[A thoughtful comment on creation and evolution from an atheist-netfriend]:

If you consider that living creatures are designed, observe how many are well adapted to imposing bloodshed and death on one another.

Monty Python had a song about this, which actually makes a very good point.

<http://wuzzle.org/python/dullsong.html>

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 ‘orrid 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 spiky 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.

I don’t present this satirical piece to make fun of the idea of God as creator. I am pointing out that if you have God as creator and designer of life, then you should take seriously that God is creator of ALL life. This includes that most efficient of killing machines; the shark. It includes a wasp that lays its eggs in the body of a living caterpillar, so that its young have a ready supply of fresh food as they hatch and eat their unwilling host from the inside.

The real problem for you — if you do see it as a theological problem — is that the world is like this at all. I guess you have some way of resolving this problem.

But given that we see the world is like this right now, why is there any problem in the notion that the world we see is made by God, and works to shape the living creatures who inhabit it?

Finally, the association of bloodshed and death with evolution is over-emphasised. Sure… what dies tends not to propagate. But evolution is equally about competition to see who can have the most beautiful plumage or most graceful courtship dance for attracting a mate. It is about who manages best at caring for their children. It is about who is most healthy and resistant to disease.