If there is sentience in the universe at the moment and it is the "parent" of the earth it is not doing a very good job. I do not like the idea of reverence, it is good that we criticize the things that we believe in and I respect what you have written here.

If we assume there is nothing watching over us, then there is nothing doing a bad or good job. I prefer this option over the particularly abhorrent thought that something that supposedly cares for our welfare doesn't bother to interfere when thousands of unique species of life are driven extinct by the human animal and millions of people endure terrible suffering every minute.

On top of that, I could not respect or revere a designer that would deliberately create some of the vicious creatures on this earth like certain insects that basically devour their prey from the inside out while they are still alive. Why would such a deliberate cruelty be added to the designed system, unless the designer was open to such cruelty. With the same degree of irreverence, I used to question the value of our species. We are capable of such wonderfully beautiful things and such horrible acts of intentional cruelty. Such acts of amazing intellectual acrobatics and acts of unbelievable voluntary ignorance. This view of the world with a supernatural supervisor made my heart cold.

It has helped me greatly to let go of the thoughts of good or bad and switch to a universal view. Good and bad are human concepts, they don't exist in a universal view. In this view a "watchmaker" type sentience does not exist. When we let go of this type of watchmaker, it is lonely yes... but the acts of kindness become more brilliant, and the acts of cruelty lose power, they become nothing but a cog in a machine that the so hauntingly beautiful that it can keep me mesmerized and lost in thought for months on end. The universe is amazing, absolutely amazing. If you get bogged down with the micro, it is sometimes refreshing to go to a macro view and realize that the universe as a whole is a living thing, it is moving towards a "solution" and whatever happens along the journey is just a byproduct of that process.