I’m thoroughly enjoying A Tale of Two Cities. As I’ve gotten older (much older) and dabbled in writing, I find myself picking up on writing styles as I read. Dickens has such a talent for setting the contrasts of characters and places against each other. The evil Monsieur in his grand chateau. The kind banker in the dark, foreboding bank. It’s fun to see the differences.
I’m about halfway through the book and would have read more this evening, but I wanted to get more of The Origin of Species under my belt.
Darwin’s book isn’t nearly as enjoyable. However, unlike the previous chapters, I’m not as disagreeable to the last chapter and a half that I’ve read. Granted, he still uses his excuse of not being able to give details “here,” and he still doesn’t produce any data whatsoever, only examples, there’s really nothing that goes against my belief in Creation.
The last full chapter I read discussed the “Struggle for Existence.” He talks about the dependence of species on each other (plants that need to be pollinated via an insect). Another subject is how there are checks and balances: i.e. if there were no predators or no destruction of a plant or animal, the earth wouldn’t be able to sustain itself. There would be billions of elephants covering the earth if drought and predators didn’t keep their numbers in check. There’s be trillions of birds filling the skies if there weren’t any vermin stealing their eggs for food.
Right now I’m partway through his chapter on “Natural Selection,” which, in all honesty, I had a rather large misconception about.
From what I’ve read (and as I mentioned, I’m only partway through the chapter), “natural selection” is basically certain breeds of plant or animal that survive better in certain places because they’ve been bred to do so. This breeding can be intentional (the best example I can think of would be breeding cattle for meat) or the breeding is just natural (like rams fighting for a mate). In a sense, it is the “survival of the fittest” though he hasn’t used that phrase (yet).
I’ve got a lot of questions I hope he addresses as I get further into the book. Since he’s thus far dealt with the “evolution” of a species in a sense of adaptation to the environment and/or survival of the fittest (for lack of a better phrase), I’d love to see him explain where the first of all of the species came from. If everything began in a primordial soup, wouldn’t everything have started out as the same type of amoeba then evolved into the same type of being since the environment would have been the same?
To me it just continues to prove the point that there is a great God who created everything. There is such a delicate balance between keeping populations of plants and animals in check versus their complete destruction, that it’s mind boggling. And though I believe that animals and plants and humans can and do adapt to their environments, there are just so many different species on this planet (and scientists are still discovering more!) that I just can’t believe it all started out as the same amoeba and evolved into billions of different plants, animals and, of course, the human being.
Well it’s way past my bedtime and what I’ve written is probably incoherent, so I’ll sign off now.
Happy reading!
