Stephen Jay Gould discusses something that most people have wondered about at least once in their life. The question was if God is good and benevolent, then why does he allow creatures to suffer. This question proved to be quite a problem for nineteenth century theologians to answer. Gould uses the example of the ichneumon wasp using a caterpillar to lay its eggs and then the larva eats the caterpillar from the inside out, keeping it alive until the very last minute, to prove a point. People would think that this is an evil act God is allowing to happen, but according to Gould, nature is non-moral, so there is no good or evil. Humans commonly think that other creatures feel pain, and Gould disagrees with this. He feels that they do not have the mental capacity to do so and many times humans try to apply their morals to situations that happen in nature.

First, I wanted to try to offer an answer to the question that nineteenth century theologians could not answer. Last semester, I took a philosophy class and we examined this very question. One answer is that God allows evil acts to happen because he gave creatures free will, when they were created. This means that the creatures are choosing to do bad things that God has no control over. Believing this answer also depends on a persons view on whether creatures have free will or not. Another answer that was commonly given was the God allows certain evils to occur, only to prevent a greater evil from happening. Going back to the wasp and caterpillar example, the wasp species would not be able to survive if it did not use the caterpillar. In nature, most creatures are dependent on other for survival, so if none of the animals were eating other ones, then they would all starve to death, this being the greater evil.

The second point I wanted to make is in relation to the point Chad made about religious leaders blaming our society for natural disasters, like Hurricane Katrina. This relates to Gould’s point about how human consistently view nature as having good and evil qualities. The religious leaders say that God is punishing people with natural events because he is unhappy with the way they are living their lives. Hearing this in class made me think of the Westboro Baptist Church. This church is famous for protesting soldier’s funerals and for their hatred of the gay community. This same church was going to protest the Amish funerals of the children that were killed during the school shooting. The church claims that god was responsible for the crashing of the Space Shuttle Columbia. Their web address is actually http://www.godhatesamerica.com/ . These people disgust me. I have no problem with people not supporting the war, but protesting soldier’s funerals, with signs about how god hates them, is absolutely horrible. I guess freedom of speech is not always used for good causes. They also blame Hurricane Katrina on our society and throughout their website, they refer to America as the “fag nation,” and they feel this is the primary reason Katrina happened. The last time I checked, hurricanes were not the result of Americas somewhat acceptance people being choosing an alternative lifestyle. Today, people should realize that trying to explain nature with religious reasoning just does not work.

Gould explains how we should look at nature. He feels that humans should look at nature and natural events as being non-moral. He means that they are not a reflection of a higher powers feeling towards people on earth. Events in nature are difficult to explain and trying to use religion to do so creates further problems. Gould brought up the point of nature being non-moral, and I had never heard this argument before. After reading his piece is agree with what he has to say. Humans have tendency to believe that everything has the same moral and ethical code that they do and this distorts their view of nature and how it functions. Religion plays an important role in many lives, but it needs to be left out of scientific explanations.