asked particularly that when I wrote for this esteemed organ that I consider controversies such as Intelligent Design. My initial observations are that midwives and parents should be more careful with newborns: a great many appear to have been dropped on their heads while infants. It is the only way I can imagine people with the large brain characteristic of humans could come to believe such specious bilge.
I am also astonished that people should seriously claim the study of evolution to be a religion. ‘For eight years Darwin studied cirripedia, and on the ninth he published!’ I cannot see that raising any hosannahs or filling many collection plates.
Nor, I am delighted to say has anyone yet reported seeing a likeness of my phiz in items of food, on rocks or pieces of wood. I will be concerned about by deification only when scientists start auctioning slices of pie in which they discern my face. And if anyone does, I shall advise they go and have their heads examined.
Of course, my face does appear regularly, on the Bank of England £10 note following a campaign to have my modest achievements recognized. The note features my bearded post 1866 self, one of the Galapagos hummingbirds and of course HMS Beagle under full sail – indeed with stuns’ls aloft and alow. I would say the note had been most intelligently designed.
I am very glad to read that you have not begun to weep tears of blood, and that we shall not have to subject your clothing to the indignities of radiocarbon dating, a novel technique since your day that has proved most useful in debunking some of the more outrageous claims made in the name of a Greater Being.
I would be happy to submit my garments to a full spectrum of dating methods, but only if the Turin Shroud were treated in the same fashion.
Of course, it would be cheaper to look at dear Emma’s receipts. I assume Mary Magdalene’s were lost.
Yes, in the laundry.