A major sub-plot also parodies popular misconceptions of Darwinianian Evolution. In fact, there is a God of Evolution, who is one of Discworld's rare atheists (being a God and loner he can get away with such radical nonsense—the other atheists tend to keep an eye open at all times for lightning bolts).
The Discworld God of Evolution is an apparent exception to the rule that Discworld Gods (and everything else) are powerful so far as they are supported by Belief, but then, He believes powerfully in Himself, or at least in his work. He may owe a little something to the character of Slartibartfast from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series.
He shares an inordinate passion for beetles with a well-known and popular God of our own world. The great British biologist, J. B. S. Haldane, was once asked what he was able to deduce about God from the available evidence, and his reply was that "God has a special preference for beetles".
Another biologist has guesstimated that there are at least 27,000,000 species of beetle in our world, at the rate of 27 species of beetle specific to each of an estimated 1,000,000 species of host trees and plant.