Monday, November 28, 2005

What's not in Kansas anymore

A mind that has not reflected on nature is not a reflection of nature and is not healthy. The objective study of nature and natural systems of organisms reveals repeatedly that competing and cooperating can be in near balance and complement each other in getting not just the most but the most abiding life out of the mineral substrates of the living. Absence of that balance is the least natural and will eventually prove the most destructive effect of humans upon this earth. To knowingly dismiss the maintenance of that balance is an evil of which the evildoer will some day be the last victim. To believe in a creator and yet demote, denigrate and obscure the power of mere observation and logic to reveal the operation of the fantastic machine we have been given is to ignore the handiwork of that creator and the intellect we were given.
To suppose the writings of some tribe of men could tell you more about how to keep the natural world running than direct study of the machinery is an arrogance pregnant with the cruel consequences it deserves. To claim we are other than animals and above nature is stupid pride.

If you divorce yourself from nature you will find there is no alimony.


We must not suppose that nature still has some place else to go because a few species have mobility. We truely have become the masters of nature that Genesis envisioned and we are ignorant, selfish masters. Nature will not leave Kansas because open minded study of nature has become legally questionable. Nature just is, standing its ground and living or dying as conditions permit. Legally mandated ignorance of the fate of unbalanced nature leads to far worse things than a crop of slightly backward science students. Darwin's contribution is but one jewel in a treasury of understandings and it is the entire enterprise of understanding that is under assault by fundamentalists, not just one of its prizes.

1 comment:

Davoh said...

"naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret"
Horace