A rainy night has given way to clearing skies. I awoke this morning around five (I know...too early) and was greeting by the sound of rain pattering against the window. All that has cleared out and the sun is beginning to peek through the breaking clouds. A perfect day for some more preliminary fieldwork at the ecological preserve. It's going to be muddy as hell out there, so it's a good thing I didn't get around to washing the Jeep yesterday.
The only drawback about fieldwork this morning is that I will miss forrmal meditation again. The Buddhist group to which I belong meets only every other Sunday and two Sundays ago I was doing the fieldwork thing. It would be nice if the group met at some other time during the week (e.g., a weeknight). Ah well. Life is a series of choices and one has to base decisions on what is most pertinent at a given time. In this case, the research has to be done.
Over the last week, I've been rather engaged in reading The Ancestor's Tale, by the great evolutionary zoologist Richard Dawkins. The book is immensly rich in detail, which is both a good and bad thing, depending on ones level of biological training. Topics such as the evolution of color vision in New World Monkeys (told at the level of genetics) certainly proves a point, but the general reader may find such detail more than a little tedious. But at any rate, The Ancestors Tale is a wonderfully engaging and thought-provoking book and for those contemptuous of creationist beliefs, the book is more than entertaining. From time to time, Dawkins takes a well-timed and aptly-framed swipe at creationists (e.g., A "Creationist Misquotation Alert," etc.) which in a humorous and factual way, show those pious "intelligent design" types for the frauds (and danger to educational advancement) they really are. Wonderful stuff!
But let me stop here before I get wound up on the whole creation versus evolution debate and spend the entire morning hammering out my own take on the issue. I've long been passionate about this and my personal evolution from churchgoing kid to evolutionist may (or may not) make for interesting reading. It factored large in my journals from the teen through early college years and at some point I may have to take the time to tell the story.
2 comments:
i think evolution is the way we can figure out where we are headed as a species. the more we let the idiots tell us that it does not exist, evolution that is, the more likely we will b e extinct- as a group of idiots who believed in a force not seen, not heard from, a force of ignorance:)
that is my take.
xtian
...I actually saw a book where I worked that explained where the dinosaurs came into the bible...I never got a chance to look thru it...as for evolution...I think Mother Nature takes care of herself...for example...the dinosaurs...the plague...and some believe aids is another one...if we don't straighten ourselves out....we may be the next big extinction...look at global warming...the tsunami...um...I hope that didn't sound too ignorant....
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