I have no need of a magical explanation for nature, or anything else.

No struggle.

All things dull and ugly,
All creatures short and squat,
All things rude and nasty,
The Lord God made the lot.
Each little snake that poisons,
Each little wasp that stings,
He made their brutish venom.
He made their horrid wings.

All things sick and cancerous,
All evil great and small,
All things foul and dangerous,
The Lord God made them all.

Each nasty little hornet,
Each beastly little squid--
Who made the spikey urchin?
Who made the sharks? He did!

All things scabbed and ulcerous,
All pox both great and small,
Putrid, foul and gangrenous,
The Lord God made them all.

- Monty Python

Python did so many great sketches about god and religion.

Well, within reason. And not too close.

We can substitute accordions for bagpipes. The logic is still sound.

I hate that sound. And you're right. The logic still works.

I HATE SMOOTH JAZZ!

But my daughter has been playing one for about 12 years. Now I get it.

Nature can be brutal and ugly, too. Deformities, Ebola, dying from exposure, blights on crops, forest fires, volcanic eruptions, getting torn apart by wild animals, hurricanes and floods, arthritis, disease and death - you get the idea.

And the Banana Argument

I just saw a post on facebook by a high school classmate. She quoted some crap by Ray Comfort.

I was gobsmacked. I hadn't realized have far off the deep end she had gone. When you admire Ray Comfort, you no longer deserve my time. Unfriend.

That is pretty bad, I wouldn't be able to tolerate it either.

Facebook is great for atheists though, it's like a smorgasbord of groups, videos and endless memes.

now I wear god's love screen.

and Guinea worms. Maybe she doesn't understand that the penicillin her kids take for every earache kill living creatures that made the kids sick. Or the diseases from sand fleas and kissing bugs (more properly called shitting bugs because they shit into the bite they just made, passing infection). Or maybe mango worms. Those really love Fido.

It's not all pretty little Thomas Kinkade miniatures, lady. The natural world can be nauseatingly awful.

I'd follow the links and send her a few You Tube videos to watch but she'd probably cry and get mad and say all that stuff was from the devil religious people who want to reconcile the natural world with an all good god invented.

And I'm just impolite enough to point out that such a creature, if real, could only operate with the express permission of their all good, all powerful god.

Then again, probably not. Mostly, these idiotic people just make me tired.

I can't think of any other way for this beauty to come about except a god, therefore a god did it.

TlalocW

Obviously, science classes weren't her strong suit and she slept through them.

Here's the gist of it for those who can't watch videos but it's missing Stephen's crisp British accent and the cutting tone of his righteous indignation:

kill innocent babies & children?


Their perspective is so one-dimensional, myopic, naive, childish, ignorant, romanticized hogwash, etc.

Of a Pictorial Atlas of Tropical Disease... nice one God.

The beauty around us could only be the result of a concept we create in our imagination?
The world would be as perfect without a single human to witness it, maybe even more beautiful.
The one thing we do have to contribute to the magnificence is our love.

frequently, about god's creation here that MOST of us have to suffer through for however finite our time in this existence.

there's a flesh-eating bacteria.

Warning: some unpleasant video

Thanks for posting.

[IMG]?w=964&h=644&crop=1[/IMG]

Also, I bet there were people who prayed and escaped that destruction, and that was a miracle and proof of God's beneficence.

I saw that move. The impossible happens, if you are white.