Bill Craig's Use of Michael Murray's Book On Animal Pain

I have Murray's book, Nature Red in Tooth and Claw, the one Bill Craig uses to defend the lack of animal pain. I have been planning on posting something about it but so far haven't. Hint: Murray doesn't conclude what Dr. Craig does. In the meantime, I found this story by Harry McCall interesting when commenting on Craig's debate with Dr. Law:
Craig quoted Michael Murray’s study to prove there are three levels of conscious to pain in order to justify a caring God. As such, Craig used Murray’s evidence to prove that without a Pre-frontal Cortex in animal brains, animals can be in pain, yet are not mentally aware of the pain, thus animals do not suffer as we (humans) do. This really begs the question of just how does Murray know this third level does not exist in animals?!

To disprove Murray’s study, I have a common black and yellow garden spider on her web outside my bathroom window which I’ve often feed by tossing bugs into her web. I have tossed bugs as large as an adult Dog-day cicada.

The cicada will buzz and fight to get free, but the spider will quickly wrap it in her silk, bit and kill the cicada. The other day, I caught a Japanese Hornet (removed the stringer) and tossed it alive in her web. The spider immediately cut the entire web holding this hornet, setting it free to avoid conceived (third level) pain and / or death.

If what Craig quoted about Murray’s second level of pain consciousness was true, this spider would have attacked the hornet (like any other buzzing bug as a meal) and fought to its death trying to wrap it in web and kill it. This did NOT happen in that the spider avoided pain and possible death. Needless to say, this spider does not have a anywhere near a mammal’s brain, much less a Pre-frontal Cortex! Link.
Whether this was a conscious choice or not, spiders who did this survived. Those that didn't, didn't. Evolution is very wasteful. 99% of all species have died out through this trial and error process. Those that somehow figured out what might cause them pain survived. It's that simple. But they know pain when they see it.

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