IT IS SHOCKING TO LEARN HOW MUCH WE HAVE TAKEN FOR GRANTED

I've never thought about oxygen not always having been around.  Yet, oxygen-utilizing genes appeared during the tail end of the Archean Expansion 2.8 billion years ago, which is more consistent with the date geochemists assign to the Great Oxidation Event.  Now I've heard many 'events' during our formative years of our world, but the Great Oxidation Event is a new one on me.  While I was busy remembering the names of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden, the world was busy in late stages of evolution and a history that long preceded the poor humans who either made up God or couldn't tune in properly to God's bandwidth.

As you read this, three billion year old  fossils are being deciphered. Click here for the story.  It does rather shatter the fairy tale of the snake, apple, Adam and Eve, and all the sins that women have been forced to suffer payment for supposedly having been committed by Eve.  Men were not, and many are still not, willing to admit they may be stronger physically but not superior since superiority should not be based on physical strength as we are currently learning in our wars.   Thus, the Bible, written by men, is as objective as the Roberts guided Supreme Court seems to be.

"Eric Alm, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Biological Engineering, and Lawrence David, who recently received his Ph.D. from MIT and is now a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows, have named this period the Archean Expansion....Oxygen did not exist in the Earth's atmosphere until about 2.5 billion years ago when it began to accumulate, likely killing off vast numbers of anerobic life forms in the Great Oxidation Event" (from the Science Daily article 12/20/2010).

Two thousand year ago people were being duped by those who sought to convince them they knew better because they were getting messages from God.  Today Fox News seems to be singing the same tune and people are still falling for it.  In the movie TRON, it was a good thing to be 'Clueless'.  However, in human life on the planet right now, to be clueless is you need your wits about you!  Read a related story about how human diseases can be related to ancient genes.

JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES AT MY DOOR

At 10 AM my doorbell rang. As I expected no one, I looked through the peephole and noticed two women holding leaflets. They shoved a leaflet in my hand as I opened the door and began to talk to me in pleasant and polite tones. I stopped them mid-sentence to let them know that I respected their right to their beliefs but that I did not share them. I told them I had met a Congregational minister recently whom I respected for his sharing that the Bible should not be taken literally and other aspects of religion as most people practiced it. I found it refreshing to have spoken with someone who, I felt, understood my questions and didn't try to convince me otherwise.

The conversation went on to my challenging these women about the Bible having been written by men; we have no proof that it was written by God through mortals. I shared that I did not believe in Genesis as described in the Bible, I believed in evolution, and that I do not think man is the highest power but, whatever that power may be, man was not made in its image. We played a bit with their disagreement that the Power might be a something rather than a someone.

Admittedly, I often perversely engage in these discussions because it has always intrigued me that people can so quickly believe that which is unprovable. Not to belabor the description of this contact, when asked I told them that I had more than one copy of the Bible in the house, had read much of it and have not changed my opinion of the words in the book for more than 60 years. I said I live by the Golden Rule, follow the 10 commandments and believe myself to live as a better person than many who sin and go to church for absolution only to go out and commit the same sins over again, taking no personal responsibility for their behavior.

After a several minute chat to a Mexican stand-off, to my surprise, both women thanked me for my courtesy in listening to them, despite my difference in beliefs. They said they thought I was a nice person to have been friendly to them as many people just slammed the door in their face. I mentioned I would never be rude to any human being who had done me no harm. I wanted to tell them I thought they were wasting a potentially good life but figured my opinion was worthless, showing only my own prejudices. I wished them more success in their day than they had with me and they smiled and said they considered their interaction with me a worthwhile stop.

When they left, I wondered what had happened in that meeting. Clearly their age and racial difference suggested we must have had and led very different lives. I shared that I wish I believed in prayer and God but had learned that my life is dependent solely on my own decisions and actions. This elicited a smile of approval from both women. My understanding that 'God helps those who help themselves' brought yet another smile of approval. It was clear that whether we believed the same story book or not, our life values were quite similar. It is unlikely we would become enemies for believing differently since our outward behaviors to fellow man and the world is no differentiated by religion. In all, I found it a very worthwhile 29 minutes near the start of my day.