“All things bright and beautiful"

.... "All creatures great and small,”

I was singing this lovely song in the shower yesterday morning, feeling
cheerful & thinking about the good times when I used to sing this as a
young child at school.

But when I came to the bit: “the Lord God made them all.” I thought to
myself: “What a load of codswallop.”

I happen to believe in Darwinian theory as regards the origin of our
species, and that evolution is responsible for the creation of all life
forms.

I also support the Big Bang theory as regards the creation of our solar
system, but then I ask myself who / what created all the matter that
was swirling around before that? I could accept that there might well
have been a supernatural force, which created all this matter, and which facilitated / caused The Big Bang.

I think that a lot of Christians would accept that the timing of
the birth of Jesus Christ is incorrect, and that a lot of the
Christmas-time magic … and it does feel magical for me … relates
to old pagan festivities, which the Christian churches highjacked.

So I think that the Christian churches should re-write their entire
religious services and teaching, to encompass these new ideas … and
that they should acknowledge that there is a measure of doubt as
regards the whole creation process.

Have a think about the Adam and Eve story, for example … God created
Eve from one of Adam’s ribs, so The Bible says. (He was clever
enough to give her an X chromosome, and thereafter introduce some
genetic diversity, so that we didn’t all end up looking like clones
of Adam). There is no mention of Adam and Eve getting married,
so it appears that they had an incestuous relationship, as did
several of their offspring … so is incest OK? As you will know,
there was a lot of “begatting” from one generation to the next
after that, but there is no explanation of the fact that we
Westerners look a lot different from Asians and Black Africans
… or an acknowledgment of the thousands of years it’s taken to
produce such differences.

I read on my Yahoo email page this morning, that the Duchess of
Cambridge, Kate Windsor (nee Middleton), is apparently a distant
relative of Jane Austen, both of whom are said to be descendants
of Henry Percy, the second Earl of Northumberland.

Here’s a link to a webpage about this …

http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/06/28/stranger-than-fiction-kate-middleton-and-jane-austen-are-distant-cousins/

I did a bit of more research on this, first of all checking out
Henry, who was the son of Hotspur, and then having a look at
Kate’s ancestry…

http://www.wargs.com/royal/kate.html

There’s been much said about one of her great-great grandparents
being a coal miner in County Durham (John Harrison b.1874)… perhaps
the land he mined once belonged to Henry Percy, which would be amusing
if this were true.

On this pedigree, the research goes back as far as Sir Thomas Fairfax
(who died in 1520/21).

The authors reckon that Thomas Fairfax is a common ancestor to both
Kate and to her hubby William … which suggests that they are cousins.

I think it’s possible that all our aristocracy and gentry are related
to one another, because of intermarriage over the years. Kate is said
to be a commoner, but then it appears that she has a few genes in
common with Diana Spencer, William’s mother.

Well they do say that men marry women who are like their mothers. :)

I’ve found another online article which traces the Fairfax line back
to Edward III …
http://walter9.info/Society/html/kate_middleton.html

My final thought … if we are all descended from Adam and Eve, or
descended from some lowly form of marine life, then we are all cousins
of each other.

Talk to you soon, my dear Cousin.