Really Crawling

Ed's quickly learned how to crawl 'properly' - he's even pulling himself up on furniture! Here's some video of him in our caravan in Berwick from last week, a bigger version is here. There's a sad trainspotting type video (yes the ones that go on tracks type) I took whilst on holiday here too, but I'm ashamed to post it below ;-)

We've Been to the Zoo, Zoo, Zoo

How about you, you, you? We had a great day out at Edinburgh Zoo last Tuesday, as part of our holiday in Berwick(-upon-tweed). I took some video of just some of the amazing animals you can see there - not included in the video are such beauties as the Malayan Tapir and the Bongo, the too cute Meerkats (the Otters and Koalas came in a close 2nd and 3rd on the cuteness scale) and the scary Painted Hunting Dogs. It took us a whole day to get round, and I still don't think we saw everything! Anyway here's the vid, there's a bigger version here.

A Slithery Customer

Edward's really - well nearly really - getting there! His slither is nearly a crawl - it's a slawl. See him go below, or go bigger here.

Darwin's Grey Box

The title of this blog refers to the now (in)famous book by Michael Behe, who disputes the biological foundations of Evolution with his idea of Irreducible Complexity. It's a book I read many years ago, and one I fully agreed with at the time: the one thing I personally always fell back upon, the one thing I held to when I had doubts as to there being a Divine hand in our making was the improbability of life arising from non-life. I'm still not convinced that the improbable happened, but I'm less convinced that evolution itself, in some shape or form, has never happened on this planet: and once you admit that, where do you stop? If there is path from me back to an apelike ancestor, could there not also be, and just as astoundingly be, a path from the first "living" thing (who knows exactly what it was) back to - who knows what? It doesn't seem the brick wall that Behe makes it out to be any more, especially after reading The Language of God by Francis Collins, discussed in a previous blog.

I mentioned in that blog that there was some excellent biological evidence presented in favour of evolution, and in trying to summarize those points today I realized that no summary would do: I'll just let Mr Collins speak for himself. I've put together a PDF file which you can download here (if I'm online) or here.

Read it? Pretty good eh? There's more in the book, but I believe those were the best points presented, they were the one's that impressed me anyways: I don't think it's surprising that the author is most convincing when discussing his field of expertise, and considering how much of an expert Collins is, and how much he's contributed to the field of genetics, I also believe his words on these matters carry great authority (unlike his words on matters spiritual). I would like to believe though, although here it's just hope - I speak with no authority ;-) - that we have, when it comes to our knowledge of our own origins, an "incomplete map" - like the map of the world shown below. People once thought the Earth looked like that. Well, I think there may be a better explanation, a more complete explanation - or at least a unifying one - over the horizon.