https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/2025/08/endless-forms-most-beautiful-and-most.html
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| Cymothoa exigua, or tongue-eating louse, inside the mouth of its fish host. (Image credit: copyright Matt Gilligan) |
Here, I take issue with this claim, but to begin with, I must point out that whether or not you like an idea has no bearing on its veracity.
See "Darwin's Sacred Cause"[1] and "Evolution Scientifically Proven Beyond Any Reasonable Doubt"[2]
Here are Charles Darwin's closing remarks from "On The Origin of Species".
“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
This view recognizes the precious and awe-inspiring nature of life by acknowledging the unimaginably vast amount of time that it has taken to develop to its current state, running the gauntlet of natural selection over countless generations.
It recognizes how rare and fragile and precious life is, with the very special conditions that prevail locally, on this planet, and also takes into account the numerous times current life's ancestors have had "lucky escapes" from extinction-level events. [3]
It recognizes that all life, including us, forms an interdependent system - an ecology. Man is not separate or isolated from the rest of the living world. We do not have any magical "dominion", although we do recognize that, as an intelligent and powerful species, we have a responsibility towards the well-being of life on the planet. Astonishingly, many creationists are sceptical of the indications of environmental dangers and reject the precautionary principle, saying that God would not cause such disasters as are envisioned, or if he did, we've got it coming. Here's Darwin again, in "Origin",
"It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us."
It recognizes that life is not worthless and is not to be trivialized. It is to be admired and valued, as well as, in some cases, repulsed by. It is all comprehensible in the evolutionary view, where the sole criterion is, is it conducive to successful reproduction? As Darwin wrote in a letter to J.D. Hooker.
"What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel works of nature!"
"A Devil's Advocate" [4] became the title of an excellent collection of essays by Richard Dawkins. I reproduce a favourite essay from it, "What is True", here. [5]
Creationists struggle with the idea that a good God would have created both perfection and the horrors in creation [6]. Either "Stan" is responsible for all that is bad in this world, or it's the fault of a particular couple, who were not made aware of the difference between good and evil, but were nevertheless, somehow held responsible for everything bad - for being disobedient. No mechanism for this polluting influence is ever proposed. It's magic. But hey, the priority of creationist leaders is not to make any sense, but to make their flocks feel blameworthy enough to be obedient.
Incidentally, atheists do not hate God for the existence of bad stuff. To think that anyone could hate something they don't believe in is as incoherent as the notion of "original sin".
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