We have an abrupt change in plans. Rather than go to Red Bay, Alabama to work on the rig, we have decided to go to Arizona to visit a relative who is ill. So this morning we are in an RV park in Tyler, Texas. The temperature was 91 degrees yesterday, but it cooled off nicely last evening. I had forgotten just how big Texas is. It takes a lot longer than a day to cross, if one wishes to make a reasonable RV driving day (5 to 7 hours).
While driving on this trip, I have a chance to contemplate the contretemps between the believers in evolution and creationism. (I feel this is a dispute by those who feel they must make a choice between science and religion.) However I do not want to walk through that worn dispute. What I do want to think about is the wonder and mystery of the way the actual universe is put together.
One of the delights of story of the creation in Genesis, is the imaging and differences in the world as we know it today and during the time of creation. However, what we know now about the way the universe is put together and the way it was formed seems to me to have mystery far surpassing anything ever conceived even a century ago. We know that in the universe there is a huge amount of “dark matter” and energy, whose properties we do not understand. Atoms are far from the basic building blocks of matter. Rather matter is made up of quarks, which change to charms and on to top quarks if stimulated with sufficient energy. And perhaps even the quarks are not the basic form of matter. The fundamental unit may be tiny forms of energy/matter called strings. As if that were not enough, physicists are postulating additional dimensions, some large and some tiny, rolled in tubes. And the “ Big Bang” seems to be an event that occurred with certainty. To think everything was at one time concentrated to the size of a pinhead. As far as I can tell, no one knows what happened before the “Big Bang”, if anything. Did time exist? Could time exist if there is no space? The wonder of the universe (one of many universes? Perhaps!) and it’s creation seems so marvelous, that it does not seem to me, we need a supernatural explanation of the nature of things. I do not believe we have to have a supernatural explanation of the universe to have religious and ethical concepts of our life.
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I'm reading "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson. It goes from the Big Bang through the course of human evolution. It's a very fun book.
You mention the temperature of 91. Just last week, we were in Crested Butte, Colorado with friends, Pete and Louise Wickham. We went out one brisk, cold morning to see the Gunnison Sage grouse do their spring mating ritual. Then we drove to Crested Butte to see the rosy finches. There, it was a warm spring day and the snow was melting. I think it was up to 35 that day. While the snow was indeed melting, there were still several feet of it around, and the woman we visited said that she was tired of winter and the snow. I think it is a little different from Texas!
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