I’m on the patio this evening, wearing a sweatshirt but naked from the knees down. My whiskey glass is unwhiskied, but there’s a simple remedy for that.
Moments ago a tiny creature landed on my glowing screen, backlit by pixels. These tiny bugs annoy me, because it seems their entire purpose in life is to swim in something I want to drink. And when they’re not swimming they’re flying around my eyeballs or crawling across my screen or exploring my nasal passages. The little fuckers bother me mightily.
So naturally when this little critter landed on my screen, my first instinct was to flick out my hand and crush it. But… lit that way, I could really see how well-constructed the creature was. It possessed a symmetry and a focus in construction that I had to pause and appreciate. A much better spokesman for intelligent design than any mammal will ever be.
I stayed my hand, and it flew away. If it landed in my glass, I am now digesting it. A more honorable death, for sure.
Quiet moments of observation… inspiration…
Once on a ferry ride from Whidbey over to Port Townsend, a group of children were leaning over the upper deck forward railing, while we were underway, tossing out bread pieces for the seagulls. One more audacious (ALL seagulls are audacious; to be more audacious is really saying something) gull wheeled right in and snatched a larger piece from a child’s fingers, flared its wings and spun away, and then flew back alongside just out of range of other gulls lest they attack and snatch at his prize. (His? Hers? I’m not a gull. I can’t tell.)
A commonplace occurrence? Sure, gulls fly and grab tidbits. They commonly fly alongside ferries, right up by the superstructure. They perform all manner of aerial acrobatics while dodging, racing, and weaving together in flight.
But a moment of insight flashed in my mind that afternoon. We humans cannot create that; not even close. Our best is so clumsy that its not even laughable. Do what? Make a gull?
Make a gull-sized drone, self-sustaining, self-aware, fully flight-capable, programmed to seek and snatch and avoid dangers and track a swift-moving vessel (our ferries are fast!) and find a morsel and take it from tiny fingers while evading the competition.
Perfection!
We’re not even close.
We can destroy; and in our own way, we can create.
But a gull? A house fly? A gnat?
The obvious proof of a creator is the creation.
Perfection.
Hell, we can’t even draw that.