Animal souls

The problem of evil is most forceful when we consider an individual whoose life, on balance, is a bad thing. Assuming God loves his creatures, it would seem to follow that God would not allow any of God's creatures to suffer to such an extent that it would literally be better for them not to exist. For example, a child who dies at age 2 and has lived a lifeconsisting of constant hunger and brutality. One is naturally compelled to think that such a circumstance is one that no loving God could permit.

But the Christian has an out here, in the form of the afterlife. If our human lives are really just a small subset of a much greater existence, it may still be true that the aforementioned toddler does have a life that, overall, is better for him or her.

But the problem is deeper than this, for suffering is not limited to human beings, but also non-human animals. And it is generally recognized that animal pain provides one of the most forceful examples in support of the inductive argument from evil (e.g Rowe's deer).

My question is what would be wrong with supposing that non-human animals also have an extra-mundane existence, as Bishop Butler and John Wesley both held. I don't know what the theologial consensus is on this point. But it seems an obvious position to hold if one really believes in a God that loves all creatures. Futhermore, such a position conforms well with what has been recently learned about the intellectual capacities of non-humans. Holding that there is a firm distinction between human and non-human has been on empirically shakey grounds ever since Jane Goodall's observations of the chimpanzees.