Intricacy - Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Chapter Eight: Intricacy

This is the culmination of the Via Positiva – Seeing God from what can be seen.
How hard would it be for you to make a tree? Would the task be easier if the tree did not have to actually work? It would not have to grow, or reproduce, or respirate. How hard would it be?

How hard would it be to make a kidney, with the intricacy of the nephron and a Henle’s Loop? Each nephron in your kidney about fifteen yards long. Each human kidney has about a million nephrons. We could not imagine a kidney, much less make one.

When we can see, when we can force ourselves to pay attention, there is an amazing complexity to the world around us, under our feet, over the next hill, and into the sky.

What do you think about evolution? I would say that evolution clearly happens. That in no way trumps the idea of a Creator. The more I can see, the more I believe in wonder, the more I am astonished at the extravagance of the Creator. The Creator creates! Look closely! There is a ‘wow’ in every molecule!

Quotes:

• If you analyze a molecule of chlorophyll itself, what you get is one hundred thirty-six atoms of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen arranged in an exact and complex relationship around a central ring. At the ring’s center is a single atom of magnesium. Now: If you remove the atom of magnesium and in its exact place put an atom of iron, you get a molecule of hemoglobin. (127-8)


• ‘Nature,’ said Thoreau in his journal, ‘is mythical and mystical always, and spends her whole genius on the least work.’ The creator, I would add, churns out the intricate texture of least works that is the world with a spendthrift genius and an extravagance of care. This is the point. (128)


• This is our life, these are our lighted seasons, and then we die. In the mean time, in between time, we can see. The scales are fallen from our eyes, the cataracts are cut away, and we can make sense of the color-patches we see in an effort to discover where we so incontrovertibly are. (129)


• The average temperature of our planet is 57 degrees Fahrenheit. Of the 29% of all land that is above water, over a third is given to grazing. The average size of all living animals, including man, is almost that of a housefly. The earth is mostly granite, which in turn is mostly oxygen. The most numerous of animals big enough (for us) to see are the cope pods, the mites, and the springtails; of the plants, the algae, the sledge. (129)


• Everything I have seen is wholly gratuitous. (130)


• Utility to the creature is evolution’s only aesthetic consideration. Form follows function in the created world, so far as I know, and the creature that functions, however bizarre, survives to perpetuate its form. (136-7)


• Of all known forms of life, only about 10 percent are still living today. (138)


• Pliny, who knew the world was round, figured that when it was all surveyed the earth would be seen to resemble a pineapple, pricked with irregularities. (140)


• Were the earth smooth, our brains would be smooth as well (no complex thinking required); we would wake, blink, walk tow steps to get the whole picture, and lapse into a dreamless sleep. (141)


• ‘Every religion that does not affirm that God is hidden,’ said Pascal flatly, ‘is not true.’ (146)


• No claims of any and all revelations could be so far-fetched as a single giraffe. (146)