They don't make em like they used to. I've got a VCR from the mid eighties that still works great. The old bird's been playin' flicks for 20 years and shows no signs of stopping. Meanwhile I'm expecting Kleenex to come out with a DVD player soon as the six that I've owned in the past several years all barely made it past their pathetically short warranties. Clothing is mostly all made single-stitch these days - you've really got to shell out some loot to get the "fancy" double-stitching of days gone by. A drinking glass from IKEA will break if you look at it wrong. The furniture in most of our homes, once you strip back the faux leather is a flimsy construction of particle board, card board, and held together with cheap little nails and hope. For the third time my mechanic tells me that the flux capacitor has gone out on my Saturn and is going to have to be replaced again. Just about everything that a regular Joe can afford to buy these days seems to be pre-garbage - it's all ready to break and break fast. It didn't used to be like this - stuff used to be made to last and folks had brand loyalty because they knew that certain brands were well made. Why can't we pay a little more and get something that won't fall apart like grandpappy used to (and probably still does) have? Back in the 50's you didn't hear anyone complaining about having to get a new cell phone every few months.
The answer to this query lies in the mechanics of how sexual traits spread. No, I don't mean that slapping a pair of breasts on a lamp makes it fall apart faster nor sell better (although the idea is intriguing.) Sexual traits are any trait that directly expedites the occurrence of the sex act. While this does include T & A, it also includes behavior patterns, demonstrations of social value, and all things akin to peacock feathers. Basically it includes (but is not completely exclusive to) all things shallow that make an organism more attractive. How does this apply to the boobie-lamp in question? First I'll mention that of course diapers and frying pans and computers don't have genes. But they do have memes. A meme is a a perfect metaphor for a gene, except that instead of being made of DNA it's made of ideas. Just as a gene is a packet of information so is a meme. (For a fully detailed description of memetic theory and its impact check out Richard Dawkin's excellent book The Extended Phenotype.) A toaster has a memetic code which is a basic descriptor of everything about that toaster upon its manufacture (birth), and the success of its sales (the sex act) dictate whether its memtic code will be passed on to further generations of toasters. Toasters thusly evolve like anything else - variations in its code get tested out at the store and in the home (the environment) and more successful ones get passed on to new generations which then in turn test out new variations and so on.
Back to talking about sex. Sexual traits in the case of our toaster are fundamentally the bells and whistles (I hate getting a cheap toaster whistle, don't you?): what the toaster looks like, it's neat-o-keen features, and lastly and most importantest - the price. Because sexual traits are directly involved with the most fundamental of all actions when it comes to passing on genes, these traits evolve faster than any other simple trait in a complex organism. With a product, the most fundamental of its actions in relation to its evolution is when we pick it up off a shelf in Mart-Mart and say to ourselves - "I don't really need a new toaster, but this one is red. And it has a bagel setting! My God! Yes! I must buy it!" The product being sold is its memetic equivalent of screwing (it's only coincidental that this often involves the consumer getting screwed as well.) Because sexual traits evolve so quickly, other traits will often fall by the way-side. Price being the most important facet of a product's attractiveness, the more cheaply a product can be sold, the more it will be sold. Once one company figures out that they can make their toaster a little more cheaply and thusly sell it more cheaply, the other companies quickly fall in line as the cheapest toaster that at least looks as good as the others will always outsell the others. Sadly quality in construction is not a sexual trait and has fallen by the wayside. In fact, poor quality in construction (as long as it's hard to detect) is in fact a positive trait for the product. If it breaks after a year, the consumer has to buy another one. Thus not only reenforcing the value (to the manufacturer, not to us poor forlorn masses) of making cheap products but also speeding the replication and thusly evolution of the product in question. This also explains why the manufacturing base has shifted out of the western world and into the third world - any company that doesn't add this trait to its product will have a less memetically successful product because of the added cost of paying human beings something beyond a slave wage to make their pieces of crap.
Well-made products still exist, of course, but they're few and far between. They'll never go away completely, as rare variations always remain in the environment in anticipation of environmental shifts. For the most part, however, the products of our lives are going to have perfectly round asses, pretty eyes and sexy voices, but be entirely irresponsible, disloyal, and unwilling to do much work once we take them home to meet mom. I leave you with words of wisdom from Mr. Waits - "The Large Print giveth, and the Small Print taketh away."
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Why do women love and men lust?
Of course there are exceptions, but in general the ladies are more interested in long term romance and the gents in making woopie. Women want Mr. Right and men want Miss Right Now. As I just said, there are plenty of exceptions. Plenty of guys want to find that perfect woman to settle down with a marry and snuggle with for all eternity, and some (I wouldn't say plenty) women are interesting in horizontal mamboing and little else - not to mention those guys interested in finding Mr. Right and those women looking for Miss Right Now. But as far as statistical majorities go - women look for more love and men for more booty.
This is very easy to explain with the cold, soulless mathematics of evolutionary theory. Searching for amour and being overly amorous are two different replication strategies. At the core of the Darwinian algorithm is this concept - any replication vehicle will behave in such a way as to maximize the potential replications of its replications. In plainspeak this means that people (or indeed, all organisms) act in such a way so that they can have the most babies that will in turn grow up, make woopie in their due time, and have more babies. It is often a mistake to think that evolution simply drives organisms to procreate as much as possible. This does the organisms in question no genetic good if their offspring do not also reach maturity and pass on their genes as well. How does this explain that females are more inclined towards monogamous love while males lean towards polygamous philandering? Females can only have 1.33 pregnancies per year, while a male can cause potentially 1000s of pregnancies in the same time, albeit he runs an awful risk of chafing at that point. Added to that is the fact that females must invest a great deal of care and resources to bring a child to term, whereas a male can be a jerkwad and skip town after his tiny investment. It is because of this simple dichotomy that females have evolved much stronger tendencies towards pair-bonding (monogamy) while males have evolved to opposite strategy of gettin' some whenever possible. Thusly women are genetically inclined towards romance and true love and males are inclined towards being a ship passing in the night. For a more in-depth explanation of the genetic theory behind this, there's piles of reading that can be done. Two excellent examples are Jared Diamond's Why is Sex Fun? and the more scientifically rigorous but more disturbing A Natural History of Rape by Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer. That second one is a superb scientific study, but can be a bit off-putting. It does talk about chipmunk rape, and that's about the most lighthearted subject in the book.
There are other strategies as well; those two are simply the most common overarching ones. Darwinian theory can easily explain the use of each strategy for the opposite sex, although they come with certain qualifiers which make them less common. A sex-crazed man will do the dirty deed with a wide variety of willing gals, whereas the sex-crazed lady seeks out a specific kind of male - specifically the most successful sex-crazed man (i.e. "the bad boy") often referred to in evolution literature as the genetic Superman, although this one does not stand for truth or justice, but arguably might for the American Way. The romantically inclined monogamous male is apt to be more responsible and have more solid familial foundations, and thusly seeks out a similar woman so they can mate for life just like swans (although if you read more about swans, you'll find out that they're actually about as monogamous as...well...humans - if you read more about human monogamy that is. Which can be little surprising considering that we have "fine" institutions like Promise Keepers to show us all how we should behave.*)
For those that would still argue that women are equally as obsessed with sex as men are, I offer the spot-on wisdom of thespian Larry Miller spouting about the idea that women think about sex as much as men do - "It's like the difference between throwing a bullet and shooting it. If women had any idea, even for a second, of how we really looked at them, they would never stop slapping us."
*We should keep promises is their gist, I believe. Oh yeah, and women should do what they're told to by their men. Or at least promise to.
This is very easy to explain with the cold, soulless mathematics of evolutionary theory. Searching for amour and being overly amorous are two different replication strategies. At the core of the Darwinian algorithm is this concept - any replication vehicle will behave in such a way as to maximize the potential replications of its replications. In plainspeak this means that people (or indeed, all organisms) act in such a way so that they can have the most babies that will in turn grow up, make woopie in their due time, and have more babies. It is often a mistake to think that evolution simply drives organisms to procreate as much as possible. This does the organisms in question no genetic good if their offspring do not also reach maturity and pass on their genes as well. How does this explain that females are more inclined towards monogamous love while males lean towards polygamous philandering? Females can only have 1.33 pregnancies per year, while a male can cause potentially 1000s of pregnancies in the same time, albeit he runs an awful risk of chafing at that point. Added to that is the fact that females must invest a great deal of care and resources to bring a child to term, whereas a male can be a jerkwad and skip town after his tiny investment. It is because of this simple dichotomy that females have evolved much stronger tendencies towards pair-bonding (monogamy) while males have evolved to opposite strategy of gettin' some whenever possible. Thusly women are genetically inclined towards romance and true love and males are inclined towards being a ship passing in the night. For a more in-depth explanation of the genetic theory behind this, there's piles of reading that can be done. Two excellent examples are Jared Diamond's Why is Sex Fun? and the more scientifically rigorous but more disturbing A Natural History of Rape by Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer. That second one is a superb scientific study, but can be a bit off-putting. It does talk about chipmunk rape, and that's about the most lighthearted subject in the book.
There are other strategies as well; those two are simply the most common overarching ones. Darwinian theory can easily explain the use of each strategy for the opposite sex, although they come with certain qualifiers which make them less common. A sex-crazed man will do the dirty deed with a wide variety of willing gals, whereas the sex-crazed lady seeks out a specific kind of male - specifically the most successful sex-crazed man (i.e. "the bad boy") often referred to in evolution literature as the genetic Superman, although this one does not stand for truth or justice, but arguably might for the American Way. The romantically inclined monogamous male is apt to be more responsible and have more solid familial foundations, and thusly seeks out a similar woman so they can mate for life just like swans (although if you read more about swans, you'll find out that they're actually about as monogamous as...well...humans - if you read more about human monogamy that is. Which can be little surprising considering that we have "fine" institutions like Promise Keepers to show us all how we should behave.*)
For those that would still argue that women are equally as obsessed with sex as men are, I offer the spot-on wisdom of thespian Larry Miller spouting about the idea that women think about sex as much as men do - "It's like the difference between throwing a bullet and shooting it. If women had any idea, even for a second, of how we really looked at them, they would never stop slapping us."
*We should keep promises is their gist, I believe. Oh yeah, and women should do what they're told to by their men. Or at least promise to.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Why do we sneeze?
As a young sprite, it occurred to me on one my visits to the family physician to ask, "Why do I cough when I'm sick? Does it help me get better?" To which he replied that, no coughing and sneezing does not help us get better when sick. Then I asked, "But all it does is spread the sick, right? Why would God make us do that when we're sick?" Dr. Keith was taken aback a little by this seemingly obvious and simple question. I don't remember his exact response, but I recall that his brushing away of my question that followed was the beginning of me realizing that doctors don't know as much about sickness as we, the untrained public, are lead to believe. Regardless of the incompetence of the medical profession, the question remains - why do we cough and sneeze when inflicted with a common virus? I have heard some postulate that it is a flawed attempt on our body's part to rid our system of the sickness - to expel as much of the virus in question as possible. Upon closer examination, this is obviously a silly answer. Our bodies do not in any way shape or form fight off an embedded illness by getting it out of our body. A disturbing scene comes to mind when one imagines a world in which blowing enough snot out will cure us: hospital wards and school nurses' offices filled with snot depositories where the ailed sit blasting mucus hours on end to rid themselves of their ailment. Indeed it is a disturbing world where the phrase "enough snot" has everyday parlance (although I think my sister would be happy, but I won't clarify that out of respect to her and common decency as well.)
But there is an answer, intrepid reader, and the rosetta stone of evolution offers it to us in its beautiful simplicity. It is a long standing debate as to whether viruses qualify as a form of life. There are unlike anything else in that they posses many traits held only by living things and yet are missing certain important qualifiers. This probably just reveals science's mistake in creating specific qualifiers to begin with - certainly if life sprung from non-life then something must exist between, and viruses are very likely the remaining spawn of some form of protolife. There are even now theories being advanced that viruses may be the ancient ancestors of all life as they do appear to be a potential missing link between the living and the inanimate. (For more on viruses as the source of life see The March 2006 issue of Discover magazine.) But my point being that viruses operate similarly to life are are clearly subject to the understood principles of evolution (in fact nonlife such as rocks and rock music are both subject to the same Darwinian principles, but more on that later.) Viruses have, without scientific argument, evolved their various traits and tendencies. But another word about snot before we go further.
Why do we produce snot at all? This I will explain only in brief. The body naturally produces mucus for two reasons: 1. for lubrication purposes (yes, yes, those lubrication purposes, wink, wink. And numerous other less filthy ones, you filthy minded filthy filths) and 2. to trap airborne dirt so that we don't breath it in nor ingest it. This is why when our allergies go haywire, lots of clear snot comes a-flowin out. Our body is overproducing mucus because it interprets the allergy in question as being a dangerous airborne nasty that it must stop with its garrison of boogers. So mucus is a good thing in the case of making certain things more slippery (Like the interior of our intestines. Why? What were you thinking of? Filthy filths.) and in catching, holding, and expelling dirt in the cleansing river that flows forth in the allergen-filled springtime or year-round should you be a smoker.
So why do we sneeze out buckets of snot not to mention sprays of virus-laden spit whenever we have a cold or flu? The answer is simple once one learns to look at it dynamically. Coughing and snotting all over the place when sick is NOT an adaptation that us humans have developed over the millennia to help cure ourselves. It IS an adaptation that viruses have gained to help themselves survive. Certain sicknesses trick our body into reacting in counterproductive ways so that the sickness can spread. Viruses, being extremely simple in makeup, can evolve faster than any multi-celled organism. Somewhere along the way, viruses discovered* this trait allowing them to spread and replicate far more efficiently than before. Everything (and I do mean everything) tries to create copies of itself one way or another. Life is in essence a big ebb and flow of various things trying to make more of themselves while competing with everything else trying to do the same. (Sheds some newly disturbing light on the Hasselhoffian Recusion, doesn't it?) Some virus way back in the days of yore mutated the ability to trick our mucus producing bodies into thinking that more mucus would help to get rid of the virus, when in fact all it does is spread the damnable thing. This simple behavioral trait is so effective that more and more viruses starting jumping on the snotty band wagon and surviving and replicating because of it.
We sneeze, in other words, because the virus wants us to sneeze so it can have more hosts to make more virus babies. It's no wonder, then, that we've all evolved an extreme aversion to anyone else sneezing on us and an extreme disgust with the snot of others. We're not nearly as disgusted with our own snot because our own snot will only ever contain viruses and bacteria already in our system. (This is also very much the reason why other people's farts are nasty and horrid, where-as smelling our own really ain't too bad.) Non airborne viruses and bacterial infections have similar adaptations - you shouldn't scratch your chicken pox, because the scratching causes minor tears in the skin which allows the pox to spread into those tiny open wounds. Chicken pox have evolved the trait of making us itch because it allows chicken pox to spread and continue to survive. I would bet a dollar and a doughnut that certain venereal diseases (if not all of them) make us more horny thus allowing themselves to spread more, although research on this is a little wanting at the moment.
So now you know, and knowing is half the battle GI Joe told me as a kid. The other half, I always guessed involved shooting people but the cartoon never really went into that.
*When I say that the virus "discovered" something I don't mean that there was a little Italian virus sea captain that landed on some phlegmy shore, stuck a flag in the snotty beach and declared that it belonged to Her Majesty Ebola. I simply mean that through the natural process of replication, variations and mutations occur and at some point one of these variations cause the host body for the virus to produce a lil' bit of snot and cough a bit, allowing that virus to spread a lil' better and so on and so forth. The process of evolution helped the virus's RNA "discover" the aforementioned adaptive trait. Although I would like it better if the cells in our body were like the Mayans and had to fight of the Spanish Viruses in glorious mucus battles which could then be adapted into a movie called "Apocasnoto."
But there is an answer, intrepid reader, and the rosetta stone of evolution offers it to us in its beautiful simplicity. It is a long standing debate as to whether viruses qualify as a form of life. There are unlike anything else in that they posses many traits held only by living things and yet are missing certain important qualifiers. This probably just reveals science's mistake in creating specific qualifiers to begin with - certainly if life sprung from non-life then something must exist between, and viruses are very likely the remaining spawn of some form of protolife. There are even now theories being advanced that viruses may be the ancient ancestors of all life as they do appear to be a potential missing link between the living and the inanimate. (For more on viruses as the source of life see The March 2006 issue of Discover magazine.) But my point being that viruses operate similarly to life are are clearly subject to the understood principles of evolution (in fact nonlife such as rocks and rock music are both subject to the same Darwinian principles, but more on that later.) Viruses have, without scientific argument, evolved their various traits and tendencies. But another word about snot before we go further.
Why do we produce snot at all? This I will explain only in brief. The body naturally produces mucus for two reasons: 1. for lubrication purposes (yes, yes, those lubrication purposes, wink, wink. And numerous other less filthy ones, you filthy minded filthy filths) and 2. to trap airborne dirt so that we don't breath it in nor ingest it. This is why when our allergies go haywire, lots of clear snot comes a-flowin out. Our body is overproducing mucus because it interprets the allergy in question as being a dangerous airborne nasty that it must stop with its garrison of boogers. So mucus is a good thing in the case of making certain things more slippery (Like the interior of our intestines. Why? What were you thinking of? Filthy filths.) and in catching, holding, and expelling dirt in the cleansing river that flows forth in the allergen-filled springtime or year-round should you be a smoker.
So why do we sneeze out buckets of snot not to mention sprays of virus-laden spit whenever we have a cold or flu? The answer is simple once one learns to look at it dynamically. Coughing and snotting all over the place when sick is NOT an adaptation that us humans have developed over the millennia to help cure ourselves. It IS an adaptation that viruses have gained to help themselves survive. Certain sicknesses trick our body into reacting in counterproductive ways so that the sickness can spread. Viruses, being extremely simple in makeup, can evolve faster than any multi-celled organism. Somewhere along the way, viruses discovered* this trait allowing them to spread and replicate far more efficiently than before. Everything (and I do mean everything) tries to create copies of itself one way or another. Life is in essence a big ebb and flow of various things trying to make more of themselves while competing with everything else trying to do the same. (Sheds some newly disturbing light on the Hasselhoffian Recusion, doesn't it?) Some virus way back in the days of yore mutated the ability to trick our mucus producing bodies into thinking that more mucus would help to get rid of the virus, when in fact all it does is spread the damnable thing. This simple behavioral trait is so effective that more and more viruses starting jumping on the snotty band wagon and surviving and replicating because of it.
We sneeze, in other words, because the virus wants us to sneeze so it can have more hosts to make more virus babies. It's no wonder, then, that we've all evolved an extreme aversion to anyone else sneezing on us and an extreme disgust with the snot of others. We're not nearly as disgusted with our own snot because our own snot will only ever contain viruses and bacteria already in our system. (This is also very much the reason why other people's farts are nasty and horrid, where-as smelling our own really ain't too bad.) Non airborne viruses and bacterial infections have similar adaptations - you shouldn't scratch your chicken pox, because the scratching causes minor tears in the skin which allows the pox to spread into those tiny open wounds. Chicken pox have evolved the trait of making us itch because it allows chicken pox to spread and continue to survive. I would bet a dollar and a doughnut that certain venereal diseases (if not all of them) make us more horny thus allowing themselves to spread more, although research on this is a little wanting at the moment.
So now you know, and knowing is half the battle GI Joe told me as a kid. The other half, I always guessed involved shooting people but the cartoon never really went into that.
*When I say that the virus "discovered" something I don't mean that there was a little Italian virus sea captain that landed on some phlegmy shore, stuck a flag in the snotty beach and declared that it belonged to Her Majesty Ebola. I simply mean that through the natural process of replication, variations and mutations occur and at some point one of these variations cause the host body for the virus to produce a lil' bit of snot and cough a bit, allowing that virus to spread a lil' better and so on and so forth. The process of evolution helped the virus's RNA "discover" the aforementioned adaptive trait. Although I would like it better if the cells in our body were like the Mayans and had to fight of the Spanish Viruses in glorious mucus battles which could then be adapted into a movie called "Apocasnoto."
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
The Beginning and End of All Things
Daniel Dennett points out in his excellent tome Darwin's Dangerous Idea that "Geometry deals with patterns in space, and Darwinism with patterns in time." This simple statement has massive implications, which are what Dennett's book is primarily focused upon demonstrating. In short Dennett is saying that the mathematical algorithm that is Darwinism is a description of how time passes in regards to the natural world (and the world of men) (and women, of course) (oh, yes - let's not forget the hermaphrodites, folks). The overarching implication of this is that the math behind the mechanisms of evolution is not only capable of explaining and predicting the development of all life, but is in fact capable of explaining and predicting the development of everything from the creation of mountain ranges to trends of popular bubble-gum flavors to galaxy formation to the spread of Mormanism to the now extinct Thursday night line-up of Must See TV. By implication, every single behavior of every single thing that behaves (both living and not), and their creation and eventual destruction are all explainable and predictable through Darwinism. Only the supernatural, should it exist, has the possibility of being free of the Darwinian mechanism.
My purpose is to explore this notion that Darwinism explains all patterns in time. If this is true, why not put it to the test? Well, the reason why not is because of how incredibly hard of a test that is to clearly administer and grade. In theory Darwinism can explain the development of all things (biological, stellar, political, economic, and even why disco didn't live forever) given that enough variables are known. And there's the rub. Anyone familiar with Chaos theory is well aware that all variables can never be known. For a better understanding of this, one can learn about it in the cinematic masterpiece The Butterfly Effect. Should one not wish to spend 2 hours watching Ashton Kutcher (who wouldn't want to do that?) just to gain a flawed understanding of that crappy film's pseudo-science, one can always check Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory) to gain a flawed understanding there. The point being, however, that there are always seemingly infinite variables affecting everything, so accounting for them all is not possible. Were it possible, one could with perfect accuracy predict the fluctuations in the stock market and then live the American Dream - to get all the money in the world and stuff it in your ears and stick your tongue out at the world.* As Chaos theory seems to be true, the best we can do is to try and estimate the majority of apparent variables. With this in mind here is the meat of this blog, dear reader: I propose to explain, using the Darwinian algorithm, any pattern in time anyone cares to throw my way or whatever occurs to me while I'm "doing my business" (I promise to not read magazines while engaged in "business" and instead to ponder various patterns in time. And my "business" time-pattern should increase in frequency as I've been eating a lot of fiber lately.) If it can be done in theory, it's about time someone started doing it in practice. And I, Dr. Chang, am that someone. Mind you, my explanations will only be as general as the available knowledge of the applicable variables. That I bother to look up, that is. But with that one caveat, I'm pretty sure I can
My purpose is to explore this notion that Darwinism explains all patterns in time. If this is true, why not put it to the test? Well, the reason why not is because of how incredibly hard of a test that is to clearly administer and grade. In theory Darwinism can explain the development of all things (biological, stellar, political, economic, and even why disco didn't live forever) given that enough variables are known. And there's the rub. Anyone familiar with Chaos theory is well aware that all variables can never be known. For a better understanding of this, one can learn about it in the cinematic masterpiece The Butterfly Effect. Should one not wish to spend 2 hours watching Ashton Kutcher (who wouldn't want to do that?) just to gain a flawed understanding of that crappy film's pseudo-science, one can always check Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory) to gain a flawed understanding there. The point being, however, that there are always seemingly infinite variables affecting everything, so accounting for them all is not possible. Were it possible, one could with perfect accuracy predict the fluctuations in the stock market and then live the American Dream - to get all the money in the world and stuff it in your ears and stick your tongue out at the world.* As Chaos theory seems to be true, the best we can do is to try and estimate the majority of apparent variables. With this in mind here is the meat of this blog, dear reader: I propose to explain, using the Darwinian algorithm, any pattern in time anyone cares to throw my way or whatever occurs to me while I'm "doing my business" (I promise to not read magazines while engaged in "business" and instead to ponder various patterns in time. And my "business" time-pattern should increase in frequency as I've been eating a lot of fiber lately.) If it can be done in theory, it's about time someone started doing it in practice. And I, Dr. Chang, am that someone. Mind you, my explanations will only be as general as the available knowledge of the applicable variables. That I bother to look up, that is. But with that one caveat, I'm pretty sure I can
Explain Everything!!!
A Religious Post Script:
As science cannot comment on supernature (science is by definition contained within the realm of the natural), and we mere mortals have only questionable inklings of what the Divine may desire, this blog will not deal with God except to say this: should God exist, His/Her/Its ways are mysterious and will undoubtedly remain so for all mortal time. Darwinism should not be taken as a replacement for the works of the Holy, it is merely a description of what is observed. God's original method of creation is unknown, but we have now come to a time where we can begin to understand enough of it to see it at work. Darwinism is creation at work, and destruction as well. It is a description of the ebb and flow of all things in time. In no way does it comment on what Force put this beautiful and powerful process into being - Darwinism reveals that God, should God exist, is far more creative, brilliant, and nuanced than previously believed. What a silly sounding statement, but only silly when one recognizes that for far too long most religions have given God far too little credit - shoving Him/Her/It into a magical, mystical corner not far removed from Santa Claus. Few scientific theories demonstrate the power and glory of God one tenth as well as Darwinism. Once one truly begins to learn of its power, one can only regard it with awe. If there is a God, Darwinism tracks the movements of God's hand in nature. If anything, shouldn't the religious want to learn more of it?
So let's leave the religious arguments to the religious blogs, shall we? (Yeah, I didn't think so.)
* This is Mr. Izzard's joke, not my own. He gave me permission to use it, but only on the condition that I lie about him giving me the permission, which I have now done. Thank you, kind sir.
As science cannot comment on supernature (science is by definition contained within the realm of the natural), and we mere mortals have only questionable inklings of what the Divine may desire, this blog will not deal with God except to say this: should God exist, His/Her/Its ways are mysterious and will undoubtedly remain so for all mortal time. Darwinism should not be taken as a replacement for the works of the Holy, it is merely a description of what is observed. God's original method of creation is unknown, but we have now come to a time where we can begin to understand enough of it to see it at work. Darwinism is creation at work, and destruction as well. It is a description of the ebb and flow of all things in time. In no way does it comment on what Force put this beautiful and powerful process into being - Darwinism reveals that God, should God exist, is far more creative, brilliant, and nuanced than previously believed. What a silly sounding statement, but only silly when one recognizes that for far too long most religions have given God far too little credit - shoving Him/Her/It into a magical, mystical corner not far removed from Santa Claus. Few scientific theories demonstrate the power and glory of God one tenth as well as Darwinism. Once one truly begins to learn of its power, one can only regard it with awe. If there is a God, Darwinism tracks the movements of God's hand in nature. If anything, shouldn't the religious want to learn more of it?
So let's leave the religious arguments to the religious blogs, shall we? (Yeah, I didn't think so.)
* This is Mr. Izzard's joke, not my own. He gave me permission to use it, but only on the condition that I lie about him giving me the permission, which I have now done. Thank you, kind sir.
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