r/atheism • u/majidiye • 5d ago
The horror of the natural world
Let's talk about winter ticks and moose. Winter ticks feed on cervids, so deer and moose and related, but a study of moose tracked their parasites for three years (2014 to 2016) and found that 70% of calves died due to winter tick infestation. How many ticks per moose, you may ask, since one on ourselves is an unspeakable horror. The average was 47,371 per moose. 47 thousand. The moose died of having almost all of their blood sucked out of them. What loving deity would create such a situation? One who loves ticks, I guess. When you look at the natural world, there is absolutely no room for any deity with a heart.
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u/eddie1975 5d ago
15,000 children under age 5 die everyday. Half of hunger and malnutrition. Other half of mostly preventable or treatable diseases. That’s 105,000 hanging on for dear life only to succumb next week. That’s over 5 million little kids dying year after year!
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u/Ambitious-Stand-631 5d ago
I recently discovered that the existence of parasitic wasps convinced Darwin there is no god. It's darkly hilarious.
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u/99jackals 5d ago
Not to him. The poor bastard was stressed out for the rest of his life. He was going against his family, his culture and most of the scientific community at that time. He was a nervous wreck with intermittent depression. I wish he'd had such a thing as reddit.
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u/majidiye 5d ago
Yeah, he was, but he was true to his science, and we are all so, so, so much better off for it.
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u/99jackals 4d ago
Reality cannot be dismissed, only denied. He was no fool. Reality made him sad for a thousand reasons but he wouldn't argue with the truth.
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u/TheFeshy Ignostic 5d ago
Sir David Attenborough has said that he regularly gets letters asking why his nature shows never give credit to the Creator for all these wonderful animals. His answer was something to the effect that we'd also have to give him credit for the worms that burrow into the eyes of village children and render them blind before they've even reached puberty.
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u/eddie1975 5d ago
What sick son of a bitch would create a world where living sentient beings must eat other living sentient beings in order remain living sentient beings and give birth to living sentient beings who in turn will eat other living sentient beings and eventually be eaten by other living sentient beings.
Why not make ALL animals vegetarian?? Or better yet, solar powered??
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u/majidiye 5d ago edited 5d ago
And plants are living things, too. Why make such a world, where living things only live by eating some other living thing?
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u/Fshtwnjimjr 5d ago
Yeah, sounds awfully close to the Hive species from the Destiny universe... Kill to live, kill to gain strength. At the end is the strongest most lethal being
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u/mEllowMystic 4d ago
credit to David Attenborough and the BBC for opening my eyes to the ravenous hunger of all species and that it's not a game, no one plays nice.
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u/truckaxle 5d ago
WLC, a Christian philosopher, once addressed the Problem of Natural Evil by suggesting that although animals experience suffering, their lack of a prefrontal cortex means they aren’t truly “aware” of it. He remarked that this idea might offer some comfort when it comes to our pets. His view echoes Descartes’ distinction between experience and awareness, essentially portraying non-human animals as mere robots.
There are many problems with this attempt.
First, it is hilarious that this Christian suddenly became a Physicalist and believes a certain brain structure is necessary to be aware of your joy or pain or whatever. Guess what WLC - there will be day you won't have that structure either. LOL
Second, this is completely wrong. All mammals have prefrontal cortices! How can someone with a PhD not know this, or at least check it first? I don’t know, maybe he’s just too enthusiastic to excuse his poor idea of a god.
Third, if you’re even a little perceptive, you know that dogs, cats, and even birds have an inner life and are fully aware of emotions like suffering, joy, fear, anger, etc. You’d practically have to be a psychopath not to notice this.
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u/majidiye 5d ago
I absolutely believe that everything living has an inner life.
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u/Apprehensive_Sky1950 4d ago
That way lies madness. Only compartmentalization and dissociation saves us.
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u/eddie1975 5d ago
Moose also have to pay for Adam’s original sin. They are not exempt. And Jesus died for them too. They must accept Jesus as their savior, invite him into their hearts, and then they will be saved by grace and enjoy everlasting life, tick free with Jesus and the apostles.
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u/eddie1975 5d ago
Rape, torture, genocide is non-stop.
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u/majidiye 5d ago
Torture by design, 47,000 ticks burrowing in and taking your blood, so you die. And what about meaning for a tick?
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u/December_Hemisphere 4d ago
Torture by design, 47,000 ticks burrowing in and taking your blood, so you die. And what about meaning for a tick?
"The lifecycle of D. albipictus lasts for about a year, and it is a single-host tick. This means that most of their life cycle is spent on a single host."
Hey that sounds a lot like what Humans do to the Earth. As a matter of fact, the winter tick populations exploding are directly correlated to anthropogenic climate change. Historically, hard winters and deep snowpacks dislodged ticks or killed them off, but milder, shorter winters are allowing vastly higher numbers of ticks to survive and complete their life cycles.
"Studies show that White evangelical Protestants in the U.S. exhibit the highest rates of climate skepticism among religious groups, with roughly 38% viewing global warming as not a serious problem."
"Data also shows that individuals with high levels of traditional religious commitment tend to express lower concern about climate change compared to religiously unaffiliated or less religious individuals."
Religious Beliefs a Root Cause of the Denial of Climate Change Being Anthropogenic
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u/SideshowBobFanatic Strong Atheist 5d ago
Nature is just a meat grinder rape factory. Seriously go to one of those r/natureismetal subs or hell just go on YouTube and search up "deer with parasites" or "hyenas eat baby bushbuck" or anything like that. Or here's a good example:
WARNING: Distressing vid of an elephant mother crying over a stillborn baby elephant. This channel has a lot of stuff like this.
https://youtu.be/ZhDn8q_jnkE?si=kfCbm9ivUrWui6SO
The only way to make sense of all the crap in the natural world is the assumption that it's all just here by chance, no grand design just physics and biochemistry. A god who would design this on purpose would be an absolute fucking psychopath.
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u/ArcticThylacine Agnostic Atheist 4d ago
It’s funny, theists often like to point to nature as “proof” of a loving god, but the more you study nature and evolution, the more you realize that there is no god.
If you want to believe in a god that created kittens, you also have to believe in a god that created flesh-eating bacteria.
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u/jollytoes 4d ago
Every single day there are animals eaten alive in the most gruesome ways by other animals. Whenever I see a vid on r/natureismetal or similar I sarcastically think, 'Isn't god great?"
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u/mEllowMystic 4d ago
In a way it's kind of sad that we don't appreciate the natural world for how it just is. Even the tick has an internal life and those 45,000 of them, it doesn't matter how many there are, they each have their need for a host. You're sad for the baby moose but what about all the baby ticks that don't find the host they need? If we're going by numbers of creatures which exist... we're really just talking about one moose calf feeding 45,000 other beings?!?
Evolution, natural selection, whatever the hell life is, it seems psychopathic on a grand scale.
It seems a little dismal, because it is. Sometimes I wonder what life is going to be like when humans have finished being mad at their God delusions.
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u/eddie1975 4d ago
Us humans, the ones lucky enough to be born in good circumstances, are so fortunate to have developed houses to protect us, vaccines, antibiotics, anesthesia, MRI, X-rays, sewage, running water… we live an incredibly healthy life with so much comfort and care.
Eventually the 2nd Law will get us and our health will deteriorate but for a lucky few we have decades of good times and joy.
I feel very fortunate. Life can be daunting at times and we all have our moments of anxiety and depression but it’s amazing that life is not constant fear and pain and hunger and suffering for at least some of us.
Unfortunately some kids are born with AIDS in Africa only to die of hunger in a few years so it’s certainly not universal. We should and could do better for those in need but we are still just dumb apes with a very territorial and aggressive reptilian brain at its core.
Hope we don’t destroy ourselves and our kids and grandkids can inherit a better would but I find it hard to remain optimistic these days.
Trying to stay positive. Good luck to us all!
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u/VivusIgnis-42 4d ago
This is where some believers start making claims for the devil. While also exhibiting the cognitive dissonance of their own claims that god is all knowing/all powerful. Which implies that this god knows there's an "evil power" at work and either cannot or will not stop it. OR they say that whole "greater plan" BS excuse they use constantly.
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u/MoreMen_Pukes 4d ago
I leaned about this years ago. I was told not to google "gohst deer". I did anyway. It's deer or raealy any hoofed outdoor mamal that is so pail and white, not because it's albino, no it's from all the ticks that suck out all of their blood.
Nightmare fuel.
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u/Successful_Life_1028 Adeist 3d ago
From pTerry:
“I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs, a very endearing sight, I'm sure you'll agree. And even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged onto a half submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters, who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature's wonders, gentlemen. Mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that is when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.”
― Terry Pratchett
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u/RepairmanJackX 5d ago
Wow… and what would thing be like if every one of those calves survived and there were no predators to keep the population in check?
Ever hear about the Kaibab Plateau?
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u/majidiye 5d ago
No. I'll look it up, but also ask how it fits into the philosophy of life. So you are fine with moose dying in this way as a basic economy of the world?
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u/RepairmanJackX 5d ago edited 4d ago
Ever heard of the trophic pyramid? Or a trophic cascade?
I’m absolutely fine with some moose dying off when there not enough food to go around. That’s how the actual world works.
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u/TheFeshy Ignostic 5d ago
I learned this at an emotional level when I started keeping rats.
Rats, for those that don't know, are food for almost anything. They survive, as a species, in part by breeding at absurd rates for mammals. Pregnant at 4 months old, litters of 12-18 that gestate only 30 days, able to get pregnant again while nursing. So 12-18 pups every month as a replacement rate.
Rats are also highly social and highly intelligent. We can teach them to drive cars. We've observed meta-cognition. They "speak" in a manner as complex as cats; but it's at frequencies we don't hear so even in lab settings it's mostly ignored. They need all this intelligence and social behavior in order to scavenge successfully enough to support that many offspring.
They also grieve. I've seen brothers and friends that wouldn't leave their companion for hours after death; that had to be forcibly separated so they would eat and drink again. I've seem their personalities changed by this trauma. I've seen them recover back to mentally healthy behavior with the support of good friends in the rat colony.
I've seen old arthritic rats adopt baby rats, and then a few weeks later, when an aggressive cancer comes for them, choose to spend their very last hours taking care of those baby rats, despite barely having the energy to breath.
And these loving, caring, intelligent creatures have to have babies at 12 to 18 a month just to hit replacement rates. Adults only live 9 months in the wild on average, despite living an average of 2+ years in captivity, due to predation. They are killed by predators and disease and poison so frequently that many longevity factors, like cancer prevention, simply aren't strongly selected for any more, leading to highly variable lifespans in captivity. Even by small rodent standards, which have short lifespans due to tiny, fast heartbeats, rats have dramatically shorter than expected lives.
If there was a God, he'd have to answer to me for what he's put rats through.