Why pink flamingos disprove God!

Why is Keith Parsons an atheist? Well, his primary argument seems to be the problem of evil. For him, that constitutes compelling evidence against the existence of God.

And in particular, the deal-breaker is the argument from pink flamingos. Pink flamingos are blocking his way to the pearly gates. If Esau forfeited his birthright for a mess of pottage, Parsons forfeited his shot at heaven for a pink flamingo:

Then there is the problem of evil. Theists, of course, have long maintained that God has good reason to permit the evil that occurs, or, at least, that we cannot be sure that omnipotence cannot bring good out of even the worst evils. Well, I cannot say with absolute assurance that omnipotence will not someday, somehow, in some currently incomprehensible and inconceivable manner, bring justifying good out of all the evil that occurs. But let me tell a story: I saw a thing on a nature program about a huge colony of pink flamingoes, somewhere in Africa, I think, that hatches its eggs next to a big lake in the middle of a desert. While the chicks are growing, the lake dries up. When the lake has largely dried up, the chicks, which cannot yet fly, have to march across a hundred miles of desert to get to a body of water that will sustain them. So, 50,000 chicks start off across the desert. Along the way, the adults try to help them, but can only do so much. As they march, the chicks often are weighed down with huge balls of mud that get stuck to their wings and finally get so heavy that they cannot walk. Some years, not a single chick makes it across the desert. After seeing this, it occurred to me: Only a lunatic would plan something like that. Now, theists will say that, nonetheless, there is a good reason that the flamingo chicks have to die in this absurd and fantastic way. All I can say is that it seems to me mad, perfectly mad, and I just cannot make myself think that there is some sublime plan that will make it all work out for the good. Therefore, I cannot accept that there is a perfectly good and all-powerful being that will make it all work out someday.
http://secularoutpost.infidels.org/2007/07/atheist-manifesto.html

What’s ironic about this objection is that it’s a stupid objection even from the standpoint of an atheist. According to naturalistic evolution, redundancy is useful. Starting out with more is a way of increasing the odds that some will survive. The more you begin with, the more you can afford to lose

In addition, an ordeal like this is natural selection’s way of winnowing the weak from the strong. The survivors will be the fittest. The strongest, toughest hatchlings. And they, in turn, will reproduce stronger, tougher offspring. The runts must die. It’s also unnecessary for any particular colony to survive in order for the species to survive.

And, of course, dead flamingos are a food-source for other species. Their loss is a boon to scavengers. Chow time!

It may look cruel to the outside observer, but there’s nothing absurd about it. In fact, it’s ruthlessly efficient. A way of balancing the ecosystem.

What Parsons is doing here is to project his sentimental feelings onto the flamingo. How would he feel like if he were a flamingo?

But, of course, a flamingo doesn’t see things the same way he does since a flamingo isn’t a man. It doesn’t adopt a human viewpoint. To project the problem of evil onto nature is to assume a fundamentally unnatural viewpoint.