The Food Chain and God: The Natural Evil of the World

A new page! "The Food Chain and God".

A good god could, if it wanted to, have designed all life so that it is directly sustained by manna from heaven, with no need for consumption of biological matter. But almost every form of life must by its very nature capture, kill and eat other living beings in order to survive. Without this murderous torment, life is impossible. If not by direct consumption, then, organisms must still acquire biological matter at the expense of others: the competition for food is also a case of living beings being required to outdo each other merely to survive. There is no way to live life along a principal of do no harm.

If life was created, and not simply the result of undirected unconscious evolution, this is surely the worst possible way to have created life. A god could not have created a more vicious cycle if it tried: tying the very existence of life with the necessary killing of other life is the work of an evil genius, not of an all-powerful and all-loving god. Either no god ever instigated life or guided it, or, such a god is monstrously evil.

The contents menu is:

1. The Arms Race: Poisons and Resistance
2. The Despair of Darwin
3. Non-Biological Energy and Balance

A few updates to some of my pages on religion

A few of these updates I done a few weeks ago, but I've been busy with University work so I'm only just around to posting this.

• Traditional Religions and Abolition of the Slave Trade - I've added a paragraph to section 1. The Early Slave Trade, War and Rejection of Slave Ownership : "Slavery was part of the culture of the entire Mesopotamian area (from which Judaism and Christianity arose) but in Babylon in the era of 1800 BCE, injury to slaves was a punishable offence, although the punishment was only a fine2, slaves were better off than in the surrounding areas. Organized Judaism arose from Babylon, and the God that they described in their holy writings happened to reveal to them laws and guidelines regarding slaves that were eerily similar to those found in the wider Babylonian community. Some use this fact to argue that all the verses regarding slaves are merely cultural artefacts, and not God's word."
  And I have also added half a dozen more verses to the text on the Old Testament and New Testament.

• Islam and the West: Pluralism, Immigration and Danger - Made a few minor updates and added section "4. Violent Fanaticism and Terrorism, Starting With Intolerance" with an example of the way a pro-evolution and pro-women's-choice cleric was forced out of his teaching role in the UK by anti-evolution and anti-women Muslims. The potential scope of what I could put on this page is staggering, so much so that I've chickened out and only made a few minor updates at the moment, due to time constraints.

• Institutionalized Religions Have Their Numbers Inflated by National Polls - Added some stats to section "5.1. Hidden Secularisation" on American atheists; 4 in 20 of them still call themselves Christian or Jewish, and only 1/4 of them actually call themselves atheist.

And finally,

• Is the Christian God Evil? Evidence from Scripture and Nature - I've added a new section to the bits on the New Testament - "2.3. Jesus and the Crucifixion - A Trick". The whole scheme of the life of Jesus does not add up, and it is very hard to reconcile it with the plans of an all-knowing, good God. The crucifixion makes no sense, except if the God of the Bible is evil. Then the magic tricks are the successful attempts of an evil god to impress us simple mortals.