Natural Evil Quotes
“Ichneumonidae" is the scientific name for a parasitic wasp that lays its eggs inside a live caterpillar and the baby wasps eat the capillary from the inside out. Darwin found it hard to reconcile why if God designed each of these species (the religious belief at the time), was there so much unnecessary cruelty in some animals. Surely, he thought God could have designed them to survive and thrive without so much cruelty. He acknowledged that God might have set a process in motion, but the development and evolution of each species he concluded was random within the scientific laws that governed. Darwin knew exactly what the effect of his publication of his findings and conclusions about evolution would have on the orthodox religious leaders of the time. Most of them were of his own upper class socioeconomic strata and he had studied theology. He delayed his publication for a quarter of a century while he muddled though, not the science, but the effect on the religious leadership and their consequent attacks on him for being an atheist. Asa Gray was a leading American scientist who was also a devout Christian.
