how the earth made us

Recently watched the bbc series ‘how the earth made us‘ with Dr Iain Stewart. One of those national geographic type perspective-expanding programmes. Struck by the mix of bounty, opportunity and risk in nature. For instance, the cyclical patterns of the trade winds, circling round the atlantic, and how the early explorers learned to exploit them to travel to the Americas and back again. Or continental plate boundaries’ resources of oil and water. But the same natural marvels, coupled with human folly or mistake, of course carry risk and danger too, and can cause great pain: earthquakes, volcanoes, shipwreck, disease and death on the slave ships. But we’re also given the capacity to improve things. I don’t really get the fixation some atheists have with the misconceptions of perfection and absolutes in God and in creation. Theology has developed a far more rugged and robust view of God and his relation to creation and his creatures. Akin to parent and child in ‘macrocosm’. Full of risk, pain, mess, but with a steady heartbeat of love and joy - strong, heady - pulsing through.