Why did God create carnivorous animals that attack herbivorous animals?
Question from Birendra:
Answer Podcast
Download by “right-click and save content”
Transcription:
Why did God created a living being and then another living being to eat the former. for example the God created a dear and then a tiger to eat the dear. Why does He destroy His own creation. ? To simplify things, why did God create carnivorous to live on the flesh of other animals?
This world is provided by God as an arena for the souls who want to themselves play as being God. All of us as souls were in spiritual world serving God , but when we want to enjoy separate from God and be God ourselves, then we are sent to this world, where we are given an opportunity to try our God projects. Try being God. Of course, as we are not the only ones trying to be God, as every soul in its own way trying to be God, that creates competition. So , this competition creates struggle. manaḥ-ṣaṣṭhānīndriyāṇi, prakṛti-sthāni karṣati , in BG 15.7, Lord Krishna describes that this world is the place of struggle, and this struggle gradually gives us the realization that trying to be God is futile and fatal project, it is much better to try to serve God. So in the animal kingdom, the Tiger tries to be God by its power and by its sharp talents and by its sharp teeth and nails, to control dominate, capture , kill and consume other animals. On the other hand, the deer tries in its own way to be God by running very fast. So, the tiger’s ability to run very fast creates anxiety and fear for the dear, and makes its life into struggle, and the dear’s ability to run very fast , creates anxiety and trouble for the tiger, and in this way the purpose of the material world of gradually exhausting the soul’s ambitions and fantasies to be God , is served. So does that mean that God is a malevolent creator who has creator one being to eat another, No, it is not God who is malevolent, it is our intention , to leave God and enjoy separate from Him, what is malevolent. So imagine a video game in which there is thief and a police, the police is trying to catch the thief and the thief is trying to flee. And within that video game, for both, there is facility o to be expert, the thief is expert in running away, and the police is expert in trying to catch the thief. So , there expertise at their respective skills, indicates that the video game has been expertly designed. But then why has it been designed like that ? to serve some other purpose. Similarly, atheist often use this argument of mutually inimical skills in nature to say that there is no God or that there is evil God, but the fact is , that we cannot separate the design of the world from its purpose. So the world is not place for enjoyment. If I use my mobile to type my next book, I will get fed up and I can blame the designer of the mobile for creating such tiny key pad that it makes typing extremely difficult. But the mobile designer is not to be blames, it is I who have to blamed, because I am not using mobile for its primary purpose. The primary purpose of the mobile is communication by speech, it is not typing, which is secondary purpose, and we can do it slightly, some small SMS we can type on it, but the mobile is not meant for typing the book, So , we have to understand the design in the context of the purpose. So the mobile will appear badly designed if we use it for typing. Similarly , this world will appear badly designed if we use it for our own enjoyment, but if we use it for its purpose , which is for our gradual purification and reformation, then we understand that this world serves a perfect purpose, and everything in this world falls in place. So, the mutual competition and the struggle that exists in the animal species, is meant to gradually give the soul the realization that this world is the place of misery, and to rise upwards. Now we may say that the animal get the realizations? Animals may not consciously get the realization, but the soul , as it evolves through the species, assimilated the lessons deeply, within its subtle mind, with in the subconsciousness and it moves forward, upwards till it comes to the human species , where it gets the opportunity for liberation.
So to summarize , the world is created to allow all of us to try out our fantasy God projects and because everybody is trying that project, it creates competition struggle and misery over here, So this is exhibited in the animal kingdom, in the competition that exists between tigers and say deer. But in addition to allowing us to bear the consequences of our wrong choice of wanting to be God, the competition in the world also serve the additional purpose of giving us realization that we need to reorient our desires. And when we do this, then we fulfill the purpose of the world, and then we realize that the world is well designed, not wrongly designed.