Thursday, July 18, 2013
Unfallen Toad
I was looking through Google's old books, circa 1835, for a piece of info about Leyden jars, and bumped into this fascinating little story instead.
Many similar stories force the conclusion that Toads can survive a long time in suspended animation... but I seriously doubt that this Toad had been "incased in its stone mansion before the Fall." Maybe a hundred years.
You don't see Christian references in modern science periodicals. Instead you see Gaian zealotry and "multiple universe" wackery.
Got me thinking along a well-trodden road. There was a real Fall in the history of life, a point where simple splitting and budding was replaced by sexual reproduction. Not all creatures are Fallen; many continue with asexual budding and splitting. In fact, splitters still dominate the world in sheer quantity and mass. We sexy critters (petunias, poplars, peacocks, people) are big and flashy but insignificant... and we pay for the long-term advantages of sex by dying, often immediately after reproducing.
Most cultures and races have a creation story with a metaphorical representation of the Fall. Some stories are clearly copies, some seem to be independently written. How did the first tellers of these tales get their ideas? They didn't have microscopes or diving bells, so they were unacquainted with the splitting and budding side of life. They did understand breeding techniques of plants and mammals. Thus their experience was solely with the sexual side, which gives no clues that it arose from an earlier world without sex or mortality.
It's obvious that a few people have broadband connections to the universe, while most of us are stuck with 110 baud dialup on a party line. Perhaps those few broadbanders or prophets are able to read their own genomes, in a form that shows up as a story in their minds?
In any case, Pollock's beautiful last paragraph was prophetic. After 150 years of destructive distraction by Marx, Darwin, Hilbert, Heisenberg et al, modern science as it advances is finally leading back to harmony with the revelation by Nature's God. Not harmony with one highly modified version of the statement as Pollock hoped, but harmony with the original untranslated unmetaphored statement, written in a four-letter alphabet.
Many similar stories force the conclusion that Toads can survive a long time in suspended animation... but I seriously doubt that this Toad had been "incased in its stone mansion before the Fall." Maybe a hundred years.
You don't see Christian references in modern science periodicals. Instead you see Gaian zealotry and "multiple universe" wackery.
Got me thinking along a well-trodden road. There was a real Fall in the history of life, a point where simple splitting and budding was replaced by sexual reproduction. Not all creatures are Fallen; many continue with asexual budding and splitting. In fact, splitters still dominate the world in sheer quantity and mass. We sexy critters (petunias, poplars, peacocks, people) are big and flashy but insignificant... and we pay for the long-term advantages of sex by dying, often immediately after reproducing.
Most cultures and races have a creation story with a metaphorical representation of the Fall. Some stories are clearly copies, some seem to be independently written. How did the first tellers of these tales get their ideas? They didn't have microscopes or diving bells, so they were unacquainted with the splitting and budding side of life. They did understand breeding techniques of plants and mammals. Thus their experience was solely with the sexual side, which gives no clues that it arose from an earlier world without sex or mortality.
It's obvious that a few people have broadband connections to the universe, while most of us are stuck with 110 baud dialup on a party line. Perhaps those few broadbanders or prophets are able to read their own genomes, in a form that shows up as a story in their minds?
In any case, Pollock's beautiful last paragraph was prophetic. After 150 years of destructive distraction by Marx, Darwin, Hilbert, Heisenberg et al, modern science as it advances is finally leading back to harmony with the revelation by Nature's God. Not harmony with one highly modified version of the statement as Pollock hoped, but harmony with the original untranslated unmetaphored statement, written in a four-letter alphabet.
Labels: Grand Blueprint
¶ 5:26 PM
