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If All Animals Go To Heaven, We Should Eat Them

If there's an afterlife for animals, as some Catholics believe, perhaps we shouldn't be opposed to killing them for food. After all, we'd only be facilitating their trip to heaven.

According to animal activist and Catholic Bruce Friedrich, the Pope recently proclaimed that all animals go to heaven. For Friedrich—who used to work for PETA and now works for Farm Sanctuary—this is yet another reason not to raise animals for food:

The most cruelty that is meted out by humanity against God's other creatures is a result of eating meat, dairy, and eggs. Indeed, the average American Catholic eats dozens of farm animals every single year, thus directly contributing to their suffering and death. All of us can take a stand against this abuse by no longer eating animals or their products, and when we do, we'll be acting in clear alignment with Catholic Doctrine. And God's other animals will thank us when we meet them in heaven.

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I suspect this is not a universal interpretation of the Pope's recent declaration, but I'll assume that Friedrich is right that the Pope has unequivocally pronounced that all non-human animals go to heaven.

If any animals are going to be thanking us in heaven, it will almost certainly have to be the animals we raised and killed for food.

Where I can't help but disagree with Friedrich is at that last line. If any animals are going to be thanking us in heaven, it will almost certainly have to be the animals we raised and killed for food.

There is a popular but kind of lazy argument for meat-eating that goes like this: Meat-infeating is actually good for animals because it gives (admittedly short) lives to beings who otherwise would have had no lives at all. It is our lust for animal flesh that ironically gives farm animals life, because if we didn't want to eat them, we would never have bred them into being. This is not the reason for animal farming, but meat defenders sometimes say that, like Jell-O, it's an accidental positive byproduct. If you think that animals benefit from even a small amount of existence, this argument goes, you can't oppose animal farming on the grounds that it kills animals who were born to become food. Yes, the animals do have to die, but that just means they've gone back to not existing—a non-state that they never would have left in the first place if not for animal farming.

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If you've ever been to Outback Steakhouse, you've probably had the experience of overhearing a rowdy table of unrepentant carnivores discussing the Roman philosopher Lucretius' "symmetry argument." The basic idea is that post-life non-existence is no worse than pre-life non-existence, and so it makes little sense to bemoan the deaths of farm animals (as vegans do) while simultaneously rooting for farm animals never to be born (as vegans also do). Combine this symmetry reasoning with a positive view of life as generally worth living, and you've got a case for animal farming.

If it's true that all animals who live and die go to heaven, then humans who breed animals into existence with the goal of eating them are not just giving them a few months of miserable existence: they are leading them to eternal life.

There are a few common ways for vegans to argue against this. One is to say that most farmed animal lives are pretty awful, and so they really are better off not being born. Another is to point out that once animals exist, they would usually like to exist as long as possible, and so killing them undermines any pro-animal pretensions meat eaters might claim. And then there is the classic, "What if we did it to humans?" If it's better to exist briefly than not at all, wouldn't we have to think of infanticide as more humane than birth control?

So, I had considered this kind of "better to exist, if only briefly" argument for meat-eating to be hopeless—until the Pope breathed new life into it last week. If it's true that all animals who live and die go to heaven, then humans who breed animals into existence with the goal of eating them are not just giving them a few months of miserable existence: they are leading them to eternal life.

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Vegans who believe that all farm animals are going to heaven—and there are probably not very many vegans who actually believe this—are now in an awkward position. To maintain that it's better for animals never to come into existence and go to heaven if they have to suffer at all along the way, Catholic vegans may have to endorse a pretty extreme and pessimistic view.

Benatar argues that an otherwise perfectly blissful life that is marred by a single pinprick is worse than no life at all. This is essentially what vegans would be endorsing if they opposed animal farming while believing that all animals go to heaven.

You've heard of Lucretius' symmetry argument, but have you heard of David Benatar's asymmetry argument? Benatar is one of the philosophers who Rustin Cohle plagiarized in the first season of True Detective, and he's most famous in philosophy circles for defending the extinction of all sentient beings. His most intriguing argument is that the non-existent have an asymmetrical advantage over the existent. In brief, the living experience both pain (bad) and pleasure (good), while the non-existent avoid both pain (good) and pleasure (not bad). If you're keeping score, the living have one bad and one good, while the non-existent have one good and one not-bad, giving the non-existent the clear and decisive victory.

Oh, did you think that missing out on pleasure should have scored a "bad" for non-existence? Benatar's claim is that missing out on pleasure is only bad for those who are aware of what they're missing (which the non-existent obviously aren't, since non-beings aren't aware of anything). Maybe you're wondering now why avoiding pain as a non-existent ranks a "good" instead of another "not bad," but just go with it.

This asymmetry argument allows Benatar to write in all seriousness that an otherwise perfectly blissful life that is marred by a single pinprick is worse than no life at all. This is a wildly unpopular philosophical position, but this is essentially what vegans would be endorsing if they opposed animal farming while believing that all animals go to heaven.

Of course, all animals suffer more pain in their lives than the equivalent of a single pinprick—as do all humans. The cost of admission to heaven for animals may be months or even years of pain and constraint, but when the reward is a future of endless bliss, that's a deal any rational chicken would take.