I love when a plan comes together. Even if I am the crazy plan muddling one.

Ok, I've ingested enough scotch at my Dad's order (OMG Lokis just discovered ...something and did a 3 ft vertical leap for no reason, excuse me as I collapse in laughter) that I'm done for the night. I hope. Back still crawling.

Congratulations, sara! Well done.

msbelle, can you explain Peanut Butter Jelly Time?

There is no explanation for peanut butter jelly time -- it's a zen thing. go with it....

I've always thought it funny that people often spend less time with a new house than I've spent shopping for shoes. I mean seriously, I saw my house three times before I purchased it and the total time was probably an hour. The last winter coat I bought involved three different trips to the store and that was $100.

I am declaring this paper done, even though I am not sure I did it right. I am just too tired to care. I`ll check it over one more time tomorrow before I send it.

Owen and Peanut Butter & Jelly Time. Definitely a zen thing.

OK, does everybody know that before the Fall of man, there were no predatory animals? Bears and such ate grass, and switched to meat after man committed Original Sin. But then you're stuck will all sorts of logical conundrums...

Designed to Kill

...

I like to start with that in my origins class, and lull my students into a false sense of security that predation is easy to explain. Then I hit them with much harder cases. Take venomous snakes. Every last one is an obligate carnivore, and they have those amazing fangs. The pit vipers have heat sensors that can detect their prey, then they take them out with a poisonous bite. The venom delivery involves modifications to the anatomy of the teeth and glands and to the biochemistry of the enzymes that are concentrated in the venom. It can't be reduced to just behavior. Snakes were designed to kill.

...

I could go on and on with more examples, but you get the point. How do we explain all this design? Wasn't creation supposed to be "very good?" Weren't the animals given only plants to eat? Didn't death come to creation from the sin of Adam? How could things be designed to kill?

Actually, I don't think these things are that much of a problem. Sure, they're designed. The real question is when were they designed? What I think these things do for us is deepen our understanding of the Curse. Think about this for a second: How could the world we live in now exist without animal death? To be honest, it couldn't. Overpopulation alone would bring it to a grinding halt, not to mention the need for a completely different kind of ecological cycling of nutrients. And the list goes on. No, if the world before the Fall had no animal death, then it must have been very different from the world we live in now.

It follows then that the Curse wasn't merely some minor tweak to the original perfection. Whole components of creation had to be redesigned, and that redesign must have included predators. The more interesting question is not where or when predators originated, but how. What kinds of mechanisms did God use? Was it a direct intervention? Or was there some kind of pre-designed mechanism involved? That's a question that can actually be researched by studying predators and the attributes that give them their hunting skills. One of these days, I hope our research at CORE will help us to better understand where predators come from.

Cash, HA!

Noah likes to dance to it. I'm sort of confounded by it.

I'm sort of confounded by it.

I've found it helps if you're in your underwear.