I hate it when people say they don’t “believe” in evolution, as though evolution was a silly suggestion and not a law of nature. The path that evolution has taken us is to one of being able to comprehend this vast and awesome cosmos without resorting to fairy stories or magic books.
The world is an amazing place where the forces that act upon us can be understood and appreciated.
This lump of cooling rock
pelted with cometary shock,
born in seas of soupy green,
chloroplasts and the golden
mean-
Billions of years encourage change,
for this process set in motion
is never ending evolution…
The human race
in a vast cosmos
seemingly out of place
wondering, why are
we here?
Did a god of old place us,
for its benefit, raise us?
Or instead, a world formed
of many things-like beads
slid onto strings,
colors placed at random
evolving into patterns,
like amino acids and
self replication or free
association, decidedly
natural selection.
The arguments will rage eternal,
and the punishments for nonbelievers
infernal for, “God does not play dice,
the world follows his plan, the Lord’s
return is at hand!”
So many blandishments to say
a constant stream of chatter to this day.
Yet we ask for the truth,
we tirelessly search for it on Earth,
we also hear the questions echo across a universe
too vast for a quick reply,
and impatiently wait
whenever we look up and see the sky.
Sorry, it might be rude not to comment on the poetry specifically, but where in the world did you find that awesome .gif?
It from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series, the episode on natural selection. Its a famous little piece of animation and succinctly captures the feel of evolution over grand time scales.
Thanks a lot for the prompt reply! Oh, and the poetry’s great, by the way. I enjoy the fact that science and reason are being appreciated in poetry. It annihilates the horrible stereotype that one who enjoys such things is dry and boring and uninterested in the literary arts. Keep it up! Not that you need some stranger telling you that.