God's Grand Plan?

Good luck with that, say I

As my mother was a Jehovah's Witness, I know their doctrine, dogma and practices reasonably well.  Last week, a gaggle (what is the collective noun for JWs: ans, a 'cult') of JWs inevitably turned up at my door, unbidden, eager to save me from the horrors of impending, nay imminent Armageddon (oxymoron?). 

I remember the incident as if it was last week. The lead Witness took heed that I was clad in my night robe/attire and asked if I was ill (twas 11.00am). I retorted: no, not at all, I'm just a lazy bugger.  Anyway, they promulgated their usual spiel, and I countered with my usual rhetoric. After a bit of back and forth, they departed, no doubt content and smug in their encounter with a lost soul/sole- I had forgotten to wear my slippers. Thus, they went hither in search of the ill-educated and gullible in order to fill their quota to the brim. Of course, on the Christian religious spectra, JWs represent the extreme fundamentalist end. They take the bible as literal truth, at least their version, and believe in the historical existence of 'Adam and Eve' and 'Noah's Ark' etc. I can't wait to encounter members of the 'Governing body' all bedecked in shimmering armour, sword in hand, astride a shining white steed. The vision of these fat old men garbed accordingly, laying forth and smiting the unrighteous, will be a sight to behold. For those unfamiliar with JW lore, this is what is going to happen at Armageddon. And Armageddon is coming real soon...

A day after my JW encounter, I was sauntering, nay promenading, in my town's High St, quietly biding my own business and time, whereupon a leaflet was thrust into my great and manly hand by a rogue 'Street Preacher'- the manic variety, no doubt. Normally, I'm required to bite my tongue in such a circumstance and render a polite and mute nod (is there any other variety?). But Mrs. S was engaged elsewhere, and thus, I was free to air my unpopular views, akimbo, and without fetter/filter. I likened the experience to a caged bird forever trapped, but on this occasion, the owner had left the door to the cage ajar....... Thus, I was free to unfurl my intellectual feathers and left to vent as was my wont (arse). The earnest young fella distributing the religious tract accosted and impinged upon my very soul (I don't have one) and demanded that I first answer an aggressively proffered question. I confess I'm a sucker for such an approach and therefore asked him to relay his profundity without delay. And so, to the question at hand: "What will I say to God when I die and am brought forth unto him?". I quipped: "Why was he/she/them/it so fond of beetles?". Obviously, my interlocutor was not a close reader of Darwin's work. After I explained the source of my answer, he flashed a smile and stated that his particular brand of Christianity was in full accord with the mechanism of Evolution. Evolution was God's methodology, nay gift for species formation. It was my turn to ask a question. "Why did your Lord God come up with a method so wasteful and cruel? Surely, an omnipotent all-loving deity could have fashioned a mechanism that wasn't reliant on such wanton misery". Unfortunately, this question remained unanswered. 

Do not be fooled by my flippant tone or demeanour, for there is an important point to be made here. 

Sadly, evolution by natural selection is inherently cruel and profligate. In nature, for every successful organism that survives to reproductive age, there is a host of brethren that lie trodden beneath. You don't have to be a biologist to note that life in the wild, for all species, is a rather precarious business. Disease, predation, competition for resources and the vagaries of climate all take their toll. As for evolutionary success, the only metric that matters relates to how many offspring you beget and their relative 'fitness' to survive in a given environment. Organisms are mere receptacles for the genes they carry. And what matters is how successful those receptacles are at ensuring their contained genes become passed to other like receptacles. How prosaically stated, Flaxen.  

God's mysterious hand in nature, as it unfolds, brings forth an unremitting, relentless horror show of rend and death. Couldn't God, in his majesty, who is able to control everything with a mere wave of his staff (poetic license), put forth a mechanism less sanguine than 'Natural Selection'. Perhaps he designated the task to one of his lesser co-deities. Christians are quick to place blame for the palpable evil in our world on the fallen Evil One. He is known by many names. But today, I will call him El Diabolo. However, before we apportion blame to the Devil, let us not forget that he is God's creature and ultimately under His control. So therefore, the final responsibility for evil, as evident in 'Natural Selection', must rest with God.         

I must write a piece about the much-maligned entity, sometimes called Satan.