Entries Tagged 'Nature' ↓

The other day after work I decided to walk through the National Zoo and I came away with a couple thoughts.  First, we humans are not the only ones with cognitive powers.  There was one orangutan that was completely working the crowd, luring everyone away from another ape and then, once he had their full attention, sending them all away in disgust to his own delight as he regurgitated a previous meal and slurped it back up again.  The thing is my nephew gets the same sense of pleasure from showing everyone his chewed up fish sticks.  A particular seal lion also resembled my nephew in his tactics for stalling to go to Continue reading →

What strikes me about this article is how it challenges the core theories and current “answers” of science.  In our modern society we tend to put ultimate confidence in the current scientific explanations and laugh at our predecessors who thought the earth was flat.  Well… I think little findings like this should keep us humble regarding our current understanding of the universe.  The universe might have a few tricks up its sleeve yet.

via National Geographic News

Anne Minard March 19, 2008
A new study is challenging the long-standing notion that the whole solar system formed from the same raw materials.

Until now most scientists had believed that the inner solar system bodies—Mercury, Venus, Earth, its moon, and Mars—had the same composition as primitive meteorites called chondrites.

But, problematically, Earth’s chemistry doesn’t quite match. Continue reading →

Somebody loved me and gave me the Planet Earth series for Christmas. I am completely mesmerized every time I watch it. The beauty, diversity, and richness of this world as captured in this film is completely staggering.

What does this have to do with the Mormon Endowment ceremony as presented in LDS temples? The presentation includes a portrayal of the creation of this earth. In the temples of the pioneers the setting was set with murals paints on the walls of the creation room. Since the inception of the video presentation of the endowment the creation story presentation has been augmented by beautiful cinematography highlighting the beauties of this earth. Considering the endowment has been streamlined into a two-hour presentation compared to the all-day experience as Joseph Smith originally shared it, I think it could be completely appropriate to consider mentally inserting this Planet Earth series right in the middle of the story of the creation of the earth and celebrating the glory and beauty of the creation. Continue reading →

It is hard to ignore Evolution in discussions about religion and the origin of life/meaning of life. It has been on my mind recently as I’m in the middle of Diversity of Life and watching Planet Earth (stunningly gorgeous btw, if the LDS church wanted to expand the temple ceremony they could probably just insert the Planet Earth series in the creation story, a modern mural of art).

Watching the evolution-religion discussion is particularly interesting due to the extremely strong reactions it produces from both sides. Continue reading →

This is all in good fun. I got a kick out of some of his little side comments.

Behind the silliness are some potentially more serious and thought-provoking questions:

Is chance really the driving mechanism behind our lives? Is the family, location, and religion of our birth simply chance? Is all of life an accident? That is the answer of science. I’m in the middle of reading E.O. Wilson’s The Diversity of Life and in a section I recently read he makes the point that everything, the diversity of life, all of it, is an accident, “beauty arises from error.” Life is a statistical anomaly. There is no plan, there is no meaning. Continue reading →