toml@oliveb.UUCP (Tom Long) (05/13/85)
[] I read something recently which casts light on the contention in this newsgroup. It is in the book "Seven Story Mountain" by Thomas Merton, a well- known writer and Trappist Monk. When Thomas was a child, his mother found him venerating the pilot light in the family oven. I take this as evidence that Thomas had a strong predisposition to a religious view of life. I think we can broaden this observation to say that some of us have a strong predisposition to materialistic views of life. I cannot recall ever venerating anything. So when we look at the "evidence" for evolution, what do we find? Clearly, there is nothing evident about it. When Thomas Merton saw the human body, like Lief, he probably saw strong evidence of design, and hints about God's mentality. When I look at the human body, I see kludge upon kludge upon a basic mammalian body plan, and when I see or try to communicate with an ape, I marvel at the similarities between us. So I propose that we consider each contribution to the newsgroup just an expression of the personality of the contributor. We could even save time and effort by just writing our personality type -- materialist, religious, undecided (for Paul) -- and leaving out the "evidence" and arguments. Tom Long (materialist)