Hannah and I were watching a show on ‘alien biology’ yesterday, about scientists who are dedicated to exploring and imagining the kinds of life that might exist on other planets. They look to the extremophiles on Earth to see how organisms survive in inhospitable environments, including something called snow algae. Snow algae are algae/cyanobacteria that, when they bloom, turn the snow blood red. It just makes me wonder at what point did they think, "Hey, let’s test that snow for cyanobacteria!" rather than just assuming that a prey animal had met its grisly end. Scientists are fascinating that way.
Also, if you like learning about astronomy stuff like that, the History Channel’s series The Universe is a really awesome little show. It’s a lot of solid scientific material presented in an understandable way. I highly recommend it.
Dreamt last night that Norwegian film crew was shooting a documentary in our home.
Still haven’t cleaned my room, but now I’m waiting for UPS to show up. With my new computer.
*taps fingers*
Come on…
i’ve been meaning to catch “The Universe” but never have…with your rec…i’ll have to make a special effort.
That is a fun show. A new show that also looks good on there is “How the Earth was Made”. It’s more of an Earthly perspective. It was good, at least, the episodes I caught before the tv died yesterday.
Good thing it died during lent, otherwise I might have to bother myself to care. :-P
Curious: what are your thoughts on there being life (simple OR complex) out There?
I certainly wouldn’t rule out complex life. I’m less certain about there being alien beings in possession of a soul. The Fall of humanity affected the *whole* of Creation, and it seems somewhat…incongruous, that there would be beings possessed of a soul that also suffered separation from God after The Fall, and all because of us, you know? Of course, I trust God’s infinite wisdom and mercy whatever the case. It feels too beyond my scope to say that ‘No, there’s definitely nothing out there.’ I think God tends to laugh at those kind of declarative statements ;-)
Oh, and I’m writing this from my new computer. Huzzah.
Yeah, I’m trying to figure out how complex life could be out there.
Some would argue that critters have a soul too; though I’d say that they were not AS effected (affected? I can never remember which goes where) by the fall (save for domestication? I’ll have to talk more about that later, I’m too zonked out from fasting all day and then driving home from presanctified, mrarrrgh)
Though I have a secret dream to be a missionary priest to another civilization like our own:-X It’s not likely to happen.
I’m not sure if this comment makes any sense. I’ll look at it again in the morning, I think. *collapsnore*
hee hee my bf and i watch the universe all the time. sometimes it gets a little ridiculous or its about stuff that you *really* dont’ care about (like a whole show was dedicated to how people could have sex in space… wtf?) but it can be pretty interesting :D
As promised: http://cordilleran2.livejournal.com/562761.html?nc=3 (the dream about Byzantine/Inca relations)
(Yes, I got your letter today :-) )
o_0 Haven’t seen that episode yet, lol.
I’d be interested to hear your further thoughts ♥
I suppose that when I said ‘soul’ I meant the spirit that is uniquely within human beings. I believe even the Church Fathers taught that animals have souls, but that they do not possess the immortal soul of the human being. And when the Fall of Man brought death into Creation, we affected all living things. God was incarnate *once* as Jesus Christ, and he redeemed the world *once* by becoming a human being, which is probably my biggest issue with there being non-human beings possessed of immortal souls, because it is so vital to our faith that God redeemed humanity. But I trust God in his infinite wisdom, having provided for the lily and the sparrow, would provide for even beings in the Andromeda Galaxy ;-)
Yay! And thanks for the link :-) Now I have a very strange, somewhat random question, that I think you would probably be able to answer:
I’ve be reading through some of the writings of the early Church Fathers and I’ve noticed some heavy comma usage. Upwards of seven or eight commas breaking up a sentence into rather short bits of text. For example, this bit of text being preceded by already four commas, a semicolon and some names:
by means of whom, I have, as to love, beheld all of you.
(Forgive me, St. Ignatius, but it sounds a bit like you’re gasping… ;-) )
In all seriousness, I’ve noted this a lot in these older writings and letters. Is this just a manner of writing, or is it by way of the translation (making the text more understandable for the modern reader)? And if this is just the way that sentences have been constructed forever, then right now it’s probably quite obvious how little reading I do of old books.
Please, enlighten the curious and sadly ill-informed :-)
Mostly it’s how it’s been translated. Some of these texts were written as a block of text with NO punctuation, particularly the earlier ones. So some of it is guesswork, trying to make it easier for us to read it.
My hypothesis on when the Fall of Adam occurred is that it was the Neolithic Revolution. Before that, men and women lived exclusively in the garden of Hunter-gatherers, feasting upon God’s Natural Bounty.
Right with the start of the Neolithic, at about the same time in the Fertile Crescent and along the coast of Peru/central Mexico and the Yellow River Basin in China, BAM, suddenly everything changes. People are working the land. People have now made animals, or at least some of them, subservient to them, via domestication. Man has fallen from the garden and started to work. All the problems of modern society start there.
Yes, there was an Adam and an Eve, but I think that the time in the garden is symbolic of the time when ALL of humanity was in the garden. Then we screwed it up. All of mankind fell at once, basically.
That’s my 2 cents on it, anyway.
Thank you! That does make sense :-)
I like your theory :-) It makes a lot of sense, especially when – like you said – one considers that the timing for the development of agriculture tends to coincide with the timing of ‘the fall’ (as a historical event, based on geneology). And as my Physical Anthropology professor put it, agriculture was probably the worst thing we ever did to ourselves.
hmmmmmm – lots of good things to think about.