Thursday, December 09, 2004

Puzzlements

puz·zle·ment (p z l-m nt)n.

"The state of being confused or baffled; perplexity"


I’ve been giving thought to things that puzzle me today. The ones that seem to have gripped my imagination are those things Darwinists, with their wooden formulas and dogma, have not explained to my satisfaction.

For example, why do up to 300,000,000 monarch butterflies migrate from the United States to Mexico each year? How do they manage the journey? How does the journey fit into the Darwinist’s scheme of things?

How about the duckbilled platypus? It’s a puzzlement to me. I wonder why it isn’t to the Darwinist.

And how about ideas? Did they just evolve? Am I supposed to believe, like the Darwinist, that if we’re given an infinite number of monkeys and an infinite number of typewriters, that one of them is bound to write King Lear sooner or later?

And what about those strange ideas they try to foist on us. I mean, what’s with punctuated equilibrium? I’m supposed to believe that’s science?

All this, and more, has been given to us by people who have the same problems we do, like balancing their checkbooks or staying married. I guess it says something about us when we put too much trust in folks just because they wear white coats, smoke pipes, and have created a language few of us really understand or care about.

I’m sitting here writing, amused by our two kittens, Tinker and Woody, chasing each other around, flopping all over each other. I find it all amusing, a dance of sorts, giving me great pleasure. As I watch them I’m reminded of these words from Holy Writ:

Revelation 4:11 (King James Version)

“11Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.”
All this and more, they’re puzzlements to me."


I think I’ll see what C.S. Lewis has to say about all of this. Ah, yes, here it is on page forty-four:


Evolution

Evolutionary Hymn


Lead us, Evolution, lead us
Up the future’s endless stair:
Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us.
For stagnation is despair:
Groping, guessing, yet progressing,
Lead us nobody knows where.

Wrong or justice in the present,
Joy or sorrow, what re they
While there’s always jam to-morrow,
While we tread the inward way?
Never knowing where we’re going,
We can never go astray.

To whatever variation
Our posterity may turn
Hairy, squashy, or crustacean,
Bulbous-eyed or square of stern,
Tusked or toothless, mild or ruthless,
Towards the unknown god we yearn.

Ask not if its god or devil,
Brethren, lest your words imply
Static norms of good and evil
(As in Plato) throned on high;
Such scholastic, inelastic,
Abstract yardsticks we deny.

Far too long have sages vainly
Glossed great Nature’s simple text;
He who runs can read it plainly,
“Goodness = what comes next.”
By evolving, Life is solving
All the questions we perplexed.

On then! Value means survival-
Value. If our progeny
Spreads and spawns and licks each rival,
That will prove its deity
(Far from pleasant, by our present
Standards, though it well may be)


Puzzlements! There are lot’s more. How about you, dear reader, what are your puzzlements?

3 comments:

Tom Reindl said...

Oprah Winfrey is a puzzlement to me :D

Violet N. said...

Phil, as a matter of courtesy, wanted to let you know I referenced this posting of yours in my blog entry today (I'm not sure of all the niceties of blog ettiquete - but don't want to take chances and step on any toes :)

Feeble Knees said...

...given an infinite number of monkeys and an infinite number of typewriters, that one of them is bound to write King Lear sooner or later?The lack of masterpieces generated by thousands of busy bloggers should put the lie to that theory! :-)

I am puzzled by people who have children and love them, yet fight to the death to prove that life does not begin at conception.

I am also puzzled by Christians who are more obsessed with the letter of the law than they are the Spirit of it.

Most of all I am puzzled by why the Red Sox are reportedly signing Pedro for three years & about 40 million. Seems kinda risky to me...