"There Seems to Me Too Much Misery in the World"

"I had not intention to write atheistically, but I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae [parisitic wasps] with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice."

- Charles Darwin, in a letter to his devout Christian friend and supporter, Asa Gray