Why did god make so much of life dependent on eating other things alive?

Question

Seems rather unnecessarily cruel, doesn't it? You'd think an intelligent designer could have made things slightly less brutal...

poliacho: With all due respect, you must have to be breathtakingly stupid to think that everything bad that's ever happened in the world was a reasonable response to some woman eating an apple that she wasn't supposed to. Don't you folks ever think about the arrant nonsense that you come out with?

Answer 1

Seems many of these folks haven't heard about the insects that eat live critters, even keeping them alive while they eat away at them. I agree, that it's brutal. They can keep their God for themselves. I think he's vicious.

"Paralysed but still very much alive, the spider is carried by the wasp back to its nest and carefully placed in the burrow. Now the female lays her egg on it. Only one egg is laid in one burrow because the stored food is sufficient for only one offspring. The female may repeat the whole process many times. A week or ten days later the egg hatches and the larva finds a large stock of still-living food immediately available. After coming out of the egg the maggot penetrates the spider’s cuticle and slowly eats it, leaving the vital organs, such as the heart, until last."

Answer 2

When God made the world, we were perfect in all ways. But He wanted us to truly be able to worship Him and thus we were given choice. We could worship Him perfectly and that would only change if we were to eat of the fruit that He said not to. So by our own choice, our first parents ate the fruit and since all crime deserves punishment, we were punished. They also gave us a sinful nature and so every generation is born sinful.

But meat wasn't always a main food source, this came about after the flood when food was scarce.

Answer 3

Yes, nature is brutal. But our bodies are organic, as are the bodies of all other living things. To nourish an organic body you need organic food, and the only source of organic food for animals is other organisms. To eat them you have to catch them and kill them. Humans do have the option of restricting their diet to vegetable matter if they so choose. But many other creatures - lions, eagles, sharks, crocodiles, trout, dragonflies, mosquitos - do not have that option. They were designed by their Creator specifically to feed upon other species of animals, and that has absolutely nothing to do with sin. It simply has to do with nature. Such species were already carnivorous long before human beings sinned, long before human beings existed. Tyrannosaurus was never a vegetarian. Neither was Carcharodon, the 80 foot shark with 6 inch razor-sharp teeth. Nor the sabertooth tiger. These animals were obviously designed by God and produced through evolution to be killing machines. That's nature.

Answer 4

Every thing could get it's energy from sunlight, like plants.

Also, why would god create things like parasitic wasps that lay thier eggs on live caterpillars which the young then hatch into, and consume alive, that seems a tad overkill.... pardon the pun.

Answer 5

You know, that's actually a good question for Religion & Spirituality.
There is surely a physical reason having to do with the acumulation of chemical energy in organisms of increasing complexity.
But let's explore 'eating' as a spiritual metaphor.
We are told by Christ to 'eat' his flesh. By this he did not mean literal canabalism, but that it was necessary for him to die — the gravest injustice for an innocent man — in order for him to accomplish sacrificial atonement.
Humanity did with the only innocent man as we do with all kind, such as the unfortunate Emily Keyes, and since he of all of us was actually absolutely undeserving of such treatment God rose him from the dead and so made it possible for Christ to raise the rest of us, the good, the bad and the ugly, to our deserved and undeserved ends.
Deserved in the case of those who reject such a costly gift.
Undeserved in the case of those who receive such an unmerited favor.
So the next time you chow down, be grateful for the sacrifice made for you by that innocent asparagus or steer, and consider the far more unwarranted sacrifice by Christ.

Answer 6

Seems to me an intelligent designer would have invented machines that were not waste factories.

The only purpose all animals, including humans, have in common is converting food into waste matter.

Answer 7

Norm is right. Things got all jacked up once sin entered the world, after Eve ate the apple. The rose grew a thorn, weeds sprouted in gardens, and good people did bad things, and nice animals ate innocent animals.

Answer 8

All creatures originally ate only things growing in the fields. Read your Bible! And after the flood man and animals began to eat other animals. That is why Noah took seven of the clean animals and only two of the unclean animals on the ark. When those who get to heaven go to heaven there won't be any more killing and eating of animals.

Answer 9

There's a purpose for everything and everyone. So what if you don't agree with that purpose. If your argument is a backhanded slap at intelligent design, its really not a very good one.

Answer 10

God did that because He owns stock in McDonalds.