Creation is scary for children and other living creatures!

The following is a comment on Roger Ebert's blog about Ben Stien's "documentary," Expelled.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/12/win_ben_steins_mind.html

The one question that I never hear on any discussion of religion vs. science, or a natural world vs. a created world is why? Why did this deity create this universe and our species? The answer in the various holy texts says that He created us so that we could worship Him.

Take a moment to think how awful a thing that is. What is this God that He needs to be worshiped by creatures he created, unconditionally and only for the fact He created us. We are primitive in our science and understanding of the universe, yet we are already on the verge of creating life by manipulating genes. Does that make it right? Do we create a new type of life just because we can? There is the old saying that when science gets sophisticated enough it is undistinguishable from magic. Do we have the technology to become magi or even gods?

Think of the creation we live in. Animals tear other animals to shreds in order to survive. We humans still crave the flesh of other animals, while we hold onto cherished pets that some societies consider livestock. Not only do animals die horribly in the natural world, they die in terror, in abject fear and in horrible pain, fully aware of what is happening to them. What kind of creature would design a system like that? I am no God, not even a scientist, but if I were to design a universe, I would come up with something better than that. If there was a design, it comes close to perfection in the interplay of insects and flowers, or the creatures that live in symbiosis with other creatures.

There is much beauty in the world, but so much suffering that it is hard to believe that it happened by design. More to the point what would we call a human who had the power to create a planet and all the life on it and created the natural world as we know it?

We'd call him a psychopath.