A Beautiful, Seductive Lady with a Wretched Soul

I'm thinking today about people who consider nature evidence of God's presence.

I think this is rather like a teenage boy who has fallen in love with a dizzyingly beautiful woman, who pins his hopes and dreams on her, without consideration of her essential inner character.

Generally, when theologians and philosophers address the question of "evil", the argument is framed as though evil were an exception to a general good. But to me, the "inner character" of nature, of life, is revealed in the process of natural selection. The beauty of the cheetah, the grace of the gazelle, the splendor of an eagle- their magnificence was honed through millions and millions of years of bloody failure. The animals we admire today are the successful ones, (though even they will likely struggle to survive and then die a painful death) whereas, countless others before them were culled. Really, what could possibly be more horrific? This process is not, from any reasonable perspective, even morally "neutral". It is more tragic than we can ever begin to conceive. To imagine otherwise- to imagine the opposite- that nature is the handiwork of a giving God worthy of praise and honor - is to be seduced and fooled, tricked and cajoled. To imagine otherwise is to callously dismiss tragedy, and that, to me, is the essence of immorality.




*I'd like to add that even without accepting the theory of evolution and natural selection, but instead simply taking a vast, vast survey of the observable natural world, one would detect patterns that entirely support my point of view.