I was sitting in my front patio around 7pm, enjoying a glass of wine, while watching 5 or 6 big bumblebees sucking the nectar out of our lavender bush. i noticed that when 1 of them was full it would head off at a low zig-zag direction, to it's hive.
we don't believe in a supernatural being that directs the honeybees. but the alternative is just as mind-bending.
to think that these little creatures have developed facilities, including a system more accurate than GPS, and all work together to propagate the species is in some ways more incredible that the 2nd coming of Christ.
If we put the life on earth into a calendar year.
Dinosaurs were here 3 months and Humans just 10 minutes.
Many people think earth would not survive without humans . Actually bugs are far more important than humans for the survival of the planet.
Not only that but when they get back to the hive they tell everyone where they found this food source. They do this figure of eight dance that says "I've just found a fabulous roof garden to die for... turn left at the apple tree and head upward etc."
The big question is. Given such fantastic navigation skills, why the hell can't they find their way out of an open window?
I'm convinced that that stuff is just more complex than we can grasp yet not nearly so complex that nature don't let it work itself out.
provided there's a lot more unknown than known, we might not be so quick to compare it with the magical even if it is.
According to the Bible, Creation was virtually instantaneous. But what really happened has taken much, much longer; some 3½ billion years, so far. The number is so big, it's hard to wrap your head around it. But there are ways of visualizing geologic time. For instance, if you use the length of your arm to represent the age of the Earth, then the entire history of human civilization (the last 9,000 years, +/-) would be about how much your fingernails have grown in the last day or two. Or if the age of the Earth were 12 hours, then all of human history (about 200,000 years) would fit in the last second. In the light of such vast expanses of time, it doesn't seem quite so improbable that natural selection, which never rests, never takes a break, should be able to sculpt all the different life forms from the raw material provided daily through constant reproduction with lots of genetic variation. Charles Darwin knew nothing of genetics. The word "gene" would only be coined decades after his death. But Darwin was a very keen observer, and he did see a lot of diversity of form within populations that others did not. He called this diversity of forms "natural variation." It's the one element of biological evolution that is random. It's an artifact of genetic mutation, which occurs in all species, and occurs at a fairly steady rate. When the religiously indoctrinated complain that "nothing so perfect as a human body could be built through a random process," they are mistaking natural selection for natural variation. In fact, natural selection is NOT random at all. Natural selection is the pressures that survival in a difficult world impose on every living thing. If an organism is lucky enough to have been born with a genetic mutation that results in a slightly better wing, or eye, or skeleton, then it has a better chance survival, and of passing on that trait to more offspring. And more genetic mutation down the road may further improve the wing or eye or bone. Meanwhile, natural selection is constantly sweeping away (killing, before they can reproduce) the individuals who are less fit. And over millions and billions of years, through the two processes, natural selection acting upon natural variation, endless forms, wondrous and beautiful, evolve.
ever read Yuval Noah Harari? might like.
@hankster I have heard him speak many times.
There is no second coming of Christ. There is no person Christ. Christ is a consciousness. As for the bees, that too is a consciousness. Everything is....oh except atheists. lol