lives.

If a maximally great being exists, then something very much like Dougherty's theodicy must be true: a good God would not allow undefeated evil, and for some creatures such defeat could only occur in an afterlife. Although Dougherty lays out necessary conditions for a successful theodicy, there are some important missing pieces. My main worry about Dougherty's project is that it seems that many rational, good-hearted creatures could and should not embrace their suffering as meaningful. This is because the evils faced by many animals seem like paradigmatic instances of meaningless suffering. What should Rowe's fawn say about its earthly suffering when its angelic guide informs the resurrected fawn-person that it was burned alive in an accidental forest fire? What about all the extinct species of creatures which were essentially Darwinian grist for the mill: what good or noble purpose will they be able to find in their lives and deaths? Or what about the millions of animals slaughtered in horrific conditions in present-day intensive farming facilities? The resurrected animal-persons cannot take comfort in the fact that they were part of a healthy ecosystem, as intensive farming destroys ecosystems. Nor can they take comfort in knowing that their flesh helped sustain some other creature through the lean winter months. At least in present-day, first-world contexts much meat-eating is a needless indulgence. Dougherty's saint-making theodicy seems to require an agent-centred, meaning-making defeat of evil, not just a global account of evil. Can Rowe's resurrected fawn-person make any more sense of its experience than that it lived in a world that operated according to regular natural laws? It seems unlikely.