Greetings fellow humans,
This is my first time starting a topic on this forum, though I have posted a few times. I was originally going to bring this up in response to a comment, but I decided it was off-topic enough to deserve its own thread. A friend of mine once told me that she lost her faith in God when, as a kid, she couldn’t figure out why God would let the dinosaurs go extinct. Why would he let them go extinct if he created them and loved them? I thought the question was a little silly at the time, but it was still something that was a problem for her as far as belief in God was concerned. My response at the time was that the evolution and demise of the dinosaurs may have somehow prepared the way for the emergence of humans (acceleration of mammal evolution, etc.). Today, I would probably take a less anthropocentric approach. I would say that God is more like a cosmic lion tamer, with the universe as the lion, than a cosmic engineer. He is allowing the universe to evolve in its own way (while gently nudging it in the right direction) because he is inherently non-coercive as a God of love, even when this leads a mass-extinction. Since this topic is probably of interest to the folks on this forum, I thought I would bring it up to see your responses. How would you answer the dinosaur dilemma?