So for the second Godless Beautiful Thing Of The Week, I figured I'd go for something natural. Something that's ancient and utterly beautiful.
![](http://assets.hulu.com/shows/key_art_the_great_barrier_reef.jpg)
I'd love to go and see this myself some day. It is widely known as the largest single structure made by living things. It's hugely diverse, and the whale/dolphin/porpoise groups, a family known as cetaceans, have had 30 species recorded there alone. It's also home to a lot of dugongs, who could be considered the ugliest animal alive. But it's also got some of the prettiest - or else it wouldn't be in this post.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Acanthurus_lineatus_Flynn_Reef.jpg)
![](http://wallpapers-diq.org/wallpapers/15/Starfish%2C_Great_Barrier_Reef.jpg)
![](http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2009/3/9/1236622717864/Corals-at-the-Great-Barri-001.jpg)
![](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/09/photogalleries/marine-new-species-photos/images/primary/1_coml_marine_461.jpg)
![](http://blog.aquanerd.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Prehistoric-Sea-Live-Below-Great-Barrier-Reef.jpg)
![](http://www.chefhans.com/GBReef/Great%20Barrier%20Reef_3.jpg)
(Sole exception there. The giant clam is cool, but that guy's got a fucking goofy hairdo.)
Having grown up on the Ecco the Dolphin games, I've always loved the beauty and diversity of sea life. That doesn't help me when I'm faced with ridiculous concepts like the late Paul, the World Cup Predicting Octopus, and find myself faintly glad he died because at least he outlived the World Cup and now no one's making a big fucking fuss over a randomly correlating series of lunches for Paul, and certainly no one's taking it as an insult that he didn't mutilate his fellow sea life until he could swallow them from a box not marked with their country's flag (seriously, people, come on).
But it does mean that I get to absolutely adore nature documentaries about the sea, even if it means squid freak me the fuck out now (if PZ Myers ever reads this, sorry, but aargh that beak). And it means I get to marvel at things like this, and not have to unconsciously thank someone for their existence, or worry about how their continued, observable and demonstrable evolution goes against what the priests told me as a kid.
And you know what? Out of the billions of single organisms there, and the trillions of polyps who make up and have made up the structure of the reef itself, I'd bet anything that not a single one of them ever prayed.
THE *HIGH PRICE* OF REVOLUTION
ReplyDeletehttp://tc2.wikispaces.com/file/view/guillotine.jpg/32021821/guillotine.jpg
FOR THE HEADLESS IDIOTS OF THE ATHEIST MOVEMENT
________________________________
myers - are you eating your own sh&t yet? you will be...
________________________
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION!
let them eat their own sh*t!
the WORLD TRADE CENTER PROPHECY - THE DANCE OF DEATH
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0Hez25fFrg
the ungrateful bastards full of hubris...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubris
a bullet for your head, traitor
And finally, the *only* man in Minnesota who says there is no God has suddenly become an arbiter on mental health...
http://www.unfacts.org/factsforum/viewtopic.php?t=4080
COME SEE A PHOTO OF MABUS AND AN EXPLANATION OF IT!
Shows what you know, sucker, I was in MN and I say there's no God. XD
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of guillotines, what's with your teeth in that photo of you PZ put up, sonny?
sonny, see you little yankees never really knew the REAL WORLD....
ReplyDeleteI'm two years too late for this but yankees drop the "u" when they spell colour. I'd say that's a small indication that The Atheist is probably English or from pretty much anywhere else in the world.
DeleteYou're dead right he is. That aside, as a little since-then on this troll: he's actually been arrested and put into psychiatric care. He spent the better part of twenty years threatening atheist bloggers, and last year it finally went far enough that the police got onto him. Now he's been released, but under the condition that he do nothing of the sort ever again.
DeleteThere are indications that this escapee from the cuckoo's nest has already started to do it again.
Yeah, that's right, call the English bloke a yankee and then tell him he doesn't know what's real. XD Smooth.
ReplyDeleteyou are all YANKEES today...
ReplyDelete...Shit, boy, what colour's the grass on your planet? XD
ReplyDelete