[edelans]

This is mindblowing. I found this YT video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovo_T0KqdYg showing the whole life cycle of the jewel wasp.

What impresses me the most is that the wasps are not trained to do that. They appear to "just know" what to do. Wow.

[hn_throwaway_99]

On my worst days I like to think "Well, at least I'm not a cockroach being eaten alive from the inside out, with my vital organs specifically spared long enough so I can survive as food for the thing eating me, by a parasitic wasp."

And, quite seriously, the existence of this type of horrific parasitism precludes the existence of any sort of benevolent god in my mind. It's easy to imagine a million different universes where this sort of abysmal torture doesn't exist, and it only makes sense in the view of "uncaring" evolution.

[marcusverus]

This seems silly to me. Where is the line? Would a benevolent god prevent all parasitism? What about predation? Disease? Even if He were to do all of the above, horrific deaths would still be possible through injury, hunger, etc. Would a benevolent god prevent death and heterotrophy as well?

If you were to ascend to the heavens and obtain dominion over all of the universe, would you spend your time meandering around the cosmos, exterminating species whose lifecycles struck you as "horrific"? Would this behavior make you more moral than a god who simply permitted nature to take its course?

[rightbyte]

I'd think you'd need to add omnipotent though to be picky. Neither benovelent or omnipotent alone are ruled out.

[wood-porch]

Do you really think the cockroach feels pain to the same degree we do?