@philosophyminis: Darwin once wrote that the reason why he couldn't believe in the Christian God was not because of the evil that humans did to each other, but because of the evil in the natural world. He couldn't believe that there was an all-loving divine hand steering a world that allowed such unthinking cruelty. Darwin's example was to look at wasps. There is a certain type of wasp which will lay its eggs in a host, such as a caterpillar, and when these eggs hatch, they will feast on the caterpillar just enough so that they do not kill the caterpillar, because a good parasite does not kill its host, because to kill the host would be to kill themselves. And so they just gorge themselves on this long-suffering caterpillar, eating it alive, but never killing it. The problem of evil is a classic problem for anyone who wants to believe in an all-loving, all-powerful God. The classic solution is to say that evil is the price we must pay for free will. We can choose, and we often choose the wrong path. But Darwin's point, the problem of natural evil, still stands. He asks why the world has been created to not only allow, but to reward such incredible suffering. Because after all, the wasp will grow up and carry on being a parasitic wasp. There is no wasp hell. And even if there were, why would we punish a wasp for doing as it was created? There are other solutions offered up, such as saying that this is a testing ground, or that this is the best of all possible worlds. But Darwin's question still stands: Why did an all-powerful, all-loving God create a world where an unseen, unknown caterpillar gets tortured to death by a parasitic wasp?

Jonny Thomson

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Thursday 18 June 2026 16:24:50 GMT