Poetry Prose and Other Words

by Ken Ingham

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Blog 1987

March 14, 1987
Save the World - Kill People

Right now it seems that the only way to preserve what’s left of precious wilderness and nature is to eliminate people. “Save the world - kill people” would be a fitting bumper sticker for the times. Is there no end to our appetite for material wealth? Most of us couldn’t be bothered with immediate concerns about the ever-quickening pace of Natures’ destruction. Everywhere I look, nice well-mannered, even kind and otherwise intelligent people including me go about their daily lives, contributing mindlessly to the problem. We work hard and pursue ever higher life-styles, assuming or hoping (if it crosses our minds) that the "eco problem" will be solved by another agency or department or another segment of the “economy”. We attempt to blot out the images of the future that are triggered by a pause to view reality. Isn’t it enough, we ask, to do the best we can at our chosen specialties and mind our own business? If everyone else did the same, wouldn’t the world then improve? I fear that we kid ourselves and the problem worsens. The world continues to evolve - no, that’s the wrong word - evolution in the past has seemed to have increased the number of species. Right now, the number is rapidly diminishing. What is happening seems almost like the opposite of evolution. Its called devolution.


April 15, 1987
God Created Evolution

What's all the fuss? Creationists believe that God created everything, topping it off by creating man in his own image. Evolutionists contend that man evolved through chance encounters between particles to initiate life followed by millions of years of genetic recombination and mutation to produce an apposable thumb and a large enough brain to use it, first in self-defense and later to subject all living creatures to either extinction or domestication.

This is a fascinating subject for those who are interested in both religion and science. It seems to bring out the extremes on both sides and, as often occurs in great theo-political debates, extremists tend to dominate the discussion at first and shape the boundaries within which continued debate by more objective minds is conducted. In my opinion, the ultimate resolution to this confusion is for both sides to admit that God created evolution. This is a point of view with which the majority of both sides can eventually become comfortable. It allows for the existence of a creator as well as a process, evolution. Achieving common ground requires only that evolutionists admit that even they are mystified by the existence of the universe and that the creationists acknowledge the validity of their own observations of what is going on around them. Extreme creationists are allowed to attribute all that they fail to understand to “God’s will and extreme evolutionists are free to assume that all of the mysteries of the universe will ultimately be revealed through continued scientific thought and observation. These two equally improbable and irreconcilable points of view will continue to dominate the media while the real debate continues unnoticed in the mainstream religious and educational institutions of the world, in the minds of objective thinkers from both sides. It is pointless for the raging issues of the day to be so dominated by extremists. There are no simple answers to many of the most fundamental questions and continued struggle by extremists for dominance can only distract us from the search for real answers.