The Purpose of Man: Planet Earth

This week is an edited excerpt from one of the earliest drafts of my book that I am still in the process of writing:

Is it fair for Homo sapiens to say that the planet Earth is here for us? One reason we like to say so is because it is so pleasing to our eyes; Earth is beautiful, wonderful, and miraculous. It truly does have an overall magnificent landscape, from the volcanic islands of Hawaii, to the evergreen forests of Yellowstone, to the powerful radiance of Niagara Falls, to the breathtaking White Cliffs of Dover, to the gigantic peaks of the Swiss Alps, to the elegant cherry blossom trees of Japan, and almost everything in between. Christians attribute these beautiful features to the workings of God, that He created them just the same as He created the stars and breathing organisms (Genesis 1). From that perspective, God is the greatest and most creative sculptor-artist to ever exist. It is a nice theory if you strictly focus on the positive attributes of our world. However, Stephen Fry, featured on The Big Think, brings up a good point:     

“You can’t just say there’s a God because the world is beautiful. You have to account for bone cancer in children. You have to account for the fact that almost all animals in the wild live under stress with not enough to eat and will die violent and bloody deaths. There is not any way that you can just choose the nice bits and say that means there is a God and ignore the true fact of what nature is. The wonder of nature must be taken in its totality, and it is a wonderful thing. It is absolutely marvelous. And the idea that an atheist or a humanist, if you want to put it that way, doesn’t marvel and wonder at reality, the way things are, is nonsensical. The point is we wonder all the way. We don’t just stop and say, ‘that which I cannot understand, I will call God’, which is what mankind has done historically.” (link)

I cannot help but to agree; nature is incredible, but it is cruel. It is overall a grotesquely violent, self-seeking, and remorseless competition for survival. Every organism is categorized as predator or prey. Predators live a life fueled by hunger and they specialize in stalking, hunting, and killing, while prey live a life fueled by fear and specialize in evasion, deception, and armed defense or retaliation. From deep sea fish, to plants, to insects, to amphibians, to reptiles, to birds, to mammals, they all hold the ruthless mentality of ‘to eat, or to be eaten’. That has been the reality of life on earth for over 500,000,000 years (considering the diversification of aquatic life: link). Homo sapiens have only overcome this barbaric 'kill or be killed'l mentality only within the last 12,000 years (considering the development of agriculture: link). And Homo sapiens have only been roaming the earth for about 200,000 years (link), while dinosaurs roamed the earth for over 150,000,000 years! (link) 
Here is a timeline of the last 600 million years on earth:

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/history_of_the_earth

If you are unaware of this wild and inherently cruel reality of nature, I urge you to watch an eye-opening and truly amazing documentary that I have just recently watched, BBC’s Life, which “takes a global view of the specialized strategies and extreme behavior that living things have evolved in order to survive; what Charles Darwin termed ‘the struggle for existence.’” (link) 
The earth's environmental conditions are not suited for humans, but rather humans' physiology/biology has adapted to these conditions (link).

My point is that it is egotistical of man to believe that this planet exists for the human race when we are, even today, surrounded by the diverse battle for survival of the original inhabitants of our land, water, and air.