I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae [a kind of parasitic wasp] with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. (quoted in Behe, Darwin Devolves, p. 85)
Behe tartly comments, "Although that prissy view of the deity might have seemed natural to upper-class Victorians tending their gardens in the sunshine, it would have surely surprised the ancient Israelites and religious people throughout history, who routinely endured plagues, persecution, famine, and wild animals. (Darwin Devolves, p. 85). Nevertheless, for Darwin, this was sufficient reason to believe that a random, purposeless process of evolution was responsible for the existence of life, rather than a Creator God.
Still, there is a question we need to ask here. In the quote above, Darwin clearly implies that parasitic wasps' feeding "within the living bodies of caterpillars" and cats' playing with mice are phenomena that bring him emotional distress, presumably because they somehow seem to be not right--contrary to the way things should be. However, if these phenomena are simply the result of a random process of evolution, then they just are--there is no question of right or wrong, good or evil. Consequently, there is no reason for him to feel distressed. And yet, Darwin quite obviously does feel ill at ease. Why? Somehow he had a notion that suffering is evil, but such a notion implies some sort of absolute standard of good and evil by which suffering can be judged as evil. Where does such a standard come from? Not from nature, for nature appears to be amoral--neither moral or immoral. Nor from human beings, as they often fall short of such a standard. It would seem to be that the only possible source of such a standard is God Himself. But if by God's moral standard, the one that is the ultimate source of Darwin's unease, the suffering caused by parasitic wasps and cruel cats is evil, then it can be argued that the suffering that exists in nature is contrary to God's original intentions for nature. In brief, something went wrong with the world, and Christianity would say that what went wrong was sin. In some way, sin has affected not only human beings, but also nature. Perhaps this is why the Apostle Paul in the book of Romans speaks of all creation "groaning." We cannot be completely sure why God allows suffering to exist, including in nature. Nonetheless, the words of Tennyson--though not an orthodox Chri:
Oh, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final end of ill.
In short, the existence of suffering in the natural world was hardly a compelling reason for Darwin to attribute the existence of living things to a random process of evolution. Indeed, it is somewhat ironic that an underlying rationale for a scientific theory should be theological in nature, given that we are sometimes told that science is based on objective facts, unlike religious beliefs!