Dear God

I was visited by bible teachers this morning, who tried to teach me the scripture despite of the fact that I informed them right off the bat that I am a graduate student of the discipline of biology and that yes, I believe in evolution. They even read from their book a quote to prove that the scripture is actually very Scientific (I can't help but picture the capitalized letter when every time they said the word). In return I decided that trying to teach them evolutionary biology is fair play, and I'm game for as long as they are.

They only ever got to read one quote.

It was interesting, since the two people were a lady and her husband, and they supposedly had background in Science. At one point we were talking about the idea that the world was round and referencing Copernicus and Hypatia, while at another point we were talking about the Dead Sea Scrolls and Book of Ezra (or was it Ezriel? There were a lot of Greek pseudepigrapha around). P-values and Lucy the Australopithecus were involved too. By the time that I was explaining that Latin grammar has no articles and how some things can be interpreted different ways, depending on the translator, I was wishing that Annie was here, because then I'd actually have someone who knows all the different main scriptures and the more detailed information about Homo erectus &c. and the discussion / debate could be really fun.

Or Kate, possibly, because she's much better with historical figures and dates than I am, though possibly the lady-teacher's comments might offend her at some point, cause an explosion of sarcasm, and then it'll be carnage. (I suspect that amongst my friends I'm the least adept at figuring out what AD, BC, CE, BCE all are relative to each other, but at least in biology we all reference things to events like the formation of the Pangea, so I'm not entirely hopeless.)

(Does Greek have articles in its syntax? Either the classic or modern form. According to these people, it doesn't.)

Then the lady said she had a class she had to get to or something and left, and her husband followed shortly afterward. I was amused and wondered how much of I've explained about random mutations in genes leading to embryonic lethal phenotypes in animals they would remember, especially as pertaining to intelligent design. (They insisted they wanted to continue the discussion on intelligent design after I hold them I work in genetics, so fair is fair.) Admittedly the lady claimed that what I have said was useful information to them, though it could be that she was just being polite at that point. (We were all very polite this morning.)

...

I still have a cold.

I have drank a cup of herbal stuff, a cup of hot chocolate, and a juice box today. (The scripture / genetics lesson occurred between the hot chocolate and the juice box.) At least the runny nose part (my second least favorite thing about being sick, because it never fails to amaze me with how utterly disgusting it is) has gotten better, for which I'm deeply thankful if only because my nose bleeds when I blow it too often.