Birds and God

The cuckoo bird uses a breeding strategy that--it seems to me--bears on theological issues. The female surreptitiously deposits her egg in the nest of a bird of some other species, and then flies away. When the cuckoo hatches, the nesting mother bird is fooled into thinking the cuckoo chick is her own, and feeds it. The young cuckoo throws eggs and other young birds out of the nest, so that it receives all of the ensuing parental care from a bird that is not its own biological parent.

Though I make no claim that the following is a comprehensive listing of the explanation for this behavior, I think most RHP members could pick some one statement as being a likely scenario.

1) Evolution is a real process, and there is no morally good deity providing a guiding hand to evolution, so that we have no reason to expect fairness to prevail among birds. Cuckoos have evolved to exploit other birds.

2) A Creator God designed the cuckoo bird to breed this way, right from the start. We have no choice but to call it “good” since it is of God.

3) The Creator made cuckoos originally to behave much as other bird species do in their breeding habits, but Adam and Eve sinned, and so God deliberately changed the behavior of cuckoos.

4) The Creator made cuckoos originally to behave much as other bird species do in their breeding habits, but Adam and Eve sinned, and so God allowed Satan to change the behavior of cuckoos into what we observe today.

Cuckoo

The Birds Are A Good Idea.

I think the birds are a good idea
I heard them hearts in rooms tapping on the window panes
Then they remembered what
Then they remembered what the birds say
The birds say Happiness
And I saw the eyes light up
And I heard the eyes light up

I think the birds are a good idea
I saw the saddened eyes looking at the shoes go by
Then they remembered what
Then they remembered what the birds say
The birds say Happiness
And I saw the eyes light up
And I heard the eyes light up

I think the birds are a good idea.



David Thomas & The Pedestrians

Originally posted by Paul Dirac
The cuckoo bird uses a breeding strategy that--it seems to me--bears on theological issues. The female surreptitiously deposits her egg in the nest of a bird of some other species, and then flies away. When the cuckoo hatches, the nestin ...[text shortened]... atan to change the behavior of cuckoos into what we observe today.

I think this is another popular option:

5) Got created the first birds, which then began to evolve in a "negative" or "horizontal" direction, giving the current diversity of birds today. All of today's birds are genetically inferior to the original bird species because they have devolved. Cuckoos are the way they are because they've lost genetic "information". Possibly they lost the ability to build a nest so they have to take another bird's nest.