posted
I kept waiting for it to appear, but I got impatient.
Anyway, here is an intriguing and poetic take on reconciling our current understanding of the plan of salvation with our current understanding of biological evolution.
posted
I love that poem. (And so there's no confusion, the post's author, SteveP, is the author. The 'Gilda Trillim' is a fictional frame story).
It's definitely provocative.
I think it's fascinating the 'Intelligent Design' creation proposal is brought up by, well, the Guy Who Wasn't Chosen, and that method of creation is a key means by which agency would be taken away.
This conversation between Father and Mother, while the elements are organizing, and evolution is taking its natural course towards consciousness, is powerful and fascinating. It features them discussing, sadly, that it is the God of Intelligent Design who would inevitably be who is worshipped below. They also explain why it makes sense that they would choose to do so: The idea is comforting.
quote:She turns to him,
“They will worship him when they get below.” “I know.” “The designer God.” “Yes.” “Omnipotent.” “Yes, working though consciousness has its limitations. Much better the myth of the God who can engineer any end.” “Omniscient.” “Yes. In a deterministic world if you know the initial conditions all else follows. There is great comfort in such a system.” “Omnipresent.” Looking down and spreading his arms he answers, “And here I am that I am. An object. Made of matter like them.” She laughs, “Yes. Like them. Our children.” “They will build machines great and complex.” “It’s what they do with them that matters.” “Yes.” “I wonder, will they care for the world? Will they know the time that went into that cactus? That flower. That snake, that bird in bright plumage a half billion years in the making? Will they treasure the emergence?” “We shall see.”
I am reminded of a few lines from The Silmarillion:
quote: Now the Children of Ilúvatar are Elves and Men, the Firstborn and the Followers. And amid all the splendors of the World, its vast halls and spaces, and its wheeling fires, Ilúvatar chose a place for their habitation in the Deeps of Time and in the midst of the innumerable stars. And this habitation might seem a little thing to those who consider only the majesty of the Ainur, and not their terrible sharpness; as who should take the whole field of Arda for the foundation of a pillar and so raise it until the cone of its summit were more bitter than a needle; or who consider only the immeasurable vastness of the World, which still the Ainur are shaping, and not the minute precision to which they shape all things therein.
posted
The symbiotic nature between microbes and higher life forms has been know for a while. We just didn't have a full understanding of the extent until now.
NPR isn't clear how they came up with the 10 to 1 ratio, so I'd take that with a grain of salt.
Posts: 1323 | Registered: Nov 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I just had a thought. Maybe he reason HF & JC are described as all all glowy is because they have incorporated bioluminescent microbes into their biome.
Posts: 1323 | Registered: Nov 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I wish! My obesity is pure pizza & irn bru. Though I suppose that they're both full of microbes, so maybe you're onto something.
Posts: 1460 | Registered: Oct 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
Derail: I had no clue what "irn bru" was, so I looked it up. Hmmm. A soda with a combination of 32 flavors. I'm intrigued by those microbes. /End derail
Posts: 3862 | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Scotland is the only place in the western world where neither Coke nor Pepsi are the no 1 seller in soft drinks. It's Irn Bru, made from girders. There is nothing else like it.
Posts: 1460 | Registered: Oct 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
Once again (in the comments to the Deseret News article) someone makes the argument that God didn't use evolution because it would make God a weaker or smaller God. They think that all life being created from nothing in an instant is more appealing.
I don't have any problem with the fact that it takes 9 months for a baby to grow in the womb after fertilization. Man isn't created in an instant poof today either, yet we don't take that against God.
Posts: 39 | Registered: Jan 2006
| IP: Logged |
UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!
Printer-friendly view of this topic
