A Darwin quote for Darwin Day

For Darwin Day, I thought I'd (re)post one of my favorite Darwin quotes. Here it is:

I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. -- From a letter to Asa Gray, 22 May 1860

The Ichneumonidae is a family of wasps. A very big family. It is, in fact, one of the largest families in the largest class of animals, the insects. There are over 60,000 species of ichneumonid wasps, each one, according to creationists, specially designed by God. My question for them is the same as Charles Darwin's: Why? Why would a beneficent and omnipotent God do such a thing?

To understand the question, it is necessary to know a bit about the ichneumonids. First of all, most are parasitoids, which means that their larvae develop inside the body of a living host, which they slowly eat alive. Eventually, when the wasp larvae pupate, they erupt out of the body of the host that they have gradually consumed, tormented, and destroyed as larvae.

It is easy to see how such a thing could exist from an evolutionary standpoint. The body of a caterpillar is good food for larvae. It's not surprising that some organisms have evolved to take advantage of it. But what kind of a God would purposefully design it to be that way?

I have heard five different answers:

1. God originally made everything good; there was no suffering or death until the fall of Adam. Then all hell broke loose. Animals immediately began to kill and eat each other, and predators, parasites, parasitoids, and pathogens roamed the earth. (Creation Ministries)

2. God made things nasty right from the start just to show us how important we are to him. He knew that Adam would sin, so he made nature cruel to show us the serious nature of sin. (Dembski's Defective Design Inference)

3. God made everything good and then Satan messed everything up. (Gregory Boyd's Cosmic Warfare Theodicy)

4. God likes it just fine the way it is. He created it that way for is own pleasure. He likes to watch things suffer. (David Snoke)

5. God couldn't help it and had nothing to do with it. He would have liked to create a kind and peaceful world, but he had to let things play out according to the laws of nature, over which he had no control. So the ichneumonid wasps just evolved, along with everything else, over millions of years while God sadly watched from a distance, unable to affect the outcome. (Ken Miller)

For each of these answers, though, I have a question.

1. How did things change so quickly? Were the 60,000 ichneumonid species specially created by God the moment Adam sinned? Or did God magically turn 60,000 butterfly species into parasitic wasps? Or did they all evolve (super)naturally in a few thousand years?

2. How do the ichneumonids teach us about sin? Until about the time of Darwin no one (except God) even knew they existed? Yet God created them just for us, just to teach us a lesson?

3. So Satan created the Ichneumonids? Along with scorpions, spiders, snakes, and sharks? He must have been a busy guy!

4. How could a kind and loving God create things just to watch them suffer?

5. A God who can't create or control anything isn't a God at all.

Here are some cool videos about the Ichneumonids.

The first one is from David Attenborough's marvelous "Life in the Undergrowth."

And here's one showing a Ichneumonid wasp (Megarhyssa sp.) drilling through the bark of an oak tree to deposit an egg in the tunnel of the siricid wood wasp, whose larva the Maegarhyssa lava will eat alive from the inside in the traditional Ichneumonid fashion (just like God intended it to be).

Evolution Creationist Style: It all happened in 1656 years

In the beginning, God created everything good. No predators, parasites, pathogens, pain, disease, or death for any of God's creatures. Every living thing (except for maybe the plants) lived forever in a vegan paradise that was all "very good."

And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. Genesis 1:30-31

But Adam screwed all that up by sinning (or whatever) and God cursed the ground causing thorns and thistles to grow (Genesis 3:17-18), creating the cruel and brutal place that we see today. It went from "very good" to "no country for old men" in just 1656 years.

How do we know this? The Bible tells us so. Here's how.

	Years after the creation of Adam
And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son ... and called his name Seth: Genesis 5:3	130
And Seth lived an hundred and five years, and begat Enos. Genesis 5:6	235
And Enos lived ninety years, and begat Cainan. Genesis 5:9	325
And Cainan lived seventy years and begat Mahalaleel. Genesis 5:12	395
And Mahalaleel lived sixty and five years, and begat Jared.Genesis 5:15	460
And Jared lived an hundred sixty and two years, and he begat Enoch. Genesis 5:18	622
And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah: Genesis 5:21	687
And Methuselah lived an hundred eighty and seven years, and begat Lamech. Genesis 5:25	874
And Lamech lived an hundred eighty and two years, and begat a son: Genesis 5:28	1056
And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth. Genesis 7:6	1656

Okay, so the flood happened 1656 years after the creation of Adam. But how do we know that creation had completed its transformation (evolution?) from kind and gentle to cruel and brutal by the time of the flood?

Well, again the Bible tells us so.

The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Genesis 6:11-13

The whole earth "was filled with violence" (God made it that way), so God had to kill everything on earth to make it less violent. Fair is fair.

So nature was "filled with violence" by the time of the flood. The only question is how did it get that way? Did God re-create it immediately after Adam's fall in a second "there will be blood" creation? Of did it evolve naturally without God's involvement in the 1656 years between fall and flood?

Can some Bible believer clarify this for me?

To torture little children just for the fun of it: The Hitchens-Richards ID debate

I wish I could have seen yesterday's Intelligent Design debate between Christopher Hitchens and Jay Richards at Stanford University. (If anyone can find a transcript or a webcast, please let me know.) But from the report in the Stanford Daily, it was another bad day for ID.

The first bit of evidence that Richards presented in favor of ID was the fact that we all feel "simple moral truths." As an example, he pointed to the fact that "we all know that it’s wrong to torture little children just for the fun of it."

And I agree, we pretty much all know that. Which is why we also know that life wasn't designed by a kind and loving God. Because the designer, if there is one, purposefully designed creatures that "torture little children" and he did so "just for the fun of it." Or so says Revelation 4:11, anyway.

Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.

Here's what Sir David Attenborough said when asked about ID.

When people talk about God and creation, they always think of beautiful things, like roses and hummingbirds. But I also think of a little African boy sitting on a river bank in West Africa with a worm eating its way through his eyeball, which will make him blind in the next few years. Now if you are telling me that God created the rose and the hummingbird, presumably he also created this thing in his eye. And it didn't evolve the way that I believe that it did, but it was created by God. Some way or another, God said, "I will make a worm that can only live by boring through peoples' eyes." Now I don't find that compatible with the Christian idea of a God who cares for the well being of each of us.

Here is the interview with David Attenborough.

And here is a Wikipedia article on River Blindness.

David Snoke's "A Biblical Case for an Old Earth"

David Snoke is a physics professor at the University of Pittsburgh and an elder in the Presbyterian Church in America. His latest book is A Biblical Case for an Old Earth.

Facing the facts

First of all, I must say that I like the way Dr. Snoke is thinking, when he says:

We must face the facts: if the Bible is wrong, utterly wrong, about the history of our origins, then we should dump it. (p.120)

Of course the Bible is wrong, utterly wrong, about the history of our origins (and just about everything else). But Dr. Snoke is reluctant to dump it. His challenge, then, is to try to find a way, any way, to interpret the Bible so that it does not conflict with science.

In many people's eyes, I have probably lost before I begin, because no matter what I argue from the Bible, they will say, "But you have come up with this just because you want the Bible to agree with science." I freely confess to this charge. (p.9)

Saying as little as possible

Snoke's little book is remarkable for how little it says about the history of life or the age of the earth. You'd think that a book about an old earth would say how old it is. But if the author has an opinion on the subject, he doesn't say so in his book. The closest he comes is this:

In this chapter [Chapter 2: The Scientific Case] I have argued that the world looks as though animals and plants have been living and dying for millions of years. (p.43)

From which, I guess, he (sort of) thinks that life on earth is at least several million years old. It seems that Dr. Snoke, like Ann Coulter, is not particularly interested in the details.

Here are just a few questions that he doesn't address:

• How long has life existed on earth?
• How old is the earth?
• How old is the universe?
• Is the fossil record reliable and what does it say?
• How long have humans existed?
• Were all of the species created in the beginning, or did God intervene periodically by creating a bunch of new species while causing others to go extinct?

Old Earth Creationism

Throughout the book, Dr. Snoke makes it clear that although he accepts an old earth, he rejects evolution.

Many people seem to assume that if the earth is as old as science indicates, and animals have lived and died during that time, then evolution must have occurred. Not so! (p.44)

An old-earth view is not synonymous with evolution. (p.193)

...evolution, which I reject... (p.164)

Lord of the Fleas

Dr. Snoke spends two chapters on the important scientific question of whether animals suffered and died before Adam and Eve sinned. Evangelical Christians are divided on this issue. I discussed his views in a previous post (For thy pleasure they were created), so I’ll skip over them here, except to say that he believes that God purposefully designed animals to prey on one another from the very beginning.

God … is not just the way we would like him to be. We may hate the wrath of God, but we cannot say it is illogical to believe in it. What is illogical is to believe in a God who would never harm a flea when we see lots of harmed fleas around us. (p.96)

Utterly wrong non-negotiables

Dr. Snoke admits that he "wants the Bible to agree with science." But he says there are three biblical "nonnegotiables" which science cannot contradict.

1. "Adam was one, real, historical man."
   (Adam was specially created by God just like it says in Genesis. And all humans are descended from him.)

2. "Noah was one, real, historical man."
   (Snoke thinks the flood was local, making biogeography a bit less embarrassing. But he insists "that the flood killed every other person on earth except those on the ark, so that every person today is descended from one of Noah's sons.")

3. "Life in al its diversity was created by sovereign, miraculous acts of God."
   (Evolution did not occur.)

Dumping the Bible

"If the Bible is wrong, utterly wrong, about the history of our origins, then we should dump it.” His non-negotiables are utterly wrong about the history of our origins. I guess it’s time to dump the Bible.

For thy pleasure they were created

The Intelligent Design movement has its own wedge issue: natural evil. Its existence is hard to deny, but what do you do with it? If cruelty is designed into creation, then how can the creator be good?

Most IDers solve this problem by shifting the blame from the designer to humans or demons -- anything but God. But of course that's cheating. We should clearly see the existence and nature of God from his creation. After all, Paul says we're going to hell if we don't.

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse. -- Romans 1:20

There are a few Christians, though, that take God at his word. He is, after all, the proud creator of evil.

I am the LORD, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. -- Isaiah 45:6-7

He made predator and prey, host and parasite, and did it all for his own amusement.

The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God. -- Psalm 104:21

Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created. -- Revelation 4:11

An ASA article by David Snoke puts it this way:

God does claim direct responsibility for the creation of natural evil.... God neither apologizes for making these things, nor weeps over them -- he glories in them.

God didn't create a world full of misery to punish Adam and Eve, and the devil didn't make him do it. He did it because he wanted to. He just likes to watch things suffer.

Dembski's Defective Design Inference

To make us realize the full extent of human sin, God does not merely allow personal evils (i.e. the disordering of our souls and the sins we commit as a result) to run their course subsequent to the Fall. In addition, God allows natural evils (e.g. death, predation, parasitism, disease, drought, floods, famines, earthquakes, and hurricanes) to run their course prior to the Fall. Thus, God himself wills the disordering of creation, making it defective on purpose. William Dembski, The End of Christianity, p.145

Notice that according to Dembski, God purposefully designed the evils of the natural world, "making it defective on purpose."

What a valuable concept! Defective Design (DD)! It will be interesting to see how Dembski and others who believe in DD will incorporate it into their "design inference."

Dembski's Theodicy: God's Preemptive War on Nature

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive; others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear; others are being slowly devoured from within by rasping parasites; thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there is ever a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. -- Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden

In a previous post (Behold, it was very good 4 June 06) I listed five ways that Christians try to explain natural evil. Here's a summary:

1. The original creation was perfect and would have remained that way if Adam hadn't of sinned. But he did, so God changed everything. The natural world was good before Adam's fall, but worse after.
2. Death and suffering are all a part of God's grand design. Nature is red in tooth and claw because God likes it that way.
3. God's creation was perfectly benevolent, but then Satan snuck in and ruined everything.
4. God created the world, but he (she, it, them) can't control it. He didn't know how it would turn out and he is not responsible for it. He's just an innocent bystander.
5. Natural evil does not exist. Nature, like God and the Bible, is kind and gentle. (Ignore it when it appears otherwise.)

But William Dembski has come up with a whole new theory: God's preemptive war on nature. Here's how it goes (with quotes from Dembski's article).

God created the universe billions of years ago.

I accept standard astrophysical and geological dating (12 billion years for the universe, 4.5 billion years for the earth). -- p.15

It was screwed up from the start because God knew Adam would sin in the end.

God is able to act preemptively in the world, anticipating events and, in particular, human actions, thereby guiding creation along paths that God deems best. -- p. 32

God ... brings about natural evils (e.g., death, predation, parasitism, disease, drought, famines, earthquakes, and hurricanes), letting them run their course prior to the Fall. Thus, God himself disorders the creation, making it defective on purpose. --p.39, Dembki's emphasis

So for hundreds of millions of years, untold billions of sentient creatures were purposefully tormented by God. How can that be true, if God is good?

Well, it's all about us. We are all that God cares about. (J.B.S. Haldane was wrong about God; God doesn't give a shit about beetles.)

God's activity in creation is ... principally concerned with forming a universe that will serve as a home for humans. -- p.37

A world that exhibits natural evil becomes an instrument for revealing to us the gravity of sin. -- p.47

God, in his preemptive war on nature, has purposefully created elaborate methods for systematically tormenting animals. And he's been doing it for hundreds of millions of years while no one but him could watch. But he did it all just for us, to teach us a lesson about the gravity of sin. Kind of makes you feel warm all over, doesn't it?

God's Fiery Serpents

And they journeyed from mount Hor by the way of the Red sea, to compass the land of Edom: and the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way. And the people spake against God, and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? for there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread. And the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died. Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD, and against thee; pray unto the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people. And the LORD said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived. - Numbers 21:4-9

These verses have long fascinated both believers and skeptics. What were the mysterious "fiery serpents" that God sent to bite the people, causing many of them to die? Well, parasitologists say it may have been the guinea worm (The nematode Dranunculus medinensis).

To understand why the guinea worm is suspected, you must understand its life cycle.

Guinea worm larvae are released by their mothers into a body of water. The larvae thrash about vigorously until they attract and are eaten by a copepod, which is a small, nearly microscopic, crustacean. The copepod is, however, just a temporary home for the worm. It cannot complete its life cycle unless it can somehow get inside its definitive host: a human being. This is accomplished when someone drinks water containing the infected copepods.

The copepod's body is destroyed by the stomach acids, releasing the guinea worm, which then burrows its way through the intestinal wall. It begins to migrate through the abdominal cavity and into the connective tissue, stopping to mate with another migrating worm that it runs into along the way. By this time females have grown to be nearly a meter in length, while the males are only a few centimeters. After the worms have sex, the little male wanders off to find a place to die, while the female continues her journey through the human host's body.

While the migration of the female worms causes great pain and discomfort, it is when the worm reaches its final destination that the torment really begins. The worms end up just beneath the surface of the skin, usually in the legs or feet, where they remain for a month or more. Their metabolic wastes and the host's allergic reaction cause a blister to form, resulting in intense itching and burning pain. One of the few ways to relieve the pain is to immerse the blister in water, inducing the worm to break through the surface of the skin releasing millions of guinea worm larvae. A copepod eats the larvae, completing the guinea worm life cycle.

But the human suffering is far from over when the worm breaks through the skin, for although the female worms die soon after releasing the larvae, their dead meter-long bodies are not easy to remove. And even if the dead worms can be extracted without rupturing, serious secondary infections often occur.

So how is the worm removed? Well, the traditional way, which is still used today, is to carefully wind the worm around a stick. The only other option is surgical removal, but this is extremely difficult and not often successful.

Well, now that was interesting. But were the "fiery serpents" of Numbers 21 guinea worms in disguise? I'll leave that for you to decide, but some aspects seem to fit the description in Numbers.

The pregnant females are rather large worms and cause excruciating pain when breaking through the skin to release their larvae. So it is easy to see how they could be called "fiery serpents".

Guinea worms would have been present in the region at the time of the Exodus, as they still are today. If the Israelites encountered drought conditions, as they did according to the account in Numbers, it would have facilitated the transmission of the disease by concentrating worm larvae, intermediate hosts (copepods), and infected humans at the same water source.

And the serpent on a pole could well represent the most common form of treatment, then and now: pulling out the guinea worm by winding it on a stick.

Okay, let's assume the "fiery serpents" were guinea worms. If so, what message should we take from all this? What is God trying to tell us here? And what can we learn about God from this passage in Numbers?

One thing that should be clear to us all, of course, is the moral of the story: Don’t whine. God can’t stand a whiner. So if you or your children don’t have enough to eat or drink, well, just keep quiet about it. Whatever you do don’t mention it to God. If you ever get tempted complain about it, just look at this as a reminder.

So we know why God did it. What isn’t so clear, to me at least, is how. Did he simply infect the drinking water with guinea worm larvae? Or did he specially create guinea worms just for the occasion? If so, why didn’t he clean up afterwards? Why did millions of people have to suffer (and still suffer today) because the Israelites complained to God about their living conditions?

And what should we make of the “serpent on a pole” thing? The bible says that people were cured just by looking at it. Would it still work today? If so, then someone should let people know because the current treatment is much more involved (and painful) than that.

You also have to wonder why God didn’t explain how to prevent further infections, because prevention is much easier than treatment. All that is needed is to filter the drinking water through a fine-mesh cloth to remove the copepods. (The World Health Organization has nearly eradicated the disease by using this method.) Wouldn’t that be better than the Moses’ magic brass serpent - or the real treatment that this may have represented? Didn’t God know how to prevent the disease that he created?

But the last question is most important of all. Why are there guinea worms? Did God specifically design these worms to live inside the body of humans? Or were they created by Satan? Or did they just evolve, and God had nothing to do with it? If the first is true, then God is evil. If the second, then there are at least two gods. If the third, then God cannot control his own creation. Which do you think it is?

Behold, it was very good.

And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. Genesis 1:31

Everything that God made was, at least at the time and according to him, very good. But things seem to have changed since then.

This is a problem for believers (and not just bible-believers, but all theists and deists, as well). Where did all the predators, parasites, disease, death, and suffering come from? Since they exist, they must have been designed. And although the design may have been intelligent enough, it could hardly be called benevolent.

But Christians believe in a benevolent God. So what's with all the nasty stuff out there?

Well, as you might have guessed, it's all right there in the Bible. But like everything else in there, it depends on who you ask.

1. Some say that the original creation was just like God said it was in Genesis 1:31: very good. No predators, prey, suffering, death, or disease. Every living thing was immortal and would have lived happily ever after, if only Adam (who cares about Eve?) didn't sin. But he did, so God changed everything. Creatures prey upon one another in a painful struggle ending in a pointless death.

2. Others say that death and suffering are all a part of God's grand design. Nature is red in tooth and claw because God likes it that way.

   [W]e like to think of God as being the God of love. However, God's character is multifaceted and complex. The God of love is going to throw plagues against the earth, eventually burn it up in judgment, and ultimately sentence the unrepentant to eternal torment. Animal death is certainly no less loving than these things.

   The God of love tortures people forever in hell; he also enjoys watching cats play with mice.

3. Others say that God's creation was perfectly benevolent, but then Satan snuck in and ruined everything. They quote Matthew 13:28 where the servant asks the master where the weeds came from and he replies, "An enemy has done this." Satan has power to change God's creation, and he has done so with a vengeance. There is a war going on within nature and God is just another enemy combatant.

4. Others say that in the beginning God started it all in a big bang billions of years ago, but he didn't know where it was going and didn't intervene along the way (except for maybe a tweak now and then when nobody was looking). He's as surprised (if he still exists) and as shocked by what he sees as you are.

5. And others just pretend that nature is kind and ignore it when it appears otherwise. Just like they do with the Bible.

I'd be interested to know what the believers think about these options. Which do you prefer? And did I miss any?