Posted on 7/26/2005, 3:12:32 PM by Mr. Silverback
Fifty years ago, a malaria outbreak occurred among Borneo’s Dayak people. The World Health Organization came to the rescue. They sprayed the people’s thatch-roofed huts with DDT—and set in motion a life-and-death illustration of the importance of respecting the natural order.
The pesticide killed the mosquitoes, but it also killed a parasitic wasp that kept thatch-eating caterpillars under control. The result? People’s roofs began caving in.
And then things really got bad. The local geckos feasted on the toxic mosquitoes—and got sick. Cats gorged on sick geckos—and dropped dead. And then, with no cats, the rats began running wild, threatening the people with deadly bubonic plague.
The World Health Organization was in a quandary. What unexpected disasters might occur if it now poisoned the rats?
Then someone determined that they needed to reintroduce part of the natural order that had collapsed: specifically, cats to eat rats.
So one morning, the Dayak people heard the droning of a slow-flying aircraft. Soon the sky was littered with parachutes bearing pussycats to earth. Operation Cat Drop delivered 14,000 felines to Borneo. They hit the ground—feet first, I suppose—and began taking care of the rats.
The story of the parachuting pussycats, while funny, makes a serious point. As I write in my new book, The Good Life, there is a natural order to the world. Ecosystems work a certain way. Cycles of nature are unchanging. You don’t grow a tomato plant in a dark closet.
No, the physical natural order of the universe is clearly evident, as the World Health Organization bureaucrats discovered when they tampered with it in Borneo. Not only that, but there is also a natural moral order that arises from our learning how to behave within the limits of the physical order. Morality, I argue, is basically choosing to cooperate with nature’s directions. As we do this, we discover a known moral order. The object of life is to live in accordance with that moral order.
It’s tragic the way so many people go through life fighting against it. We want to enjoy sex on our terms, not the way we were designed. We end up with dejection, family dysfunction, disease. It’s like planting the tomatoes in a closet. It doesn’t work. It breaks the immutable laws of the universe.
I argue in the book that this discernible physical order clearly reveals an intelligent designer. If God designed the physical universe—as the evidence is indicating—isn’t it reasonable that He would teach us to behave in a way that conformed to His created order? Morality is cooperating, remember, with nature’s directions.
This is what Christians believe by faith, and as I argue in the book, something we can all observe, that is, the natural order. And we need to help our neighbors understand this: The good life can’t be found when you live in opposition to the natural order, regardless of its moral demands. In the end, the moral demands are the only path to health and happiness.
If you don’t believe that, just ask the people of Borneo. They discovered what happens when you tamper with the natural order—and were rescued from mosquitoes, rats, and the World Health Organization bureaucrats by parachuting pussycats.
Otherwise, I agree with this article 100%.
Oh, and Parachuting Pussycats would be a great name for a band.
There are links to further information at the source document.
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It is a pretty funny story. I read about it in his The Good Life book.
I don't personally think "He" teaches us anything. "He" lets us teach ourselves. Like my Grand Daddy told me, "Everybody pays for an education. Some people just pay a whole lot more than others."
It would be over at DU.
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Linking natural order to intelligent design is quite a leap of logic - or rather faith. The final outcome of something cannot be its own proof.
So, the Bible is for use as a paperweight and all the references in it to God teaching us and us teaching each other are just to add extra ink weight?
Life's experience is the teacher my friend. There is a big difference between understanding and knowing.
Boortz used to talk about chasing p*ssy all the time.
Well that doesn't look right. I mean he used to talk about cat chasing. Throwing a cat out of a plane and skydiving after it. I am no (can't even spell it) scientist but I am guessing the cats terminal velocity(TV) would be well below a humans (about 120 MPH) The cats TV might be about 40 MPH and you know they always land on their feet...
Any ideas on this. I dont have a cat to test out the TV of them. I don't mean dropping them or anything but if you just tie a line on them and hang them out your car/truck window and speed up you can find TV for them. At the speed the line goes taught(well it will already be taught from the weight of the cat dangling on the end of the line) and 45 degrees from straight down, that is TV for an object, roughly.
Most peole tell me that cats die when dropped from heights. But I am curious because this is not the first time I heard of chasing p*ssy.
See post 1. The story appears to be authentic.
Non sequiter when considered with your last post, and it starts from a bad premise anyway. As my pastor says, "Experience is not the best teacher. The opportunity to learn from other people's bad experiences is the best teacher."
Saying God doesn't teach us because it takes life experience to "understand" is like saying my Mom never really taught me to read, I only learned to read when I took the reading ability gained from her and read a book or two. It doesn't follow.
It is said that the malaria deaths in Africa in the post-DDT world are the equivalent of a 747 crash per day, every day.
Can you post a link to the relevant Harvard website?
Galileo might disagree with you.
Story must be aprocrophal.
this is a goody.
I'd be more inclined to believe this story happened as claimed if I could find even one reference to it from the WHO itself. So far all I can find are claims originating from what appears to be a single unidentified and unverified source.
For instance, every recounting of this story has almost identical wording and paragraph styling, and are all intended as object lessons warning of the dangers of tampering with nature. The WHO doesn't have a single reference to what must have been a pretty large scale operation in the 50's.
Without any verifiable sources of hard data and no corroborating independent accounts I find this to be little more than a constructed propaganda tool.
Hm...Okay, hypothetical here..Since the reintroduction of thousands of cats, was there a decimation of the local bird populations, which then led to a dramatic increase in all kinds of crop-eating insects?
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