Status Updates From Green Was the Earth on the ...

"evolution is no less creative than creation. It is creation by degrees over an extensive period of time. Evolution needed a push to get started, and guidance rather than good luck to end up with the production of all living species. ... We cannot dispose of creation by arguing that evolution created itself."

"there was forever one single ocean. No matter how big the continents were, they rose up from the bottom of the sea to become islands in a common world ocean."

"I began to feel that the ocean was a friend. It was more. It was the mother of all life. It had been the life supporter and food provider for thousands of years ... ."

"the sea and the sky have been the two symbols of endless dimensions and permanence"

"'There is nothing for modern [human] to return to,'" ... I said ... with sadness."

"Happy days made time blur ... . ... [There] was no tomorrow nor any yesterday. Everything was today, no matter how often we saw ... the colorful approach of another sunrise. Our former life was ... a remote dream. ... When we thought of it, it gave us a strange feeling, as if we were in a science-fiction novel. When we tried to describe our own world, ... [we] never seemed to quite believe our words."

"The islanders did not fear death"

"The more we look into microscopes and telescopes, the better we understand that we have been helped into a world too wisely evolved toward a functional ecosystem to be a product of pure coincidence. A billion molecules could be tossed into the air and never come down together in the shape of a butterfly egg or the seed of a breadfruit tree."

"We have no idea what the origin of gravity is. But we eliminate our ignorance once we have a name for it. It is the same with the flowers in the forest; we feel we know them the moment we know their names. Words are useful, not least those we fabricate to hide our ignorance. To make us stop thinking ... "

"All other living creatures would be able to continue their existence without the presence of [humankind], for they did indeed exist alone in the beginning, without [humankind]. But [humans] could be neither created nor evolved before the rest of the global ecosystem was ready to house [them]. Nor could [humankind] survive in the future if that ecosystem was destroyed."

"Living month to month with the plants that fed us, I came to look upon nature as a sort of magician, whose magic wand was time."

"It was good to feel the breeze, the sun, the touch of the forest, rather than ... the same cloth clinging to us wherever we moved. To ... feel the soft mud squeeze up between the toes ... felt better than stepping continually on the inside of the same pair of socks. Rather than feeling poor and naked, we felt rich, wrapped in the whole universe. We and everything were part of one eternity."

"The days were long, perhaps because we were alert every moment in an environment completely new to us. Yet we were never bored. Each day was packed with new observations, new experiences."

"Nature itself had exaggerated. Something so beautiful seemed impossible."

"[Adults] said that God had created nature, and yet they acted as if the devil was on their heels unless they continued to sever their ties with nature. Even atheists, who argued that nature itself had produced [humankind], acted as if nature was [human's] old and innate enemy."

"We were taught to believe in progress from Paradise. ... We were also told that ... God was completely satisfied with the world [She] created. ... But whereas God was pleased with [Her] job, [humankind] was not. God was sure [She] had given [humankind] a perfect environment, an earthly Paradise. [Humankind] did not agree. While God rested, [humankind] took over."

"How could adults believe that people of my age would think more clearly, once our freshly developed minds had been pushed through the education machine and filled to capacity with the doctrines of the elders? It was now, while we were still young, that we had to think; ... if we were not to be drugged into accepting blindly the seats offered to us ... ."

"They were ready to welcome any change from the world ... by calling it 'progress', no matter what the change might be. 'Progress' was synonymous with distance from nature. The adults ... were so absorbed by their own ability to invent and to alter the existing world, that they hurried ... , with no design for the ultimate structure."